4 ms·

I've always been a little confused... Who's time is worth so little that they'd actually see a single cent worth doing one of these drawings? Kids? Third world

by astine 18y ago

I've always been a little confused... Who's time is worth so little that they'd actually see a single cent worth doing one of these drawings? Kids? Third world laborers? I can see kids doing this, though I doubt that many would have access to the accounts and bank information necessary. As per third worlders: if a person's situation were such that a cent per minute was a reasonable wage, how could they afford a computer and an Internet connection? I'm imagining vast Chinese sweatshops with workers making .5 on the cent. Is my analysis wrong here?

sdfx 18y ago
I guess for most people it's not the money, but the feeling of accomplishment and the sense of community - teaming up to achieve a bigger goal. I doubt that sweatshops would do this - they are busy breaking captchas and mining gold in WoW.
- astine 18y ago
  Except, how do you know what the bigger goals are? I signed up for MT a while ago thinking I should give it a shot to see what it was like. I had no idea what the tasks added up to on a grander scale and I found that it really wasn't worth my time. Edit: Are you sure that folks don't use MT to break captchas?
  - sdfx 18y ago
    a salon.com article about the motivation of turkers has been posted here not to long ago: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/07/24/turks/ http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/07/24/turks/ It's certainly nothing for me, but it somehow attracts a lot of people. Is there something about breaking captchas in their terms of service?
    - run4yourlives 18y ago
      FTA: Efficient Frontier, a search engine marketing firm, has used Mturk.com to accomplish tens of thousands of tasks since early 2006. Efficient Frontier helps companies figure out which keywords will bring Web surfers to their sites. With Mturk.com, Efficient Frontier can afford to pay three different people to look at each potential keyword, and vote whether those words are relevant to a given site. It costs the company just 4.5 cents to test each keyword, paying 1.5 cents to Amazon, and 1 cent each to three turkers. That is sheer genius.
floozyspeak 18y ago
A classic and popular misconception that "no one in their right mind would do this", yet they do. The time for effort formula trips up a lot of people, your not the first one come up with this analysis. The problem you have is the lens you're looking through. No one paid you to post here, no one paid you to participate in a social network, watch a youtube video, let alone make a blog, yet a whole heck of alot of the folks on the planet do it. People need to stop looking at turk through the "job" lens because it will never ever make sense. But if you look at it through the multitasking, social media, bored outa my gord, what the hell, yearning to participate in something, be apart of something, advisory and authority lens it makes much more sense. Meanwhile, read up on turks, get to know their behaviors and find out the why behind their actions. http://www.floozyspeak.com/blog/archives/2008/08/valley_of_the_t.html http://www.floozyspeak.com/blog/archives/2008/08/valley_of_t... Don't take my word for it, go ask them yourself, make HIT, put it up there and see for yourself. But take the traditional "this is a job" lens off cause that is a classic misguided view of mechanical turk.
- davidw 18y ago
  Hrm. Still seems weird to me. I post here because it's pretty explicit that I do it for my own reasons. If I were to make 2 cents per post, that would make it somehow demeaning for me, I think. It does appear to work though, so maybe that's not a valid concern for many people. I wonder how exhaustible a resource people like that are, though. If MT were to become more widely used, would it fall off a cliff as the supply of people doing it "just for the heck of it" dried up and they are forced to ask for market rates?
  - hugh 18y ago
    Things do seem more boring when you're making money for it. Does this effect have a name? I'm reminded of the first time I ever went to a casino. After an hour of exploring and putting the occasional dollar in a slot machine, I was about five dollars down. "Oh well, I thought, five dollars for an hour's entertainment is pretty good value!". Then on the next machine, I won ten bucks, and found myself thinking "An hour's work for five dollars? What a gip!"
WilliamLP 18y ago
> Who's time is worth so little that they'd actually see a single cent worth doing one of these drawings? Kids? Third world laborers? Unemployed Java programmers?:)

by astine 18y ago

sdfx 18y ago

I guess for most people it's not the money, but the feeling of accomplishment and the sense of community - teaming up to achieve a bigger goal. I doubt that sweatshops would do this - they are busy breaking captchas and mining gold in WoW.

astine 18y ago
Except, how do you know what the bigger goals are? I signed up for MT a while ago thinking I should give it a shot to see what it was like. I had no idea what the tasks added up to on a grander scale and I found that it really wasn't worth my time. Edit: Are you sure that folks don't use MT to break captchas?
- sdfx 18y ago
  a salon.com article about the motivation of turkers has been posted here not to long ago: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/07/24/turks/ http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/07/24/turks/ It's certainly nothing for me, but it somehow attracts a lot of people. Is there something about breaking captchas in their terms of service?
  - run4yourlives 18y ago
    FTA: Efficient Frontier, a search engine marketing firm, has used Mturk.com to accomplish tens of thousands of tasks since early 2006. Efficient Frontier helps companies figure out which keywords will bring Web surfers to their sites. With Mturk.com, Efficient Frontier can afford to pay three different people to look at each potential keyword, and vote whether those words are relevant to a given site. It costs the company just 4.5 cents to test each keyword, paying 1.5 cents to Amazon, and 1 cent each to three turkers. That is sheer genius.

floozyspeak 18y ago

A classic and popular misconception that "no one in their right mind would do this", yet they do. The time for effort formula trips up a lot of people, your not the first one come up with this analysis. The problem you have is the lens you're looking through. No one paid you to post here, no one paid you to participate in a social network, watch a youtube video, let alone make a blog, yet a whole heck of alot of the folks on the planet do it. People need to stop looking at turk through the "job" lens because it will never ever make sense. But if you look at it through the multitasking, social media, bored outa my gord, what the hell, yearning to participate in something, be apart of something, advisory and authority lens it makes much more sense. Meanwhile, read up on turks, get to know their behaviors and find out the why behind their actions. http://www.floozyspeak.com/blog/archives/2008/08/valley_of_the_t.html http://www.floozyspeak.com/blog/archives/2008/08/valley_of_t... Don't take my word for it, go ask them yourself, make HIT, put it up there and see for yourself. But take the traditional "this is a job" lens off cause that is a classic misguided view of mechanical turk.

davidw 18y ago
Hrm. Still seems weird to me. I post here because it's pretty explicit that I do it for my own reasons. If I were to make 2 cents per post, that would make it somehow demeaning for me, I think. It does appear to work though, so maybe that's not a valid concern for many people. I wonder how exhaustible a resource people like that are, though. If MT were to become more widely used, would it fall off a cliff as the supply of people doing it "just for the heck of it" dried up and they are forced to ask for market rates?
- hugh 18y ago
  Things do seem more boring when you're making money for it. Does this effect have a name? I'm reminded of the first time I ever went to a casino. After an hour of exploring and putting the occasional dollar in a slot machine, I was about five dollars down. "Oh well, I thought, five dollars for an hour's entertainment is pretty good value!". Then on the next machine, I won ten bucks, and found myself thinking "An hour's work for five dollars? What a gip!"

WilliamLP 18y ago

> Who's time is worth so little that they'd actually see a single cent worth doing one of these drawings? Kids? Third world laborers? Unemployed Java programmers?:)