hi, i'm new to mturk. I created a hit as a requester earlier this month for people to write articles related to my website and post it to their website/blog. A backlink with anchor text needs to be intake in the article. A week or 2 after that, I received a account warning email from amazon mturk saying that my hit is an invalid hit and it has been removed from the marketplace. 1. Are these kind of hits (post article+backlink to my site) not allowed in the marketplace? 2. Even though amazon says the HIT is removed from the marketplace (according to their email), I'm still getting people submitting results. If i sign in as a worker, i can also see that my HIT is still in the marketplace. What does this mean? 3. Do you think I should cancel this HIT? Will I get my account banned if I don't?
1. Doesn't look like they are. 2. Take it down anyways. 3. Yes. Maybe. https://www.mturk.com:443/mturk/help?helpPage=policies
and whatever you do, please don't reject the people that have already submitted work to you because Amazon took your hit down
It's weird that they won't allow you to have these hits as they sound very familiar to what Gaddy was having people do.
I think I may have found the potential problem. Quoting from Amazon's site: What are some specific examples of HITs that violate Amazon Mechanical Turk policies? HITs requiring disclosure of the Worker's identity or e-mail address, either directly or indirectly HITs requiring registration at another website or group HITs that directly or indirectly promote a site, service, or opinion HITs that violate the terms and conditions of an activity or website (for instance asking Workers to vote for something) HITs that have explicit or offensive content, for instance, nudity, but do not have the Adult Content Qualification HITs asking Workers to solicit third parties HITs that generate "referred" site visits or click-through traffic HITs that ask Workers to take action to manipulate a website's behavior or results HITs that violate intellectual property rights of any party HITs that require Workers to download software I bolded the problem areas. I think the biggest problem was asking for a back link. And, maybe, another part was asking the person to post on his own website, which might allow you to learn his identity as well as manipulate the results of your website. (And "thanks" to Whimsy for posting the link.) And I agree with Melissa's request not to reject others who have already done your HIT. This happened to another requester recently and caused all kinds of grief before it was finally resolved--if it ever has been finally resolved!
After reading the policy, it does make sense now why i got a warning. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's trying to use mturk to get articles+backlinks, am I? Anyhow, i know what to do. I deal very fairly with people and only reject submitted hits when they didn't follow the instructions. Rejecting hits and getting warning from amazon are two totally independent event
DVD, You'd be surprised at how many requesters reject hits because amazon pulled them down or for a coding mistake they made. It's actually pretty common, but in my opinion, it's unethical but they do it anyway.
What I'm not understanding is why you've left them up so long after getting responses that they're probably in violation of Amazon policy. I recognized which HITs they were as soon as I read your post but I'd just skipped them. Still coming up in my writing searches though. Hopefully you're able to take it down soon so you're able to put up other HITs in the future.
Whimsy, It's an experiment. It was really my first published HIT since 2009/2010 I sincerely posted a HIT which i think would get a few people interested (and yes, there were). Little did I realize that it will get a warning. After getting the warning, I thought the HIT will just disappear from the marketplace (as that's what i understand from their warning email) but it didn't and there were still people hitting on it daily. It's a pity that this kind of HITS doesn't meet the policy requirements as I've lots of work in this area that needs get done. Whimsy, I noticed that you mentioned "writing searches", would you be kind enough to PM me the kind of work you've done or would like to do? Just want to get in touch with people who love writing and see if we can spark some fire PM from interested parties are also welcomed
Summaries of articles, anywhere from 50 words to...I think about 250/300. There are also jobs for rewriting articles but I don't enjoy those. The pay sucks but it's more interesting than surveys.