Hi everyone, I just joined Mturk a few days ago and I am very happy to be making some money, however I have ran into a bit of a problem today. Most of the HITs I have done are Give Your Opinion - Simple and Quick! (US) by CrowdSource. They have even credited me for most of those hits. However, today, when I tried to do another one, there was a problem. Since you all are about to face a wall of text, here is the problem in a nutshell for those who are lazy: I can preview available HITs, but when I click accept, the HITs become broken and I have to return them. And here is the long version: I was still able to preview the HITs but the moment I click accept, the screen shows this message " There are currently no remaining HITs available" or "this HIT has become unavailable". This is impossible because the number still shows 12000 hits left. Anyways, I have no choice but to return the HIT i just accepted because I can't do anything. Naive old me thought that maybe they did run out of stuff they wanted me to search so I tried again in a couple of minutes and a couple of hours with the same results. Thinking this is just a problem with this particular batch of HITs, I have tried to do Determine the Number of People in 5 Images by Tagasauris. Just like with the other one, I was able to preview the task and view the images just fine, but when I finally click on accept, the screen refreshes and shows something along the lines of "Generating data, please come back later". Then, I tried to do Choose Best from: 'Analyze this person' made by CF (cloudfactory). Again, I was able to preview the task just fine, even when I accepted the task, the screen loaded up the task for me, but when I finished and click submit, nothing happens. Even when I click submit 100 times, it still wouldn't work. When I reset the task ( this is an option in the task itself) and press submit, it tells me I haven't answered the question, so the submit button and the reset button are working, but somehow I can't submit the HIT. My HITs accepted and submitted at this point are still quite low (84 accepted and 51 submitted) so I couldn't have went over my HIT limit. I have been approved on every HIT I have done, except the ones where they are still pending for approval. I don't get why this problem is happening with me. I have tried to use both Chrome and Firefox to see if the problem is browser related but the problem still persists. At this point, I have had to return 8 HITs due to this problem, and since I am only a 2-days-old member, it has really affected by statistics negatively. Have anyone else run into this problem or is it just me ? I have called Amazon customer service and submitted a ticket for customer support on MTURK. The customer service individual I talked to told me that there is no phone support for Mturk and the email support only works on Weekdays and it would take 1-2 days for them to help me out. If anyone can help me out by telling me how I can fix this problem, I would greatly appreciate it. Even if you don't know how to resolve it, please just post a comment below if this has occured to you. Thank you all for reading this, I know it was very long.
There are a few different things happening here... CrowdFlower (as well as a few other requesters, like CrowdSource) limit the number of any particular HIT type that you can do. There is a script over on the script forum -- http://mturkforum.com/forumdisplay.php?9-Scripts -- that helps you identify these "false available" HITs. It sounds like the Tagasaurus HIT is just plain broken. You can report it as such at the bottom of the page if things aren't loading, etc. CF has a pretty bad reputation (see http://turkopticon.differenceengines.com/A1OCPG2TDIL4AO ) among MTurk workers for having a fake submit button (so supposedly they get your work without paying you). I'd avoid them in the future. There is a script for blocking requesters, too. I wouldn't worry too much about your "returned HITs" stats at this point. I think it is more for your own information - I haven't seen a requester use it to weed out workers, yet. Mine is pretty bad right now because I did a ton of HITs for a requester that was collecting contact info for app developers, and the instructions said to return the HIT if the developer page was down or otherwise unloadable.
Thanks DK713 for your quick reply. After your explanation, I feel a bit better, however I still feel that there is a problem with my Mturk account. Last night, I was doing the CrowdSource hits ( the same time I have a problem with today), and I remember the last one I did, I only have to search for 2 search terms instead of the usual 8 terms, and after that I was still able to submit my task. Secondly, the HIT that I did for Tagasaurus that turns out to be broken was not broken yesterday. Yesterday, I tried out his HITs and were able to complete 2 before I got bored of it. This is my third one and it became broken. Somehow I get the feeling I did something wrong here. Also, you said that returned HITs do not matter much, what about abandoned HITs ? There was a couple of broken ones that I couldn't do today, and i just let the timer runs out and they became abandoned hits. Would these affect me much in the future? Once again, thank you for welcoming me into the forums and answering my questions. It is great to be here. XD
No problem! I'm not really sure what the role of abandoned HITs is, someone else might know. I have 6 abandoned, and they're all appeared kind of mysteriously one day (only thing I can think of is I forgot to uncheck "automatically accept next available HIT"?). Anyway, the impression I've gotten is that they're frowned upon, but requesters rarely use that stat as a way to weed out workers, if ever.
Hi again, I know that DK713 said that the Tagasaurus HIT might just be broken but it wasn't broken yesterday, and also today the HIT number for that HIT kept going down consistently, so someone was doing it. Anyone has any thoughts about this ?
I did one of the Tagasaurus "Determine the Number of People in 5 Images" HITs, and I did not actually have to click on an "submit" buttun, it just automatically submited after I choose an answer for the fifth image. Hmm... not sure what to tell you =\
I have no clue if this is the case, but are you sure you don't already have too many hits assigned to you? When you click the hits tab, right under that is an option to view "hits assigned to you" and it shows any hits that you've accepted by haven't submitted. Pretty sure there is a limit to how many you can have open at once, but not sure what it is. That's probably not it, but just a thought.
Hi guys, thanks for the timely reply. I don't have ANY hits assigned to me at this point, but I'm still unable to do Tagasaurus "Determine the Number of People in 5 Images" HITs. The problem with this HIT is that I can preview it just fine. Yesterday I even did it twice. Today, however, when I click accept button, the page refreshes and it says "Generating data, come back later". So i returned it, accepted a new one, and the same thing happened. Tried this on another browser too. I have tried to work on a couple of HITS by other requesters and so far they are working for me. On another note, yesterday, I did the "adult video 90 characters description" HITS and I saw they had a few thousands left, today I woke up and there were none left. People are horny to the max lol. Anyways, I hope this problem I am having isn't punishment for doing those adult content HITS? I have to admit, I did quite a thorough inspection of each video before I wrote the description.....
Ha! I hope it isn't punishment, because I did about 100 of them over the course of two days. They're pretty easy when you get the hang of it, and they pay well. I get brain fried after a while, though, because I stop being able to come up with "unique" descriptors.