Hi all, First, I'm so glad to see that this forum exists! There's much more information here than on the AWT site for requesters. I'm new to mTurk and wish to use the system in the most respectful and efficient ways, for myself and for workers. My question is re contacting workers. Each of my HITs has a unique associated Qualification that allows a worker to complete that specific HIT. However, the approval message that comes through, if I'm not mistaken, is a simple "granted" message with a link to "all hits available" ... right? What is the best way to alert a worker as to where she can find her HIT? Is it even possible? I didn't see anything in the TOS re this, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. BTW, thanks for your advocacy on behalf of workers and fair wages! -av- Research Ventures
Workers don't receive any messages regarding the following: -Bonuses issued (who it's from, what the reason was) -Qualifications granted (worker would most likely eventually notice certain qualification needed HITs as available now) -Blocking workers (When worker tries to do HITs from you again, they get an error message you blocked them) Rejections are a little different. If work is rejected and a reason is given, it does show up in the workers history for the day in question. Although, I doubt the majority of workers go back and look. If you are wanting only a specific worker for one specific task there are two ways. The easy way is to list a HIT only for the workerId in question(i.e. 'Only for Worker A2THSDITH4JRO' subject). If someone knows to be looking for their workerId in HITs, they will me. In the HIT you must include a warning that all others that try to accept and complete the HIT will be rejected. The more difficult and seldom used way is with qualifications. You would make up a custom qualification for the user(s) you want to do a certain HIT. Then you grant that/those certain worker(s), the proper qualification. After that, you post your HIT that needs that qualification. Then those workers would already have to be looking for your HITs, or you can contact them. Contacting workers is the same as requesters. It can be done with a simple HTTPS POST. Or contact them though a link, if they have completed a past HIT for you. By contacting workers this way, they will know your requester email address. You can also request, but don't expect, workers to give you an email for easier contacting. Not all workers are females. But to reiterate: direct email, contact form, HTTP POST(the contact form), or if the worker was already looking they could find it that way.
Thanks for the info. While testing the whole Qualification/HIT scenario on the sandbox, I noticed that I was notified via email that I'd been granted a qualification and I was provided the generic "ALL HITs" url. Are you saying that doesn't happen on the production site? Just because I'm doing my bit to shift the paradigm, I like to use the "generic She" instead of the "generic He" because, as you may have noticed as well, not all workers are male. Thanks so much for the help! Update: I just verified again that, as a worker, I am notified via email that I have been granted a particular Qualification. There's no link to the HIT, but I get the name of the Qualification, which in my case is the name of the HIT (trying to reduce confusion ...) and a further direction to contact the Requester directly if I have any questions. Which I do. Does that square with your experience and the experience of other workers? btw, the reason for all the hoops and whistles is that this particular batch of work requires a unique worker for each HIT. sigh. Thanks again!
I've been granted qualifications without even knowing. No email came, and if one did in the past, it certainly didn't include HITs. I haven't fully looked into the requester side of giving qualifications, but it could be you're doing something most all others don't. I imagine if it does work, the list of HITs would be dependent on if there were HITs available with that custom qualification. The other way of getting a unique worker for each HIT, is have a single HIT with many assignments per HIT. Then use the external question option to allow your server to issue whatever HIT you wanted in a similar batch. That way Amazon only allows one worker, and you get your whole batch done by unique workers. A third way, would be grant the qualification to all that request it. Then after they do one HIT of yours change the value of that workers qualification that they can't do any more.