After looking over the tasks in the Mechanical Turk, I really wondered about the motivation of Turkers. They sure aren't doing it for the money.
I suppose it gives people an outlet for the remarkably common desire to help others. The pricing must function primarily for signalling the difficulty of the task.
It's a very surprising and interesting phenomenon to me.
You're on to something, but I think there might be another factor at play: love of using the Internet. It sounds a bit silly, but I think people love going to sites and search engines and finding information. To make it more interesting, they prefer to do it (1) when the work has a point, (2) the work has low commitment, and (3) it gives a sense of accomplishment.
I think people love going to sites and search engines and finding information.
Yes, it's an online game! A game that, unlike most games, actually means something to other people!
If I had a cent for every minute that mankind has spent mindlessly playing Tetris or Windows Solitare, I'd be rich.
Mechanical Turk is an instantiation of that principle.
The money that's exchanged serves as a social signal from the world that your thumb-twiddling is inherently valuable.
It's like Clay Shirky's essay on why micropayments don't work, only in reverse. Micropayments don't work because even a tiny payment has big psychological consequences: It sets off our decision-making circuits ("should I really pay for this?") and our reciprocity circuits ("I paid for this, and it didn't make me happy, so you still owe me!"). The result is that we feel a micropayment as a consequential cost, even when the amount involved is tiny. Apply this in reverse and you get the Turk: Give someone a penny for a task and they feel rewarded, even though the reward is tiny.
Or maybe they are doing Mechanical Turk stuff while playing (on the phone, listening to music, "watching" a TV show, IM-ing), and Mechanical Turk lets them justify the use of their time as "productive".
lulz. Bezos is a genius. Also: I wonder if a lot of the turkers aren't the same people so accustomed to being scammed by "stay-at-home" work offers in local newspaper classifieds.
I've used it for similar purposes and had the same experience. Amazing service!
Who are these people doing the work? I turned my mom, a Stanford PHD grad onto it for a project of her's and now she does hits for fun. Sometimes it's not always about the money.
I'm thinking about using MT for a more mentally intensive task: have each HIT involve reading a paragraph or two of a given text, and write pairs of questions and answers that could be obtained from the text. Is this feasible?
Yes but be cautious. Make it too vague on what you want them to do combined with a low pay amount and you'll get weak data.
Be clear on what you want them to do.
pay them decently, not 1cent, maybe more like 5 cents or more
and test it out, see what kinds of data ya get back, tweak, and change it up
Most turks aren't going to be BS ya but some will, in the end however you only pay for what you feel is quality, but if you deny folks over and over and the reason you're getting crap data is not them its because your HIT is too vague and you pay crap, well you'll get a rep for being lame on turk and more crap data will follow.
Interesting article about an amazing service, have to remember it for the next time I run into a similar problem. But please don't use it to blast out my personal data to hundreds of "untrusted" people...
help me brainstorm a problem while I was flying from city to city for work, they did a good job on that one
validate a hunch we had at the office on some language in a research assignment, basically quick proof, get a taste on whether or not it was connecting with them
many times ive used it to get what i call fuel before a meeting, get a quick read on folks on brand or research aspects of something
i don't use turk in the traditional sense, i see it as a personal army ready to process whatever you got, a survey np, help you think outloud np, research when you cant, np, turk is pretty cool, but it all depends on what you want to get out of it
I used it to find scientific citations -- works great. And the price is always cheaper than you think. I figured for something that takes reasonably good search skills, oftentimes not Google.com, 10 cents would do it. I got down to about 4 cents.
Amazing - nearly all the comments there are from Turkers, former Turkers, or people who are proud to say they will never be a Turk. Of course, all the commenters over here are talking about using the service as employers, or are simply interested observers.
I guess I hadn't realized reddit had gotten so bad.
Yes, definitely try http://www.greedyPeople.com. I created it. If any of the people from this board enter ycomb001 in the promo code on signup (over the next 48hrs) I'll give you 20 free credits (equals $20) to try it out. And let me know what you think. :)
I made an account. Too much schtick for my taste. Also, start deleting stuff from the UI. It's an interesting concept, but it took me forever to figure out how to even browse the offers. (What the heck is the difference between "services needed" and "offers made?")
Well thats the second time I've pimped you out, first on rrw and now where, where the hell is my take??! :P I do wonder well greedypeople is sticking with the masses. :P
Hahaha! Thanks. You really are one of us. Services Needed is if you dont know who to make an offer to privately, you can just list what you need done to the general public (traditional want ad). Offers Wanted means that you are listing what you are willing to do for money and you want people to make you offers.
I suppose it gives people an outlet for the remarkably common desire to help others. The pricing must function primarily for signalling the difficulty of the task.
It's a very surprising and interesting phenomenon to me.