You're also not included if you're not a specific gender, age, race, income level.. the list could go on. So do you plan on spending all your 'free time' posting scathing indictments of all HITs that get posted that require something you don't possess? Seriously? Also... well, yeah.. pretty sure I DID post this comment here.. and not on any other thread.
I concur fully with that last statement. The Great HITs thread would be much greater if it weren't full of junky pictures, GIFs, and commentary about everything under the sun but the actual HITs. It's annoying to refresh sometimes and have had two pages of posts have gone by in that time (and I have posts per page set to the max number) that have almost nothing to do with actual HITs. It's more like a clique-ish social hour free for all from what I can see. I saw someone yesterday have the audacity to gripe at someone because they couldn't find something that had been asked already that day. If people actually read the entire Great HITs thread every day, how would they even get many HITs done? I'd love to see the forum owners split it off into two threads. One for chatter, one for only HITs and discussion of things specifically regarding those HITs. It's not that I don't want to be social, but when I'm checking for HITs during my "work time" I don't feel like I have time to shoot the breeze or joke around about stuff or scroll past a bunch of juvenile images and GIFs.
I very rarely go on those threads, so while I don't usually post new work here, I don't usually leach off those threads either. Anyway, I went on that thread the other day and there were people I have never seen on this forum before. Most of them were shooting the breeze and had thousands of thanks. There must be some who only visit those threads.
So basically it's a specific type of assignment which gets you the Masters, but you have to do a wide variety in order to hope to hit the right type. That explains why some people don't have it after hundreds of thousands of completed hits, while others claim to have gotten it after a few hundred.
That was one point I was going to make in another thread, but since you brought it up here... Masters seems to be granted based on ONE category; however, the privilege is a universal one. So if you are kind of a "jack of all trades" worker, you are less likely to get a Master's unless you do so many that you do enough of one kind to get you noticed.
No I suggest you all go make your own forum if you think you can do it so much better. If you are so important that you don't have time to go through .gifs, or time to go to mturk.com, click hits, and do your own search for your own hits to make your own money, then you need to get off and go do your job. I'm so sorry you think you stumbled upon a charity but no one owes any of you anything. Do something for yourselves.
If you are hell-bent on roosting in the “Great” HITs thread, you can turn off avatars, images and signatures in your settings (http://mturkforum.com/profile.php?do=editoptions)... that cuts down a lot on the juvenile B/S. In the long run, you will be better off learning to do without the thread and finding your own Great HITs. My tip to you: simply load the TurkAlert home page and watch for HITs as they load.
I'm typically in the Great HITs thread everyday (except weekends) and I have no problem doing hundreds of HITs and meeting my daily goal. It's simple. Search mTurk, use Page Monitor and turkalert. I find most HITs before they are even posted to the thread. It's not rocket science and anyone can do it. I hang around a few forums to contribute back to the community, and so that I don't feel like a 21st Century Digital Hermit. It amazes me that people come to a forum and complain that the FREE HITS they are getting are cluttered with too much chatter.
This forum used to have a chat box on the home page where we could all catch up and be social etc. It was a nice diversion when mturk was slow. I never find hits to do on the great hits thread either because it seems to me they are always one hit wonders and I'm more into batch hits. But I check once in a while-just in case I missed something.