
Show HN: Wise – Mechanical Turk-like service with a Stripe-like API - husseinfazal
http://www.gowise.co
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husseinfazal
We are not actually built on MTurk. The tagline is there to allow people to
quickly understand what type of tasks we can complete.

We bring on our own workers that have been vetted and tested by us - and are
also open to working with workforce providers. In terms of scaling, we are not
concerned about the supply (workers). There are a very large number of workers
available - and quality can be moderated with the right onboarding and testing
processes. The more difficult side of the equation is the demand side. By
building a simple RESTful API - we hope to be able to generate consistent
demand.

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dang
> _We are not actually built on MTurk._

In that case we've changed the title to make it less misleading.

(Submitted title was "Show HN: The Power of Amazon MTurk in the Form of a
Stripe-Like API".)

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husseinfazal
thanks dang.

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coffeecheque
Looks really interesting.

How do you price transcripts? I see you've got a price per API call, but what
if the video is 10 minutes long?

Also, I presume you can do audio only transcripts too? Just as a .mp3 rather
than a .mp4?

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husseinfazal
We can handle both .mp3 and .mp4. The current pricing we have listed is the
base price per api call for simple image moderation. Longer/more complex tasks
will of course cost more. Feel free to fill out the form on the website and
someone from our team will reach out to you with more details. Thanks!

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maldeh
Interesting idea. Sounds like you may hit scaling issues rapidly if this gains
modest popularity though, since you're tied directly to a worker pool. I see
there's about 300k HITs active on MTurk at any time, so even the startup pack
at 1000 requests/mo would be a significant fraction of all MTurk activity.

Would you be expanding to other crowdsourcing providers as you grow?

Edit: Wasn't paying enough attention to the math. I guess without data like
HITs resolved / second, it'd be hard to estimate just how many requests could
be feasibly absorbed by the workforce. The rate limits look sane enough.

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JshWright
What does "Stripe-Like" mean in this case...? HTTP?

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wanghq
My first impression is that this is built on MTurk, but actually it's not.
Then I don't understand what "Stripe-Like" is. Probably need to refine the
headline.

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deftnerd
I'm building a microwork platform but so far the main focus has been on the
worker side and not on the submission of jobs side. Are you set on just using
MTurk as your backend for workers or would you be willing to work with other
providers?

If you're willing to work with other providers, what kinds of requirements
would you have to ensure that the workers were high-enough quality for your
needs?

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pkfrank
I love this, simply genius. I think it'll make sense to focus on a few select
tasks and scale those with great partners, instead of spreading too wide at
first.

The pricing doesn't make all that much sense to me. Why not a simple per-
request pricing model with a monthly minimum (after a # of free trials)? Or
the ability to simply purchase larger blocks for discount pricing?

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husseinfazal
pkfrank - thanks for the comment. we are still working through the pricing
model. The current model is on a per-request basis but we are also exploring a
monthly fee to keep the quality of the companies that request tasks high. What
kind of tasks do you think we should focus on?

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adrianmacneil
You should hit reply on the actual comment you're replying to :)

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husseinfazal
Yes true. Sorry. Will do moving forward!

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lsemel
I see accuracy guarantees with each plan. How do you ensure any particular
level of accuracy?

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husseinfazal
Accuracy/Confidence is calculated based on the number of workers who have
submitted an answer and the accuracy score that each one of those workers has.

In order to increase accuracy %, we simply push the task out to more workers.
i.e. the exact same image moderated by 3 high-quality workers may have a 90%
confidence level while pushing it out to 5 high-quality workers may increase
that confidence to 95%.

