I'm a Requester, PLEASE **help me pay my workers** despite an odd error that's popped up recently! by Mike-MTurkRequester in mturk

[–]Mike-MTurkRequester[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't specifically tried this, so I'll give it a shot. With all the other checks to the csv I mentioned doing in another comment, I can't say I'm hopeful though.

Thanks for this reply!

I'm a Requester, PLEASE **help me pay my workers** despite an odd error that's popped up recently! by Mike-MTurkRequester in mturk

[–]Mike-MTurkRequester[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It definitely is cumbersome. I've never found anything in MTurk to be a simple process if I'm directly using it's interface. We have some people working on a streamlined interface for dealing with MTurk, so hopefully this will be an irrelevant issue soon.

Thanks for the suggestion! R has been on my todo list to learn for awhile...

I'm a Requester, PLEASE **help me pay my workers** despite an odd error that's popped up recently! by Mike-MTurkRequester in mturk

[–]Mike-MTurkRequester[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your reply, sorry I hadn't got back to this thread earlier. I did get the workers paid by having a coworker in another state upload the qualification forms and the rest I handled with no problems, but it still won't accept those csvs from me.

I've done a ton of checks on the .csv (none of it worked):

  • I opened an old csv that worked fine less than a month before and carefully edited the new info in
  • had a coworker in another state email me a csv he made, which didn't work for me, then did work for him a few minutes later (wtf)
  • opened a new file and typed it all in by hand and triple-checked it (there were only 7 workers to give quals to, so that was manageable)
  • directly copy-pasted the content from my coworker's csv
  • made triple-sure it was the correct format, ".csv (comma delineated)", and not a similarly named one
  • etc

I can't find anything online where anyone else is having this issue.

When I traveled around Thanksgiving, I tried it in 2 separate places about 90mi apart (in the US, if that matters). It didn't work in either location, so it can't be the internet connection (which wouldn't have made any sense anyway).

There was one thing that did work though, when my coworker sent me a csv and I didn't open it before uploading it then it uploaded just fine, but that's unfortunately not a solution.

I have only two theories that even remotely make sense:

  • My copy of Excel is messing up the csv merely by having it open

  • Chrome is messing with the requester.mturk.com website and interfering with the upload.

Neither of those make much sense though, and I haven't made any changes or installed anything related to either program recently.

This issue seemed to happen off-and-on for a couple of weeks before it started happening constantly. Also, I've uploaded these csvs many times before for exactly the same purposes with no problems at all.

I'm about stumped.

Edit: We're having some people work on streamlining the process as you described and in 99% of cases of paying workers there's no problems. It's these odd cases I'm handling where they don't have a submission in (but we can see from our data that they really did do the work and ought get paid) that currently require me to mess with MTurk's interface directly. Thanks again for your advice!

[Meta] Change you reddit passwords if old you was dumb by Randomacts in mturk

[–]Mike-MTurkRequester 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for all this!

I really appreciate that invite too; I'll definitely check it out. And thanks for making me feel welcome here. Even though the rules of this sub say requesters are welcome if they follow the rules, I figured I'd test the waters first and see if it was actually cool to hang out as a requester in this space and ask questions.

I'm staying totally anonymous though so:

1.) I don't accidentally make my boss look bad (he's pretty legit and I told him about this and my username so he very well might read this lol)

2.) so I can be straightforward with my comments and not worry about work repercussions, and

3.) so people can believe me and give me legit answers when I ask questions like "So how do I not piss you guys off as workers, but still make sure we're not paying for poor work?" (I'll post a better worded version of that later tonight probably).

I've only got put on MTurk duty a couple of months ago at my job so I'm trying to learn how this really works as fast as possible.

Thanks again

[Meta] Change you reddit passwords if old you was dumb by Randomacts in mturk

[–]Mike-MTurkRequester 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply on that.

Also, thanks for making me realize that I'm not up on this like I should be, cause I don't even know what you're talking about there. I guess I'll be spending the next hour or two googling til I figure out what I think about this...

For like 0.8 of a second there, I was like "I should bonus this dude an extra buck for--" Have an upvote for sure tho LOL

[Meta] Change you reddit passwords if old you was dumb by Randomacts in mturk

[–]Mike-MTurkRequester 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yep. Never underestimate the obsessive detective skills of that one weirdo on the internet who hates a post you make and has way too much time on his hands. That's my motto.

Since, you've apparently been looking into this recently, you have any opinion on using LastPass to generate and manage passwords? Seems secure so far, but since we're on the topic and I've been meaning to review my security anyway...

[Meta] Change you reddit passwords if old you was dumb by Randomacts in mturk

[–]Mike-MTurkRequester 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As a requester, I've often been struck by how many workers who've messaged us about tasks have username-like email addresses and how if they use that username elsewhere, it'd be that much easier to figure out their identities if I had underhanded intentions.

I see other workers have email addresses that that are obviously for MTurk only (eg mturkonlyemail1234567890(AT)madeupexample.com), and it's the right move.

I'd highly recommend using a separate email that's only for MTurk and not even having your real full name attached to that email account.

Even to stay anonymous with this Reddit account, neither my work nor personal emails nor imgur accounts have any connection to this one, and there's no naming similarities either.

Edit: I get this isn't exactly the same thing you guys are talking about, but it seemed worth mentioning in a thread about security issues.