KSquared I have just had 2 HITs rejected by KSquared. He accused me of plaguarism saying that the exact words I used appeared on another website: 1) I never plaguarise 2) I always check my own work for originality 3) These hits were to rephrase his own words - which I did - so plaguarism does not enter into it anyway. So beware this requester.
I've mentioned this before, but if someone requesting writing work rejects you and you believe they've done so unfairly, do a Google search a few days later and see if your work is actually being used somewhere. If it is, report the requester to Mechanical Turk for fraud immediately, and Amazon will ban them from MTurk permanently.
I think it should be amazon's policy that if a requestor rejects work, he should be required to give some kind of reason. Especially if the worker asks for one. It's not fair that we may spend an hour or two on an article and then have it rejected and receive nothing--not even an explanation. I also think that for article writing, workers should be compensated something; even if the work is rejected because of the length of time required to finish the project.
That's also very high on my list of Things I Would Change about MTurk. Providing a reason for rejection should be mandatory, even on the quick HITs. If it's the same reason for multiple HITs, the requester could fill out the reason once and attach it to the whole group. There's no reason requesters couldn't do this now. Eg., $1.00 to write the article + a bonus of up to $4 depending on the quality.
In that case, don't you feel anyone and everyone will be out to grab that opportunity (that is, $1)? It'll be like "first come, first served" basis!!!
Not necessarily, because the requester can still reserve the right to refuse your work if it's total crap. I agree it would probably be better, though, if the requester could just put up the $5 HIT, and choose to give partial payment to people who don't meet high enough standards. Sort of a "Hey, I appreciate that you tried, but you really need to work on your spelling and grammar if you want to get full pay on article HITs." One advantage of doing things that way is that the requester could then post a new HIT asking people to correct the grammar and spelling of the badly written article. As it is now, if a requester rejects your work, they are forbidden from using it in any way. CastingWords' approach is to accept imperfect work as long as it's clear the person tried, and the things which aren't good enough are approved but get posted for editing. Bonuses are given to the people who do good work that needs less or no editing.
Sorry about that. I guess I thought it goes without saying that requesters should always have the right to reject submissions, as long as they do so fairly. I put up an experimental HIT recently to get a feel for integrity in the current worker climate, and had about 20% of people submit junk. Such results definitely makes me thankful to have the right of rejection. Another 10% submitted work that couldn't completely be considered junk, but didn't fully meet the few very simple standards required by the task. I didn't reject anyone's submission, however, as I plan to offer that 30% a special group of HITs in the future that I hope will reveal some of the reasons people cheat or submit substandard work, while exploring how to motivate them not to do so. I think I know and understand most of the factors, but I'd like to give workers the chance to demonstrate it themselves because I think Amazon and its requesters could learn something here. Although there will always be some cheaters, I believe that improving the worker experience, not only in terms of pay but also in the website interface, resolving disputes, etc., has great potential to motivate some of that 30% to do good work, and through my HITs I'm gathering evidence to prove that to Amazon. There will likely be a time soon when I won't be turking anymore, but before I go I want to see Mechanical Turk a better place than when I first found it.
I'd surely have taken it as CS, but you mentioned: So I felt that even a half-hearted attempt would get at least $1. Suppose there's an "Article Rewrite" which requires certain length and at least 50% unique. What I felt was you were suggesting that the Worker will get $1 even if rewritten article is just 10%-20% original and is messed up with grammar and spelling mistakes. And for those who meet the given requirements will get the bonus over and above the HIT Reward amount. So I was saying that under such circumstances, such a HIT will be accepted by any Worker who sees it first and is sure can at least vary that article by 10%-20%. If it happens this way, such an article will be of no use to the Requester, yet he has to pay $1. And then the Requester needs to put it up again for Rewrite and keep on following this process until and unless he/she finds the article meeting the necessary requirements. And it's possible that the Requester would himself turn into a Worker under such circumstances sooner or later since there will be lots of time wasted on one hand (in verifying all the crap articles until he finally finds his much-awaited sweet-heart) and lots of payments on the other. Anyways, I think MTurk must give it a try.
The bottom line is that you get what you pay for. I won't submit sub par work on purpose because I value my high approva rate. But I think the reason so many people do submit crapola is because the pay isn't equal to the amount of time and effort required to finish the task. I do a quick scan of the hit. If the requestor pays a buck, but wants a 500 word article, and has so many details for acceptance that Jesus Christ himself couldn't get it right, I won't do it. Sometimes there is just no pleasing some people. And sometimes people have very grandiose ideas about their own self importance and think we peasants will jump at the chance to make a buck while jumping through impossible hoops to collect it. I always do my very best, so if I complete a requestor's hit once just to see what happens, and he rejects me, I won't work for him again. Or if start working and realize I'm in over my head, I return it so somebody with more experience can complete it instead.
For me its the requester listspinner.com, I did 10 Hits exactly the same pay, he approved 5 and paid for them and rejected the rest, when I emailed him he wrote back saying I didn't follow the instructions! I dunno what more to say to that.
There are a few shady characters that put out hits. I'm not saying this listspinner is one of them. My philosophy is, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!" Don't do his hits anymore if you feel you've been cheated.
Content Spooling I did a bunch of paraphrasing paragraphs for Content Spooling the other day and all of them got accepted except one. That rejection was totally off the wall and referred to a hit that I did not do or accept. I did not accept a hit that had anything to do with stairmaster stepmills or exercise equipment, so something is wrong somewhere. I wrote back to them but of course, received no response. Your summary has 42 words - it needs to have a minimum of 90 words. Your summary does not contain the keyword 'stairmaster stepmills & bikes' - it needs to occur in your summary once. Your summary does not contain the keyword 'stairmaster 4400cl stepper' - it needs to occur in your summary once. Your summary does not contain the keyword 'stairmaster 3800rc recumbent bike' - it needs to occur in your summary once. (Our initial reviews are automated. If any of the listed requirements are not met, your HIT is rejected and a new one is created.) This is very annoying to receive a rejection for something I didn't do. This is the second strange and bizarre rejection I've gotten from Content Spooling, so I am a little gun shy about doing any more for them. Fortunately, I only have 5 rejections out of 1300+ submissions, but two of them are from Content Spooling!
Even if you contact them, they will send you an automated response. I had sent them a mail when they were loading hits with no subject. I got fed up when this thing continued for about 15 days, so sent them a mail that there was not subject on which to write. They have made some changes to their system, so I believe you have got caught in those changes somewhere. They need to work out the bugs in their system, I have done some summaries for them, and barring one, all have been accepted. I think you will have a hard time getting a response from them.
suzy q - i got the exact same rejection and i too never did a single hit on the subject of stairmasters! i know because i checked after doing a couple to see if they were accepting and they put in this rejection right off the bat! no problem with the rest though. the thing that bugs me with contentspooling is their fussy word count, and i don't know how to program some automated word count. you'd think they could have it integrated into their hits because i've seen others with similar running word counts. these aren't really that profitable to do, but sometimes they're the only hits i can find that don't require looking up websites, etc.
Do you know how to install a bookmarklet? They're small scripts that perform simple functions. There's one for doing word counts at this blog: http://minutillo.com/steve/weblog/2007/12/27/word-count-bookmarklet From that page, you can install the bookmarklet by clicking the word count link and holding down your mouse button, then dragging the link up to your browser's bookmark bar before letting go. Once it's in your bookmark bar, you can use it anytime. Just select any text, click on the bookmarklet, and a window will pop up giving you the count.