[Air-L] Examples about problems with Amazon´s Mechanical Turk

[Xanat Meza]

Hello!
I have never used Mechanical Turk, but I remember a similar service called Freelancer. The person I was working with first boosted of being extremely good, to later express (when we were midway with the project) that it was too difficult. We somehow adapted the project to finish it on time, but what really made me cringe was how much pressure he made on giving him the top review and rating, when we barely completed the project on time and with the very minimum requirements. Not much later, this person was kicked out of the site and stopped the appi that he connected to our project, so it stopped working until we linked an appi of our own. Then he asked if the project was working (we believe he wanted more money for "fixing" it). This was a person that had around 90% glowing reviews and ratings. What I want to say, is that at least on my experience, reviews and ratings are deceiving of the real quality of an internet-based worker. This was the first and only experience I have had with such websites. In the future, I am planning to reach out to people who I either know personally or who might know someone interested in my area of work. 
Hope this helps,Xanat V. Meza

Ph.D. candidate - Kansei, Behavioral and Brain SciencesUniversity of Tsukuba
M.A. Media and Communication
Yeungnam University
B.D. Graphic Communication Design
Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana
 

    El jueves, 1 de noviembre de 2018 7:59:57 a. m. GMT+9, Alejandro Tortolini <alemtor at gmail.com> escribió:  
 
 Hi all, I need some help: I´m writing about Amazon´s Mechanical Turk, and
some months ago I made a list of examples of people who had some bad
experiencies with it, but I can´t retrieve it from my social bookmarks
(Diigo). I remember specially the case of an indian or birmanian man, who
bought several computers and hired some neighbors to work in Amazon´s
Mechanical Turk, but suddenly and without explanation Amazon closed his
account. Anybody knows something about this case, or similar?
Thanks,

Alejandro Tortolini
UdeSA - Buenos Aires - Argentina
https://www.clippings.me/users/aletorto <https://tinyurl.com/yaewgsjx>
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