We are a few Mechanical Turk Workers who are interested in forming a business together. As a business we would like to contact Requesters with whom we work with on a daily business, and offer them our Mechanical Turk services! So, does anyone have experience with having a company set up around a group of Turk Workers? Could anyone point to some topics on the forum where this has been discussed? In specific, we are curious about the terms of service on MT. We would like to know whether Amazon is 100% okay with us contacting Requesters and mentioning we're part of a larger business. From the terms of service: "(2) You have the authority to enter into this agreement and bind yourself, or the company you represent." We would like to know whether Amazon would count this against granting any/all of our accounts the Masters Qualification? Does a Worker being part of a business hinder Amazon from granting the Masters Qualification to that Worker? And... from the TOS it sounds like having a few Workers formed into a business is acceptable, according to the TOS... is this assumption correct? Thanks for your input!
You mean become like Crowdsource and the others that post HITS here....or something else? http://www.crowdsource.com/?gclid=CP2h-oDU1bkCFUpBQgodvVkABg
Sounds like you'd be better off forming a guild, like these guys-- http://www.llts.org/ You'd be in effect a sub-group of turkers who vouched for each other's quality. I don't see how amazon could possibly complain.
I don't understand, logistically, how this work. If you try to lure requesters off of mechanical Turk, that violates TOS and would get you and the requester banned. You would still each need your own mTurk account, since you can't use someone else's account. In which case, the work would still be performed as it is now. How would forming a business/alliance whatever come into play?
Hello Thanks for your very fast replies! We would be a group of Workers forming a company. And so, for the most part, we would being doing HITs, rather than posting HITs. Yes. We would be a sub-group of Turkers. We would be under a company, however, that would hopefully end up being somewhat independent of AMT. We contact Requesters when/after working with them to let them know that, if they are interested, they are able to contact and contract with our company. We, the company's Workers/Turkers, are available to do work through AMT and/or outside of AMT.
Thanks for your reply, swiftkick! The company's goal is to get more jobs for the Workers. For example, as a company, we may lobby Requesters to create a special qualification for our Workers. We could promise, in return, to do the work at a lower cost... or to guarantee the work be completed in a certain timeframe. Although we never expressly try to get Requesters to do work privately with us off of AMT... as you mention, this may be against the TOS... we do give out our company's website, which has options for people to hire us, through either AMT, or privately, outside of AMT.
That is totally against the TOS and will get your accounts, and the requesters', banned. Requesters do report this kind of behavior and have in the past had accounts shut down as a result.
Yes it seems to be quite against the TOS to even inform Requesters of a facet of our company that does work/exists outside of AMT. Therefore, the last thing we want is for Requesters to get the idea that we're trying to work with them outside of AMT. (It would be really great PR to be able to let Requesters know of the facet of our company that is doing work unrelated to AMT, but it seems that it will have to be kept completely separate, including having a separate website.) Now that this is out of the way... it looks like we'll be making an arm of our company that works solely through AMT, which does not inform Requesters of any work that we do outside of AMT. So... Does anyone know of other groups of Workers who have formed such companies? Companies that work solely through AMT, that offer their services to Requesters? Some examples would be really helpful for us!