"People don't use libraries any more except as a computer hub..." The 39 libraries in my county and several hundred in nearby NYC will disagree with you. I'm not sure about your other meaning. There are sites that explain things in a very complex manner, but the one I used is devoted just to pulling up the history of common idioms. If you want complexity, there are academic and professional journals, and sites the scientists and mathematicians use.
The lack of a report has happened before and it always makes me feel unsettled---what are they up to now? MTurk breeds suspicion. Like penny HITs. At least they stopped offering HITs of less than a penny. (Yeah they did that. I imagine there are still people who have a part cent floating somewhere in their records.)
You can trace it as far back as you want, as long as its in print somewhere. But you need to have your own limit on how far back you want to go. There are sites devoted to Middle English, Chaucer's language, and Old English. I'm satisfied going back to 1616, because the topic isn't vital to me. Doing a college paper on it is another story, but I graduated 50 years ago. No, I haven't had any candy or wine, or little kiddies at my door, and the spooky movies on TV tonight were crap. No classics. I've been watching PBS, where Tavis Smiley is staging a debate between the other 2 Pres. candidates. And Charlie Rose discussing Clinton's email problem.
I just submitted another ~400 HITs in the last 2 hours. Keep this pace up I might make 3000 submitted before tomorrow.
I would think "Barbara Allen" dates back to the 1400's, just an educated guess. We know "Greensleeves" dates back to Henry VIII, and there is some evidence he wrote it. Here's a highly serious site, if you want one. A search engine like no other wolframalpha.com
You're right! I forgot about that. It drove me nuts seeing that on my dashboard. I was happy when another requester did the same and made me whole again!
Amazon doesn't set the payments; the requesters do. Amazon just acts as a conduit for the money. And the 0c hits are quals. Were there really half-penny ones? THAT"S A HOOT!
MT was originally a means for people in very poor countries to make a little money, which was worth much more there than it is here. At some point, Amazon decided they wanted only people with a good command of English, and they dropped most of those countries, except india, where English is taught universally. Then along comes some Americans who can tweak the poverty wages, using scripts, to make a decent amount of money. It's ironic because it never was meant to be a decent wage, and the countries it was meant to help are no longer in the program. It brings to mind the mini-loans that are made to women in Africa and Asia to start their own little businesses from home and become independent. I can't think of the name of the org. that does it.
There was a requester who offered 0.00 pay HITs because he thought we should be glad to do them--for science! What was his name? It wasn't so long ago. He wrote long complaints about the reviews on TO. And he just kept putting them up--with everybody refusing to do them. I think he finally offered paying work. He didn't last long, I think.
So the system worked in that case. The majority of requesters are legit, even if cheap, and some not so cheap. I had one woman who figures out how much time each turker spends on her hits, and sends out a bonus to equal $10/hour.
Who ever claimed Mechanical Turk was to be used just for paying slave wages? It is a platform designed for companies to outsource their work. Not everything has to be dirt cheap, you just have to know how to look. Anyone can write a script if they care to learn, and more times than not, user error is a large part in the 'poverty wages' aspect of Turk, which has happened time and time again. People can do HITs more efficiently than most others even without a script. It takes experience. Amazon recommended paying at least minimum wage at the time, but never bothered updating that figure as the years passed. Minimum wage isn't glorious, but it's helped countless people afford the cost of living.. albeit barely. If Amazon actively policed the platform and enacted at least minimum wage on every single HIT ever posted, things could be so much better.
Thanks! I'll have to look at them. I love English mysteries!! I'm not so patiently waiting for the next Charles Todd book to come out. Then I have to wait for my library to get it Do you read any of Anne Perry's stuff?
Here it is, from Aunt Wiki: it's called microcredit, and the first org to do it was the Grameen Bank in India. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel for his work founding it. Anyway, that's what MT could have done if it stayed where it was. Not microcredit, but micro-wages.