According to that list, a whole lot of hits out there are against the rules. So you might need to make a hit asking people to tell you what they think of this site. And leave whether they sign up or come back, up to them...
Sorry but I can't help myself from replying to this one. None are around??? Aren't you around here daily for a considerable period? Or are you a ghost in this ghost-town?? If this is a ghost-town in any way, then I too am a ghost often wondering here (more than you) and have fun here more than another board like this one (which some nuts refer to as "original" one) that too discusses mturk issues. Anyways, thanks for getting me back to posting. Oh, yours was the last one I responded to before this one (after which I stopped posting). I can now see that by stopping posting to this forum, I've just worked in the hands of someone who never really wished any good for this forum. Realizing my mistake, I'll now be contributing my part to this forum and take care not to fall prey to such devils again. Finally, I hope the ghosts will RIP for a while!!! NO OFFENSE INTENDED TO ANYONE, seriously
Thanks for sharing that, Andy. I haven't been doing much work on MTurk lately since 1) there hasn't been much worth doing, and 2) my wrist is broken, so I'm only doing the easier tasks which mainly require clicking and saving my slow and tedious typing for occasional posts here. In my free time since reading the guidelines you posted above, I've also been putting more effort into just browsing the listings and reporting HITs that clearly don't belong on MTurk. I wouldn't flag a HIT like yours, but I do find and report a lot of clearly spammy stuff which makes MTurk look like an anything-goes kind of place. If we all did the same, then yes, there would be fewer HITs for a while, but I believe MTurk would become more attractive to people with better jobs to post and we'd all be better off in the end. Case in point: when new users visit a website and find it full of spam, what do 99% of them do? Leave. And the other 1% post more spam. Likewise, the longer we continue not reporting inappropriate HITs to Amazon, the more MTurk will be transformed into a hive of scum and villainy. We shouldn't wait for Amazon to come along and clean it up for us, as it could be too late by then. I regret that I haven't been more proactive with this kind of effort for a while, but now I'm fully committed to it. I can't tell anyone else what to do, but if one is willing to look at the long view instead of the short term, then consider helping out in this effort.
Thank you for the comments ergo. I hope your wrist gets better soon! I have big plans for this board & it is currently my second biggest project. My goal by the end of the year is for this forum to rank #1 in google for mturk forum - then I will look into other advertising venues.
I too have been reporting spammy hits because every time in the beginning that I did one, I got a bunch of crap in my email account. We need real jobs on mturk--not survey sign-ups and voting hits and all that other stuff. I too, have never reported innocent hits like Andy's. But there are certainly plenty of others that are blatant to the point of being offensive. Asking workers to accept hits on terms that violate not only mturk's policies but those of the other sites, and perhaps even the law, are unacceptable. Looking the other way would be the same as not reporting an employee at your place of business for stealing, even though your boss who pays you deserves to know sdo he can protect himself froms such a one. I work on amazon mechanical turk. They collect my payments and make sure I get paid and don't get ripped off. That is a reason compelling eough for me to want to keep the site a safe place for us to make a few bucks in these difficult economic times. P.S. When you accept and work on a hit you KNOW is in violation of mturk policies, you are, in effect, in violation of its policies and those of the other sites as well. Something to think about
Here's a HIT I found similar to the one by you (Andy): https://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=HTAM4QGCRYFZ4AZR7J60 BTW, if it doesn't last long enough, here's the screen-shot of that HIT: Not sure if anyone's going to report it or not, at least I ain't reporting it nor am I doing the HIT though.
This hit like Andy's is benign in my opinion. As it relates to helping improve mturk by joining a forum that discusses mturk, I would leave it alone and not report it. The only sign-up hits that piss me off are the ones that allow the person posting them to benefit financially through some pyramid or other scam that has levels. Mainly because they make hundreds of dollars for every 20 bucks they spend while paying the workers mere pennies to complete the hit.