unfair hard block from R.W. Baird

I've only been on Mturk for 7 months and would love to know how this usually pans out??? How many hard blocks can one get before they are totally booted out???

 

It was my understanding that once you get three hard blocks, you are ousted from mturk. This may have changed, and if not, it should.
Other factors should be considered. For example, if you have had an mturk account for a number of years, it's reasonable to expect hard blocks. Obviously the longer we work on the mturk site, the greater chance that eventually-whether deserved or not-we will end up with a few hard blocks. Quality of work should also be taken into consideration. A worker with a low approval rating will likely receive more hard blocks, whereas a worker with a very high approval rating may have received HB's because he didn't fully grasp what the requester wanted or because of requester error. What confuses me the most about the "three strikes" rule is why it is applicable at all. I'm confused how amazon can justify booting a worker off the site when we are contractors and not employees.

 

I used to do HITs for a Requester on a daily basis. Whenever he rejected a HIT, he'd leave a feedback giving the reason for doing it. If the HIT was rejected in error, the Worker can know it, thanks to the feedback. Whenever I got a rejection, each and every time it was an error on the part of the Requester. So I used to write back and eventually the rejection was reversed. (It may have been around 8-10 rejections during 2 months.) However, once when a rejection was not reversed even after writing back, I wrote back again. But neither did the Requester respond nor did he reverse the rejection. So I kept on writing to him. And one fine day, I realized that the Requester has blocked me. I wrote to the Requester to lift the block, and even told that I won't work on his HITs anymore if he wishes so. Neither did he lift the block nor did he reply. It was Amazon's email that threatened me. It said that if more Requesters block me, I'd lose my account!

I'd no idea that they implement it after 3 blocks. If true, that's really harsh. And I agree with Shego that it's unjust to do so. They often say that they don't interfere in a dispute between Worker and Requester. In that case, why interfere here? And if they want to keep it that way, give the same right (to block the Requesters for any which reason) to Workers too, and apply the "deleting account after 3 blocks" policy to them too. But that won't be favorable for business, will it?

Hope they'd be more transparent about this policy, and may it be a fair one!

 

There is a huge misunderstanding about "hard" vs. "soft" blocks because Amazon doesn't make it clear at all. In short, there are no hard and soft blocks. On the requester end, there is only one block option and it seems as if whether the system sends out an email is somewhat random. More than likely, the requester blocked you to prevent retakes and the system just decided to send an email. I have heard that administrative blocks don't have any adverse effect at all, based on emails people have gotten from Amazon in the past.

I don't think there is a real "three strikes" rule-I've known people with less than three blocks get suspended, and people with more than three who did not. I suspect that suspensions happen at least partially based on some other criteria that we don't know anything about. I also wouldn't worry too much about two blocks over the course of five years-I'm fairly certain that there is a time limit as to how long the blocks would be counted against you. Personally, as long as you're doing the work honestly, I wouldn't worry overly much about blocks.