If you have done this survey before...don't HIT this!

Discussion in 'General' started by Flora, Aug 8, 2012.

  1. Flora

    Flora Admin
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    I am a month old or so MTurker. I have been enjoying this site. I have one question that I had been wondering about.

    Often times I see, "If you have done this HIT before, Please do not do it again, you will not be paid for it".

    Now how do I know if I have done it before or not. I don't have great memory to memorize all the requestors or HITS I have done before. I have gone through my previous 45 days to check to see if I have done this requestor before so I can avoid doing it again but that's time consuming. Is there a better way?

    Thanks in advance.
     
  2. Turkalicious

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    A lot of people use spreadsheets. I'm not even remotely knowledgeable about spreadsheets and honestly don't want to bother. Usually I can tell after a few questions if I've done it already. A lot of requesters will keep a list of IDs that have taken their surveys so you can easily check but most don't from my experience.
     
  3. chuck_h

    chuck_h User

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    There are two ways that a requester can prevent you from taking a survey again. The first, which is recommended by the MTurk team, is to block you from doing any more work from them. However, I don't trust Amazon to figure out which blocks are meant to prevent you from doing any more work from that requester for a benign reason, and which were issued because you screwed up a bunch of their HITs and they really don't want you to work for them any more (adding to your three strikes).

    I would think the other is would be assign you a qualification after you've taken a survey using GrantQualification, then check for the value of that Qualification before allowing the worker to work on a HIT. I'm not sure this will work, however. The problem is that MTurk only allows you to check for the existence of a qualification, not its non-existence.
     
  4. scotched

    scotched User

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    There is no easy way around this. I usually rely on my brain to spot a survey that I've done before. I usually err on the side of "I've probabaly done this survey before" if it feels too familiar.

    I would pay someone a small fee if they developed a program that extracted HIT history, and inputted them into a spread sheet. Doing this manually would be damn near impossible for most of us.

    Someone smarter than me might have an easy way to do this.
     
  5. Flora

    Flora Admin
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    Thanks everyone for your input. Yeah I've relied on my memory and whether it looks familiar. So far I haven't done one twice that I know of.

    Yes I'm aware about how requesters can block you from doing their HITS again. Hasn't happened to me yet.
     
  6. bredeanf

    bredeanf User

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    I look at the link, usually my browser will make the clicked on links purple. I also rely on my memory, if I review the first few questions and they seem familiar, I just don't do the HIT.
     
  7. McUser

    McUser User

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    I want to post that you should always look closely at the age requirements for surveys - sometimes they helpfully disqualify you at the get-go, but some reject you afterwards if you have neglected to read the fine print. This happened to me today and it was my fault. Another rejection in my stats...
     
  8. Crayonshaver

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    I do the spreadsheet. I list the requester in one cell, the title in the next, the amount, and then the date posted. I've done over 500 surveys and they get renamed or run together. After you've done, say 50, surveys, you will start noticing similar questions over and over, so relying on that isn't always good for me.

    When I have a new survey, I just do an Excel search for the requester's name or a key word in the title.
     
  9. kristilec

    kristilec User

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    Xcel spreadsheet here also. With over 500 HITS I can't possibly remember all the surveys I've done. Once you have it set up it's simple copy/paste at the end of each day to put the info from your dashboard to the spreadsheet. Then like others, I search on the requester or HIT to make sure I haven't already done it.
     
  10. Khalinov

    Khalinov User

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    This is what I do. I haven’t been burned yet.
     
  11. ds_36

    ds_36 User

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    There's no easy way to accurately determine which surveys you've already completed. I don't use any sort of spreadsheets or notes, I just start any that look interesting and if it seems too familiar I return it. I know it's not the best method, but it's worked for me so far. I can't remember getting rejected for taking any surveys more than once.
     

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