
I hired 50 people today. This is what they look like - steveeq1
http://www.thestever.net
======
paulgerhardt
Andy Baio did this last year with the additional task of including "why do you
turk?"

<http://waxy.org/2008/11/the_faces_of_mechanical_turk/>

Interesting to see how the demographic has shifted in that time period.

Regarding the bit about crowd-sourcing ideas; Andrew Hyde used Turk to solicit
startup-ideas: <http://andrewhy.de/using-mechanical-turk-for-ideas/>

~~~
eru
Or time of the day?

~~~
paulgerhardt
Andy Baio's project took place over the course of 3 days; it's not explicitly
stated how long this task took to complete though given how high the pay was
(relatively) I could see this job filling up in an hour.

(Edit: or 3 hours - pay seems to be a large factor, I wonder if by paying less
one gets more people who do the task out of boredom rather than necessity and
how that correlates to quality of results.)

------
benhoyt
This is similar to a short survey I ran the other day: I wanted some stats
about how many people used wedding gift registries, so I put an ad on Facebook
(targeted at married females in NZ) that said "Answer 4 questions about your
wedding and be in to win $50".

70% of people who clicked did the survey, which is a really high "conversion"
rate -- I suspect the $50 prize draw really helps. I spent about $0.25 per
click, so all up 200 survey results cost me about $120.

~~~
marcusbooster
So did you actually give the $50 prize to anyone?

~~~
benhoyt
Yes -- though not yet, because they (weirdly) haven't replied to my "you've
won the $50 survey prize" email. Either they thought it was spam, or they
typed in their email address wrong. I'm guessing the later, and will move onto
the next randomly-selected participant in a couple of days.

~~~
gridspy
<http://xkcd.com/570/>

------
markerdmann
I'm surprised that this made it to the top of HN. I did something similar for
my friend's birthday last year, but I never considered it particularly
newsworthy. Another fun project was proving to our product manager that he was
completely wrong (about listing overdue timesheet dates in reverse
chronological order) by submitting the question to Mechanical Turk and getting
instant user feedback.

Does the popularity of this link mean that there is enough interest in
Mechanical Turk to justify the creation of web apps around it?

~~~
bcl
The HN front page has been defying all logic as of late...

~~~
alecco
Maybe part of the MT task was to register on HN and up-vote the post?

~~~
steveeq1
No, I didn't do that. At most I put a reddit and a digg link on the page.

------
nearestneighbor
<http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2007-09-03/>

------
mmelin
Is it common for Turkers to repeat tasks? These people used the same sign:
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=1> and
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=9>

~~~
steveeq1
Yeah, it is. There were a lot of bad submissions. I'm just experimenting with
Mechanical Turk right now. Initial impressions. . . 1) a lot of fraud (about
half sent in pictures of their cat or something) 2) most people are from india
3) Most of your replies come in the first 3 hours or so. After that it wains.
You have to resubmit after this 4) There were repeat submissions. Three of
them looked like they are from the same room, same camera. But people claimed
different locations.

~~~
yaacovtp
It helps to be very specific in what your HIT is and reject submissions that
don't complete the job.

~~~
jacquesm
I think if you are ambiguous in your request then it is unfair to reject
submissions that follow the letter of your request but not the intent.

That's making other people pay with their time for your own lack of
specificness.

------
hkr
The following guy made me smile. =]

<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=27>

~~~
allenp
My favorite as well. Reminds me of an evil genius in-training from Captain
Horrible's Sing Along Blog or something.

------
markbnine
This makes me curious about Amazon's vetting process for requests.... taken
one step further, I can imagine all sorts of ridiculous things to ask people
to do.

~~~
SwellJoe
Why would Amazon vet the requests? People can choose whether to take part in
any particular project.

~~~
markbnine
What if somebody asked people to write something profane? Or political? Or
perhaps deface the image of an icon or religious leader? Once you move past
written messages, you open up all sorts of avenues. Crowd-sourced politics?
Crowd-sourced porn? Crowd-sourced violence? Etc. At what point does Amazon
need to filter these requests?

~~~
brk
While I don't doubt that everyone has their price... I think you would find it
cost-prohibitive to pay enough people to do something like that to have any
sort of real-world impact.

People are not going to go out of their way, or risk jail time, for
$1.00/task. You'd need to pony up a lot more money (like, I'm guessing, 100's
of thousands of dollars) to get enough people to violate basic principles on a
large enough scale for this to create some sort of shift.

~~~
axod
If they're in India, and breaking laws in say the US, I doubt they'd care too
much.

------
jacquesm
I think you failed in your objective to say 'hi' to that actress, instead you
have made lots of other people say 'hi'.

------
bretthoerner
So who won the $50 bonus?

~~~
steveeq1
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=4>

I am writing her now.

~~~
JoeyS1980
She is my sister. Pervert... :D

------
olalonde
First thought: seems like Mechanical Turk is popular in India.

~~~
myoung8
There also appear to be MTurk "shops"--some of the people are clearly sitting
at the same computer (some even used the exact same sign...)

~~~
delano
Yeah I noticed that too. There's also some location inconsistencies!

<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=33>

<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=34>

<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=35>

~~~
aonic
Here as well, look at the closet on the right and the pictures on the wall.

<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=10>
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=14>
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=45>
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=42>
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=41>
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=32>
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=31>
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=30>
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=29>

------
EAMiller
Aaron Koblin, of the flight patterns visualization fame
(<http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/flightpatterns/index.html>) has a few art
projects based on MTurk. Bicycle Built for Two Thousand was a project where
each worker was asked to sing a tiny part of a song, without knowing what the
song was, then the complete song was reconstructed:
<http://www.bicyclebuiltfortwothousand.com/>

------
sheriff
funny, I've been running a HIT recently which asks turkers to wish my friend a
happy birthday. <http://happyturkday.tumblr.com/>

------
dawie
This is not nice: "I'm offering a $50 reward to the guy with the best photo,
so have fun and be creative" They thought they had a chance of winning.

Blows my mind how 4 out of 50 (8%) did not even complete the stated
requirements.

Also crazy how all many of these people are Indian.

~~~
dylanz
I think he paid them all $1 for the task, with the added bonus of possibly
getting $50 if they win. Why is that not nice? They got paid, and entered a
contest. $1 for a HIT on Mechanical Turk is pretty good, especially
considering the amount of work they needed to do here (which is not much).

~~~
ardit33
are you kidding me? it is a fricking $1. Even in a developing country is not
much, especially with the dollar going down.

Don't be surprised when people don't take your requirement that seriously.

~~~
malvim
$1 seems to be pretty great for this task. I just read some HIT descriptions,
and there were A WHOLE LOT of "write 200 words for $0.03" jobs. Which really
sucks if you ask me.

------
ashishk
Cool experiment. Thinking of using Turk for photo approvals on my site, but
the accuracy issue leaves me slightly hesitant. Has anyone had experience
doing this?

~~~
eru
From what I read the standard technique seems to be let two people review
everything. When there's a discrepancy you can add more manpower (and take the
majority view or so) or look at it yourself.

~~~
jules
A problem is that there are rooms of people turking together. They'd probably
all submit the same translation, for example.

~~~
eru
I guess you should flag exactly similar translations. Though I do not see how
you can do this without relying on security by obscurity.

------
az
funny how <http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=33> and
<http://www.thestever.net/viewer.php?num=34> have the same color background
(even the dot on the wall by the upper right hand corner is the same) but the
signs they are holding are across the world from each other...

------
cookiecaper
Would you do that for a dollar? I might if I knew where I had a spare piece of
paper and a Sharpie, but I don't.

The payment for most of the tasks on Mechanical Turk and other things like it
is just not worth the time for almost any task I've seen. Which is really sad,
because it'd be awesome if it were worth it.

~~~
nostrademons
I would if I just happened to come across the posting and just happened to
have paper and a sharpie and a digital camera next to me.

It's interesting to read all the comments that say "$1?!?! You're ripping off
these people! Why would anyone ever do anything on Mechanical Turk?" How many
hours do y'all spend on Hacker News? How long did it take you to write those
comments? How much were you paid for it?

In strictly economic terms, Turkers are getting ripped off a lot less than
news.YCers are. After all, $1 is infinitely more than $0. We labor for free so
that Paul Graham can have a viable online community and pick of the top
posters for his seed capital firm.

~~~
cookiecaper
This isn't really labor, first of all. For most of us it's both a leisure and
educational activity that we participate in not for PG's benefit, but for our
own benefit by learning and socialization. Making a sign that says "Hi Lili"
and taking a picture of it is much less fruitful, even if it nets me $1 in
money. The things I learn on HN net me much more money in the long run.

~~~
nostrademons
But we have no way of knowing if Mechanical Turk participants think of their
turking the same way...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Except perhaps the ad-hoc (non-rigorous) studies that have been done before
asking people why they turk. Someone mentioned last years submission of such a
study further up the thread.

Of course you may be being philosophical about it. In which case, no we have
no real way of knowing if they even think.

------
UncleOxidant
The economy is saved!

Oh, maybe not...

------
socratees
I hope I'm not sounding offensive. But what is the author trying to prove
here? It's a well known fact that majority of the people on mechanical turk
come from developing / under developed countries.

~~~
SwellJoe
I didn't think there was any commentary on where the people are from. Did I
miss something?

~~~
socratees
I didn't mean to be on the offensive side or to start an argument. I was just
asking a question. Refer the author's reply.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1010388>

~~~
SwellJoe
No one has accused you of being on the offensive side, I don't think, and I
wasn't arguing with you. I just didn't see any indication that this project
had much to do with the location of participants. So, I just wasn't sure what
you were getting at with your "But what is the author trying to prove here?"
query, since it seemed to me that the guy was just trying out Mechanical Turk
and documenting the results, without any social or political commentary that I
could perceive. It doesn't seem like he was trying to prove anything.

