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Comment by mmelin | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

After that it wains

wanes

A wain is a kind of wagon or chariot.

Can someone please tell me why this submission is interesting to HN? (Obviously it is, I just can't figure out why.)

Mechnical Turk is kind of interesting. It's one of those things that I'd really like try out, but have no immediate use for. I'm sure I'm not the only one. (In fact, most of the cool projects I've seen using MTurk are of the Gee Whiz variety)

Also, people like to look at pictures.

Try soliciting suggestions for birthday or holiday presents.

Or, try soliciting feedback from 100 people on the clarity/ease of your company's sign-up process, introductory video, etc.

Many of the comments will be worthless, but you'd be surprised at the quality you get from some people, even at rates as low as $0.05-0.10.

Mechanical Turk is a fascinating tool, maybe this is not the most interesting use, but it still make hacker drool. When you can't have AI, you use AAI (Artificial AI).

You can use it to train pattern recognition. It sure beats doing the work myself.

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

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.

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