{"id":1555,"date":"2021-04-01T13:15:48","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T13:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.info\/?p=1555"},"modified":"2021-10-24T22:10:27","modified_gmt":"2021-10-24T22:10:27","slug":"newsletter-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.net\/?p=1555","title":{"rendered":"Newsletter 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we head into the last few weeks of 2020, we’ll likely start seeing the amount of work on Mechanical Turk decrease temporarily. Universities will break for the semester and many businesses will take time off for the holidays. We hope you will enjoy this down time with your families and take a much needed break. 2020 has been a year for the books. Merry Christmas\/Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from all of us at Turkopticon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Happy Holidays Turkopticon members! I hope everyone is fairing well with all the things going on in the world today. TO sure has made a lot of progress over the past year! I know some look at the website and say, \u201cYeah, not really that much.\u201d We have, however, now transitioned from just a review site to a non-profit organization dedicated to making Turk work better for us all. With that, I thought I would highlight some of the things we have accomplished this past year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, we have helped over 25 Turkers get their accounts reinstated. That\u2019s 25 people who now have access to a way of earning money in these trying times. We are actively working with requesters to develop apps and other tools that can help Turkers use their time better and not look for work. One of the other projects we are working on is communicating with Amazon about bad requesters and ways to improve the website to make Turk better for us all. We are also updating our coding and website, so you will be able to see and enjoy those changes this coming year!<\/span><\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, we\u2019ve built a software team that has been updating our code to make it easier to maintain, diagnose, fix, and improve. We hope you\u2019re seeing more system stability now. Programmers from Tech Workers Coalition believe in our cause and support keeping Turkopticon free and making work better for everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n

SO, this is my question to you: : Do you want to be part of all the great things happening at TO? If so, please reach out and let\u2019s chat. My email is\u00a0volunteercoms@turkopticon.net<\/u><\/a>. I am excited to see what the new year will bring and look forward to having more people come on board to see what other wonderful things we can accomplish together!<\/span><\/p>\n

Remember, if you want to donate to a non-profit this season, please consider us! Donate here\u00a0https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.info\/?page_id=474<\/u><\/a>. Your donations are tax-deductible!<\/span><\/p>\n

We hope everyone has a safe holiday season!<\/span><\/p>\n

A really big Thank you<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

We would like to thank everyone who has helped us with a donation Rebecca BurWei, Ananth S, Jacob Van Dehy, Christopher Potts, Brendan O’Connor, Maxine Eskenazi, Danielle Dean, Alex Hanna, Emily Witt, Mary Smart, Luming Hao, Meg Adamik, Sean Kross, Ev Henke and Numerous Anonymous donations.<\/span><\/p>\n

See the bottom of the newsletter for how you can submit short articles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mass rejections<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

First, allow me to introduce myself. I\u2019m Sherry, lead organizer for Turkopticon. I have been a Turker for going on 6 years. You may ask why did I finally decide to step up and work to make Turk better? Two words: MASS REJECTION. My personal story involves having a great history of finding good new requesters and having plenty of wiggle room in my approval rating so I decided to work for a new requester in the same hopes of finding good work. That is when my Mturk experience drastically changed and I knew I had to stand up.<\/span><\/p>\n

The hits were simple: look up a website then copy and paste some information (or so I thought). I did approximately 80 hits before I thought I should stop until some of these approve. I went on turking like normal, doing a few surveys and then went to check my dashboard. I was speechless when I saw the screen: 80+ rejections. I had never had this experience before and I instantly contacted the requester. I then went to the Turkopticon website and there it was: Numerous workers receiving the same treatment. No response from the requester. I emailed Amazon and didn\u2019t get a response from them either. That\u2019s when I realized we, as Turkers, have no option but to just take it when a requester wants to scam the system and not pay workers. Amazon takes no responsibility in protecting us. We\u2019re basically on our own. I knew when Turkopticon reached out and asked for help that I could no longer stay hidden and I had to speak up!<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m asking you. What’s your experience with mass rejections and how have you handled them? Which requesters are guilty? Has Amazon helped resolve them in any way? Please send your stories to us at\u00a0https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.info\/?page_id=727<\/u><\/a>\u00a0so we can work together to fix mass rejections and make Turk better for us all.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Turkopticon is looking for suggestions!<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Do you have suggestions for how to make Turkopticon better and wish to share them? Please email\u00a0volunteercoms@turkopticon.net<\/u><\/a>\u00a0and someone will contact you to further discuss your suggestions. We want to hear from everyone so don’t be afraid to contact us. We can work together to make Mturk better for everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Join Us on Facebook!\u00a0<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Turkopticon community is growing! \u00a0Our Facebook page went live on Thursday, June 4th and we would love for you to join us. Participate in the conversations, learn about upcoming projects, and stay up to date on the latest news by giving us a \u201clike.\u201d You can find the page by searching for Turkopticon or visiting www.facebook.com\/Turkopticon\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we head into the last few weeks of 2020, we’ll likely start seeing the amount of work on Mechanical Turk decrease temporarily. Universities will break for the semester and many businesses will take time off for the holidays. We hope you will enjoy this down time with your families and take a much needed … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Newsletter 7”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletters","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1555"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1568,"href":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions\/1568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.turkopticon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}