I currently fulfill the role of community manager on the oldest forum for Amazon Mechanical Turk workers and I'm looking to speak to researchers, journalists and businesses who want to learn more about "mTurk" from the eyes of a worker. I can assist in tweaking HIT design so that workers can complete your projects more quickly and more accurately. I can also provide you with a list of great workers to use for a private qualification, guaranteeing the best results possible. I love to educate researchers on what makes "Turkers" tick and what there is to be learned from our community. Lastly, journalists who would like to know more about Turking or Turkers are more than welcome to contact me. I am also currently a Psychology major at Ryerson University, so I'd love to join any projects investigating mTurk. My interests are varied, but I'm especially interested in studies investigating the psychology of mTurk (why workers do what they do, what the best design/language is for HITs to stop cheating, etc.), or ethnographies of Turkers (the force as a whole, India vs. US, etc.) Let me know what you're up to! Contact Me: Speaking: Digital Labor 2014: Sweatshops, Picket Lines, and Barricades The New School November 16, 2014 Design the Future of the Networked Workplace: Hackathon November 15, 2014 mTurk Workers: We're Here & We're Human: Panel speaker, talking about digital labour issues such as lack of support from Amazon, why communities are so vital to Turkers, worker rights Sources: An example of Amazon customer service Amazon charges 20% more for using the Masters Qualification, but doesn't tell you using this qualification is the default: learn where you can remove the Masters qualification here Conference on Human Computation & Crowdsourcing AAAI November 3, 2014 Speaking Up, Speaking Out: One Voice for the Invisible Turkers: Invited speaker, talking about myths, mTurk Requester best practices, worker rights Sources: Turkers are highly educated Masters is a waste of money Other myths the Turkers want you to know are false CS889: Human-in-the-Loop Systems With Professor Edith Law, The University of Waterloo October 22, 2014 Ethics in human computation Stanford-Harvard joint seminar: Difficult Problems in Cyberspace With Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Stanford University January 7, 2011 Cyberlaw and crowdsourcing Publications: Life as a mature student on campus The Ryersonian April 9, 2014 When returning to university as a mature student, things never go as planned. While you think you can seamlessly slip into the social life of young adults, the fact is that you will never feel as old as you do on campus. Interviews: Crowdworkers form their own networks Financial Times November 3, 2014 "Only when you harness all the tools available can you make a living wage, or [even] a good living," says Kristy Milland... Crowdwork - zurück in die Zukunft? Perspektiven digitaler Arbeit herausgegeben Christiane Benner (ed.) 2014 ">>Sechs Dollar die Stunde sind das absolute Minimum<< ..." (pp. 99-111) Collaboration, Crowdwork, Wearable Computing Spark with Nora Young (Podcast) March 1, 2014 We look at the digital layer, between us and the world around us. The internet is always there, informing the world around us. What was once strictly research or weird art projects, are now practical businesses and lifestyle trends. We present the good, the bad, and the questionable fashion of that digital layer. How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine TheNation.com February 11, 2014 Since 2005, Amazon has helped create one of the most exploited workforces no one has ever seen. Spamgirl speaks! An interview (part 1 of 3) Spamgirl speaks! An interview (part 2 of 3) Spamgirl speaks! An interview (part 3 of 3) Broken Turk November 17, 2010 Spamgirl is the dutiful, no-nonsense moderator of ... the Turker forum. She was gracious and uncensored enough to talk about her experience with Mechanical Turk in great detail. Enjoy. “I make $1.45 a week and I love it” Salon.com July 24, 2006 In an eight-hour day, when she didn't have the kids to watch, Milland could go through 1,000 photos, making a cool $30. Mentions: Optimizing Human Computation to Save Time and Money B. Livshits, G. Kastrinis November 14, 2014 One way to measure worker sentiment is via sites such as various discussion fora such as ... sites like www.turkernation.com, which aim to highlight easy and wellpaying HITs (human interest tasks) and warn others about hits that, for instance, do not pay as well as advertised or require more time than expected to complete. Crowd-Workers: Aggregating Information Across Turkers To Help Them Find Higher Paying Work C. Callison-Burch November 3, 2014 I would like to thank... Turker Nation's spamgirl for providing thoughtful feedback... Designs for a future microtask market (dissertation proposal) M.S. Silberman May 9, 2014 One reasonable view was expressed by spamgirl, well-known crowd worker and organizer... in Amazon's Mechanical Turk system (AMT), in 2010... Crowdmilking T. Scholz March 9, 2014 On Turker Nation, a forum for Mechanical Turk workers, one person called “spamgirl” writes that "unions are a way for greedy people to take advantage of companies. As a person who rallies against corporations to behave in just that manner, I would never become a part of any other organization’s plans to do the same. As a group, Turker Nation can fight its own battles we can choose when to fight back and when not to individually." Being a Turker D., B.V. Hanrahan, J. O'Neill, N. Gupta February 19, 2014 Example 7: An Engaging Requester modgirl Great requester, honest, good communicator, cares about what is best for us as much as is best for him. Highly recommended. You’ve proven to me that you are a good requester because you’ve asked here for help – you have my respect. Understanding Indian Crowdworkers N. Gupta, A. Crabtree, T. Rodden, D. Martin 2014 We have also been studying Turkers by analyzing publicly displayed posts on forums such as Turker Nation, Turk Alert... to understand the Turker perspective and reasoning about their work, Turker-Requester relationships and other practical and ethical matters. From critical design to critical infrastructure: lessons from turkopticon L. Irani, M.S. Silberman 2014 Turkopticon, alongside crucial worker communities such as Turker Nation... Bucking the trend: improved evaluation and annotation practices for ESL error detection systems J. Tetreault, M. Chodorow, N. Madnani 2014 It is important to look at the reviews that Turkers provide outside of the HIT in venues such as Turkopticon and Turker Nation. Turk-Life in India N. Gupta, D. Martin, B. Hanrahan, J. O'Neill 2014 Martin et. al analysed the publicly displayed posts of Turkers (primarily from the US) on the Turker Nation forum to understand their reasoning about work, community, and Turker- requester relationships. The Chameleon-like Nature of Evaluative Adjectives L. Karttunen, S. Peters, A. Zaenen, C. Condoravdi 2014 We nevertheless paid them the same fee as the others: $1 for the completed task, more than the prevailing rate at the time, to maintain a good reputation as an employer in the Turker Nation community (http://www.turkernation.com/). Beyond AMT: An Analysis of Crowd Work Platforms D. Vakharia, M. Lease October 7, 2013 Turker Nation Forum. Dicussion Thread: *** IMPORTANT READ: HITs You Should NOT Do! *** Mechanical Turk is Not Anonymous M. Lease, J. Hullman, J.P. Bigham, M.S. Bernstein, J. Kim, W. Lasecki, S. Bakhshi, T. Mitra, R.C. Miller March 6, 2013 While Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT) online workforce has been characterized by many people as being anonymous, we expose an aspect of AMT's system design that can be exploited to reveal a surprising amount of information about many AMT Workers, which may include personally identifying information (PII). This risk of PII exposure may surprise many Workers and Requesters today, as well as impact current institutional review board (IRB) oversight of human subjects research involving AMT Workers as participants. Experiences surveying the crowd: Reflections on methods, participation, and reliability C.C. Marshall, F.M. Shipman 2013 Posts in forums such as Turker Nation (http://turkernation.com/) suggest that some respondents participate in surveys to offer their opinions about hot- button issues like privacy, permission, pseudonymity, and anonymity... Saving, reusing, and remixing web video: using attitudes and practices to reveal social norms C.C. Marshall, F.M. Shipman 2013 The point system gave us a means to retain data from participants who might have found one or two questions confusing, or who completed HITs prior to accepting the work (a common practice reported in online forums like Turker Nation). The Benefits of a Model of Annotation R.J. Passonneau, B. Carpenter 2013 To insure a high proportion of instances with high quality inferred labels, we piloted the HIT design and payment regimen with two trials of two and three words each, and discussed both with turkers on the Turker Nation message board. Crowdsourcing for Speech Processing M. Eskenazi, G.A. Levow, H. Meng, G. Parent, D. Suendermann (eds.) 2013 Some regulation between requesters and workers exists through workers’ Blogs or Forums, such as the Mechanical Turk Blog (mechanicalturk.typepad.com) or Mechanical Turk forum (turkers.proboards.com)... Webbasierte linguistische Forschung: Möglichkeiten und Begrenzungen beim Umgang mit Massendaten B. Juska-Bacher, C. Biemann, U. Quasthoff 2013 Aus diesem Grund wird auf Crowdarbeiterforen wie dem Mechanical Turk Forum (http://turkers.proboards.com/) oder Turker Nation (http://www.turkernation.com/) vor Auftraggebern mit diesem Mechanismus gewarnt. Accessible Crowdwork? Understanding the Value in and Challenge of Microtask Employment for People with Disabilities K. Zyskowski, M.R. Morris, J.P. Bigham, M.L. Gray, S.K. Kane 2013 Martin et al. analyzed posts on Turker Nation, one of the online web forums for mTurk workers. Economic and Ethical Background of Crowdsourcing for Speech G. Adda, J.J. Mariani, L. Besacier, H. Gelas 2013 There is no social or health security, no guarantee of payment and no support coming from unions (which may however be replaced on the Internet by blogs and forums such as Turker Nation... Collaboratively crowdsourcing workflows with turkomatic A. Kulkarni, M. Can, B. Hartmann 2012 We noticed that workers on Turker Nation, a discussion forum, posted messages about tasks created by Turkomatic, complaining about poor wording or excessive scope. Optimization techniques for human computation-enabled data processing systems A. Marcus 2012 Turkers keep track of good and bad requesters, and share this information on message boards such as Turker Nation. Conducting behavioral research on Amazon's Mechanical Turk W. Mason, S. Suri 2012 Turker Nation is an online bulletin board where workers routinely comment on requesters and communicate about individual HITs. It's all about the Benjamins: An empirical study on incentivizing users to ignore security advice N. Christin, S. Egelman, T. Vidas, J. Grossklags 2012 We periodically browsed Mechanical Turk user forums such as Turker Nation... and noticed with interest that our task was ranked as legitimate because we were paying users on time and anti-virus software was not complaining about our program. Crowdsourcing for Language Resource Development: Critical Analysis of Amazon Mechanical Turk Overpowering Use G. Adda, B. Sagot, K. Fort, J. Mariani Nov. 2011 Some regulation between Requesters and Turkers exists through Turkers' Blogs or Forums (for instance... turkers.proboards.com) Human-powered sorts and joins A. Marcus, E. Wu, D. Karger, S. Madden, R. Miller Sep. 30, 2011 Turkers keep track of good and bad requesters, and share this information on message boards such as Turker Nation. Web workers unite! addressing challenges of online laborers B.B. Bederson, A.J. Quinn 2011 This concern about wages is reflected in comments posted at Turker Nation [17], a web-based forum where AMT workers (often called “Turkers”) are free to discuss their situations openly. Approaching the Symbol Grounding Problem with Probabilistic Graphical Models S. Tellex, T. Kollar, S. Dickerson, M.R. Walter, A.G. Banerjee, S. Teller, N. Roy 2011 We would like to thank ... the members of the Turker Nation forum. Understanding Natural Language Commands for Robotic Navigation and Mobile Manipulation S. Tellex, T. Kollar, S. Dickerson, M.R. Walter, A.G. Banerjee, S. Teller, N. Roy 2011 We would like to thank ... the members of the Turker Nation forum. Labeling Parts of Speech Using Untrained Annotators on Mechanical Turk J.E. Mainzer 2011 Since Mechanical Turk has no method of rating Requesters, unaffiliated sites such as Turker Nation... have been developed to discuss and review Requesters. Working the crowd: employment and labor law in the crowdsourcing industry A. Felstiner 2011 Turkers have already created various online forums to share information and build relationships, (See, e.g., Turker Nation, http://turkers.proboards.eom/indcx.cgi) as have participants in other crowdsourcing platforms. Putting Out a HIT: Crowdsourcing Malware Installs C. Kanich, S. Checkoway, K. Mowery 2011 One way to reduce the completed task would be to simply not allow (some percentage of) workers to submit or to refuse to pay them afterward. This is unlikely to be a viable solution in the long term as the workesr will complain to Amazon and warn other workers on Mechanical Turk-oriented forums such as Turker Nation. CrowdDB: Answering Queries with Crowdsourcing M.J. Franklin, D. Kossmann, T. Kraska, S. Ramesh, R. Xin 2011 In another case, a bug in CrowdDB triggered false alarms in security warnings for browsers on the workers’ computers, and within hours concerns about our jobs appeared on Turker Nation. Crowdsourcing Human-Based Computation D. Wightman October 16, 2010 Online message boards have been created to provide experienced Mechanical Turk users, often called turkers, with venues for rating companies that post HITs (Turker Nation Message Board System). Sellers’ problems in human computation markets M.S. Silberman, J. Ross, L. Irani, B. Tomlinson July 25, 2010 "spamgirl's warnings pertain to HITs where (a) there is uncertainty about whether the requester intends to pay workers, (b) the requester intends to spam or defraud workers,and/or (c) the task is against AMT’s terms of use." Automatic Task Design on Amazon Mechanical Turk (thesis) E.H.C. Huang April 6, 2010 For example, Turker Nation is an online forum where people discuss anything related to AMT, from efficient working strategies to requester reviews. Ethics and tactics of professional crowdwork M.S. Silberman, L. Irani, J. Ross 2010 Administrator spamgirl on Turker Nation, a forum for workers, outlines tasks to avoid:... WePS-3 Evaluation Campaign: Overview of the Web People Search Clustering and Attribute Extraction Tasks J. Artiles, A. Borthwick, J. Gonzalo, S. Sekine, E. Amigo 2010 The more interesting initiative, though, was the establishment of a two-way dialog with the Turkers by posting on the Turker Nation bulletin board 9. We understand Turker Nation to be the most popular venue for this kind of discussion... Crowdsourcing, collaboration and creativity A. Kittur 2010 Unification sites like Turkernation let workers sanction employers who consistently do not approve legitimate work. Mechanical Turk W.L. Forssen, A. Renberg 2010 This leads to fake HITs by non-serious requesters which in turn has lead to a separate part in the community forum Turker Nation, called Hall of Shame [7]. Annotating Large Email Datasets for Named Entity Recognition with Mechanical Turk N. Lawson, K. Eustice, M. Perkowitz, M. Yetisgen-Yildiz 2010 Out of 169,156 total HITs, we received 702 comments from 140 different workers, as well as over 50 email responses and a dedicated thread at TurkerNation.com. Crowdflow: Integrating machine learning with mechanical turk for speed-cost-quality flexibility A.J. Quinn, B.B. Bederson, T. Yeh, J. Lin 2010 The web site Turker Nation serves as a de facto blacklist of Requesters alleged to have used tactics that Turkers consider unfair. Crowdsourcing for affective annotation of video: Development of a viewer-reported boredom corpus M. Soleymani, M. Larson 2010 Effort invested in establishing trust accumulates since users exchange information on requesters on Turker Nation... concerning the HITs and bonuses rewarded. Diversifying Demining: An Experimental Crowdsourcing Method for Optical Mine Detection D. Andersson 2008 Further, there is an unofficial worker forum called Turker Nation, an active community in which the members discuss and comment on HITs, requesters related topics. Turker Nation was used for worker feedback in preparation of and during the time of the experiment. The politics of digital crowds C. Aradau, T. Blanke n.d. Turker Nation, an online forum for Turkers, (http://turkernation.com) has a hall of shame of the worst jobs. Crowdsourcing for Speech: Economic, Legal and Ethical analysis G. Adda, J.J. Mariani, L. Besacier, H. Gelas January 18, 2013 Below are some statements, from different sources... Turker Nation, illustrating the economic situation of some MTurk workers in the US: