Goddamn it, I have to learn not to waste my time with CrowdFlower HITs. They always piss me off and I wind up returning the damned things. I found one called "Answer questions about PDF Files" that pays 9 cents each. The instructions seemed pretty straightforward and I was like, "Okay, I'll give this a shot." I opened up the PDF and started hunting through it for the information they wanted. A few minutes and 24(!) questions later I was thinking, "Well, that wasn't so bad, maybe I'll do another few of of these." Then I realized that the HIT had four more sections, each with the same 24 questions. I had to do the same thing for five PDF files, not one. That would put my total work time at, I estimated, something around 15-20 minutes instead of the 3-4 I'd already put into it. I wanted to slap myself* for accepting a CrowdFlower HIT and not remembering their corporate philosophy of "extract the maximum amount of work for the minimum amount of reward". Feeling conned and angry, I returned yet another CrowdFlower HIT unfinished.** *Actually, this is untrue. I wanted to reach through my computer monitor and slap the holy f*cking sh*t out of the person who seriously expected so much work for so little reward. ** This is probably the second or third CrowdFlower HIT in a row that I've returned without finishing after I realized how much work the damned thing actually is. My advice to CrowdFlower: if you want to pay a penny or two for doing the job, pay a penny or two. Don't bundle up five or ten jobs into one and offer a dime for it.
ROFL yeah the thing i miss all the time is the little box in the left side that says.. Task 1 of ..... 9000000! anymore i see there names i just scroll right past there hits .. wont even look at it.. there like the jello blob that seems to eat up requesters and spit back out shit no one wants to do.. UGH!
I've returned so many Crowdflower HITs when I realize that i'm on page 1/4 and have done like 20 questions already, they're crazy if they think i'm going to do that much work for that little.
Been there, done that more times than I can remember. Finally I drilled it into my head - look for the page count before reading instructions. What throws me off is that they do have some good paying HITs from time to time. I caught 4 for 75c that took about 5 min each about a month ago. My pet peeve is their error rate calculation. I'm sure some you know - working on the third hit with no mistakes, then one part of the 5 parts is flagged and the message pops up - Your approval rate is 66% - our minimum expected rate is 90%.
I want to know the grading scale that they use? I am so glad that this isn't like being in school where if you miss one question you jump down to 66%. However, I think if we had grading system like this in America, just maybe our students would surpass China one day. But I mean honestly, you go from 100% down to 66% for one missed question. YIKES!
Even if it was only one PDF file 3-4 minutes for less than a dime? Pssh. CF sucks for most Turkers no matter how you slice them.
LOL! I am sorry. Their hits want you to sacrifice your husband AND child in order to get a few measly pennies.
Oh yes their grading...They have some very confusing or unclear questions.. I don't know if its them or crowdsource that has the category one? Where you decide where things go into Ebay like categories- Sometimes the ones I got wrong could NOT have been possible- The answers their "wonderful" all knowing robot chose were not right at all. I remember doing one task for a measly 1-5 cents to look up "activities" and see if they were over $5...but then of course you had to answer a ton more questions about each place...And they told me I got a few wrong and I was on their website so I know I wasn't wrong :/ They are a waste of time- generally wrong and pay a ridiculously low amount. So not worth it. I have always wondered- If they have someone...or something doing the work beforehand to tell us we are wrong (when we're not) then why are they having us do it again?lol
You are probably right about the robot making the calls, but a few times I was sure that is was a human and was just some bored punk who was messing with me. I have left insults and refused to change my answers and still never been rejected. I think their QC is questionable.
How much cheekiness could have this requester! Yes, I was just astonished about the cheekiness of that Requester. There are many jobs underpaid on Amazon MechanicalTurk but I must admit that this one is unsurpassable! When I realized, as you do too, how much time consuming it implies I give up right away and I filled in every box encountered till the end of the task this message: "The slavery was abolished long time ago, maybe you didn't find out that yet!" (I was very angry indeed) Lol, you estimated 15-20 minutes to accomplish it, you are pretty fast, it took me 10 minutes to reach the end in the manner I've described above! How much boldness did it need to post such task!
Just tried a Video Sentiment HIT. Did the training. 5 answers required. They say I got 1 wrong... and that is a 0.0% accuracy (HOW?) so I can't do the jobs. The one I got wrong, what was written seemed like gibberish I couldn't understand if it meant something good or not, but apparently that is positive sentiment! LOL. Ok. Whatevs.
Funny, I just saw these HITs and I was like hmm, ok 9 cents...let me take a look. I clicked on the first PDF to view and it was pretty small. I'm like, hmm ok this could be good. Then I start to see how many questions there are for the one PDF...and the instructions...and then i'm like wow this is really dumb. Then I proceed to scroll down and see there are many more to do, all in one 9 cent hit. I let out a bellowing laugh here at work. It's ironic that there is a thread on it here. This company is crazy if it thinks it will get this work done on mturk. Sadly I'm sure there are some people who will put the time in and actually do this work...thus making it worse for us all.
I should also mention that one of the qualifiers for this HIT is the long of locations you cannot be from: Location is not PK, KW, IR, IQ, IN, ID, EG, BD, AF I had to look some of these up, but the countries listed are Pakistan, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, India, Indonesia, Egypt, Bangladesh (really?), and Afghanistan. Interestingly, all of these countries, save India, are predominantly Muslim of one flavor or another. If you're not from one of these countries and would like to take a crack at doing these, knock yourself out. There's over a 1300 of them as of this writing. https://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=2TFJMVHVKCJ09TP5YYA7DKQ4C3C64E
I'm very new to mturk, but it didn't take me long to notice the same thing! They show you one example for, say $.08. Then you get on the page and it wants you do six or seven of the task! I also got dinged for incorrectly qualifying an article. They wanted me to rate it as insightful or entertaining when it was obviously an advertisement. Thankfully, they had an option for me to tell them why it's wrong, but still.... That said, I still do and enjoy their relational hits for $.16. It's too bad they only let you do three or four at a time.