Block Requester script v1.0 beta July 4th. It's the day each year that the US celebrates its declaration of independence from Great Britain. Today, declare your independence from the requesters whose HITs you don't want to see by installing the Block Requester script for Firefox with Greasemonkey. What is it? It's a simple script which allows you to hide HITs from requesters you're not interested in. Hate RequesterX's HITs? Click the little 'x' next to RequesterX's name while viewing the HIT listing, and from now on you won't see their HITs again. What do I need to use it? Firefox. Version 2 will work, but 3 is highly recommended for better performance. Greasemonkey for Firefox. If you don't already have this installed, follow that link to get a copy. Download it in Firefox, and when it's finished you'll be prompted to restart the browser. You must restart before installing the Block Requester script. Block Requester script. Click this, and Greasemonkey will pop up a window asking your permission to install the script. Click 'Install'. (If you saw a bunch of code instead of a pop-up window, something is probably wrong with Greasemonkey. Check that it's enabled in the Tools->Add Ons menu.) If you find installing scripts daunting, I can provide you a customized download of Firefox that includes everything preinstalled. Note 1: This script is not recommended for use on slow computers or slow internet connections. You may briefly see undesired HITs if MTurk takes too long to load. Note 2: Until just this evening, I was having problems with this script in Firefox 3.5. Works fine for me now, but if it doesn't for you please let me know. 3.0 should run it if 3.5 won't. Now what? Go to Mturk.com and look at the HIT listings now. You'll see some new things. Beside each requester's name will be an 'x'. To remove a requester from your listing, click the 'x' and confirm your choice when asked if you're sure. The page will reload, and that requesters HITs will no longer clutter up your listings. Just in case you make a mistake, you can click 'undo' after blocking a requester. The listings look really empty now! If you block a major requester, or block a lot of requesters, that can certainly be the case. The script works by hiding the part of the HIT listing that contains a blocked requester's HIT. Sometimes the page may even be blank because all 10 HITs were blocked! Want to see the HITs you blocked? Any time one or more HITs are hidden, a 'Show Blocked' link is added right next to the 'Show All Details | Hide All Details' links on the page. Click this to see what you're missing. While looking at the listing, you'll now find an 'unblock' link next to every blocked requester. I'm sure you can figure out what that does. I blocked Amazon Requester Inc but am still seeing their HITs! Amazon Requester Inc is a catch-all name used by a number of Amazon teams and clients. They use the same name but different IDs for various HITs. Keep blocking until you get rid of all the ones you don't want to see. This is kind of cool, but it's a little depressing / frustrating / ugly seeing so few HITs on a page. I know. That's why this is a 1.0 beta version. For version 2, I plan to fill empty slots with more HITs so you'll always see a full page -- minus all the requesters you don't want to see. It doesn't work! That's quite possible, especially if you're running other scripts that modify the HIT listing in some way. I've tested with Turkopticon and haven't encountered any problems; your mileage may vary. If you need to disable the script for any reason, go to your Tools menu->Greasemonkey->Manage User Scripts, and disable or uninstall the script. Then get in touch with me and let me know what the problem was; I'll do my best to fix it. This script is also very sensitive to the current layout of MTurk. If Amazon changes their HIT listing HTML at some point, this will probably stop working. I'll try to keep on top of any such changes they make. How to contact me with questions, problems, suggestions, money , etc. This coming Wednesday, July 8th, I will be joining Randulo for the live Turkers Talk voice chat. That would be an excellent time to give me your feedback. But feel free to join in even if you have no interest in the script at all. I'm sure we'll cover many topics during the show. Other ways to reach me: post here, send me a PM, or tweet me via @turkerz on Twitter. My computer blew up! No it didn't. Or if it did, it wasn't because of my script. But just in case: should you choose to install and use this, you do so at your own risk. What about my privacy? What information do you collect about me? None. This script works entirely on your computer. No information is sent to me, Amazon or anyone else. Your Javascript skills stink. Hey, this was pretty much my first serious script. I wrote it a while ago and have been working on other things since then. Some of the design is a bit strange. When version 2 comes out, it will be a complete rewrite from the ground up. Stay tuned, and thank you for trying out this first version. This first one was mainly designed for me, and as a proof-of-concept. The next one will be built according to the public's suggestions. 'Block' Requester? Isn't that name a little undiplomatic, and inaccurate besides? Yep. It will be changed in v1.1 to something like Hide Requester. Special thanks to Shego and Justfight for helping with testing. I couldn't have done this without you. Thanks too to Sonica for her encouragement, and to all of you who have made our little community a special place. This is my way of giving back to you for all you've given me. And Andy, thanks for putting this forum together.
First of all, great work ergo, keep it up. While filling up empty slots is the one (and most probably the only) feature I miss the most with this script, it's still quite helpful as it is. At least, I can say that for myself, it has saved me from the frustration & sheer torture of going through the HITs by conjecture corporation which seem to be never-ending. I just checked right now & the script is working perfectly on my Firefox (3.0.11) browser (haven't started using Opera for turking as yet). Hope others too will find the script helpful & appreciate your efforts to help us as you always do.
I have an idea you could go and block all the requesters you like and only get their hits int he blocked section am I right or wrong? then keep the ones you can't stand showing... Just a tought nothing meant by it just and idea.
Thanks for the feedback, trueakitalover! So if I understand correctly, when doing the Show Blocked command, it should show *only* the blocked HITs, not blocked + unblocked together. That's an excellent idea. I'm also considering whether to have Show Blocked show all the HITs together, but blocked requester's HITs will be in a different color. Between the two, which idea do you like better? Separate listings, or together with a different color?
Ergo, thanks for this script. Sorry, I am on a slow internet connection since my broadband isn't working and so did not respond earlier. Of the two options you have listed above, I would prefer separate listings of blocked and unblocked HITs.
what I was thinking instead of having the blocked putting the favorite requester into one and then those that you know are spamalicious in our email boxes I would block those. Then I wouldn't have to search and peck for my favorites all the time. I have requesters I admire so much then I have one's I know they are just out to get into my email box. I only go with the ones that are red anymore. I sometimes will go with the blue if I feel like it and want to do something different. I do the ones that I know that come recommended highly anymore. I use the turkopticon the forums here and all to judge by the good requester's are. I love turking.
Great ideas, trueakitalover and Sonica! I've wanted to do something for favorite requesters too. That will probably have to wait for 1.5 or 2.0, but shouldn't be too far away. I really want to help improve the turking experience for everyone.
Thanks too to StellarMajyk for some great suggestions. I'm working on filling up the empty space created by hidden HITs with more HITs from other pages. Does anyone want the ability to view more than 10 HITs per page? I can do so, but it will probably slow down your MTurk listings a lot if there are a lot of hidden requesters.
Just a quick update: I'm skipping right to 2.0 on this, reworking things into something akin to an e-mail Inbox, with the ability to create labels and filters according to whatever parameters you'd like. Those of you who have given me feedback so far will be invited to test out the new version ahead of public release. Thanks for all your great suggestions!
For some reason, mine isn't working anymore, there aren't any Xs to check or anything. Is it just me?
His script must have got messed up by the latest Amazon Mturk update. It's not just you. I just finished updating my program for the changes, maybe Ergo can do the same for his script If you're wondering what exactly happened, the queries on the URL changed their order. For example where it used to be '/mturk/searchbar?requesterId=' Now its:/mturk/searchbar?selectedSearchType=hitgroups&requesterId='
I don't see anything at https://www.techlist.com/mturk/requesters/. I think it must be due to this update. Thanks for this info, LD. I was wondering whether something was wrong at my end.
Thanks for the heads up, guys! I'll get this fixed and upload a new version. I'll post a message here when it's up. Hope Techlist gets their site fixed soon too. UPDATE: Okay, fixed version is up at the same location as before: http://crowdsauced.com/block/block_requesters.user.js My thanks to LD for cluing me in on the exact issue.
I am getting the following error when trying to add the script: Error loading user script: 404: Not Found I am using Firefox 3.5.8 and successfully installed and enabled grease monkey. Can someone help with this?
I'd have if I could have. It seems that ergo could have helped you out here. Or even lightdark. But unfortunately, they don't seem to be active here for quite long. ergo's Last Activity: 10-04-2009 11:49 PM lightdark's Last Activity: 10-28-2009 08:31 AM Does anyone have any idea whatever happened to them/any of them?
The script is working again, someone fixed it. Check it here: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/69128
Thanks sonica, I miss my blocker script, Ive been looking a long time for this cause it takes me hours to shift through 40 pages of crap
I'll add my voice to the crowd calling for a "Favorites" listing that fills up the page (not just leaving blanks). This would come close to making an ideal turking environment. (Okay, that and being able to track bonuses!) Thanks for all your great work! Lisa