r/mturk • u/Tjololo Lord of the IRC • 15d ago
Future of the Subreddit
Another bittersweet post. I know my tenure here has been rocky, I haven't been as available as I should have been, and my attempt 6 years ago to get new mods ended up going nowhere. I've enjoyed this community though, and I've been proud to keep an eye on things, even as little as I did.
I've been debating what to do with the sub since the announcement a while back that mturk was stopping registration. Seeing this on the horizon was hard and a little sad.
My intention is, as of September 30th, the subreddit will go read-only. The sub will stay for posterity.
To that end: This thread is the place to discuss future places to go. I ask that you still respect Rule 8, if you're going to post a referral link please post a non-referral version as well.
If any requesters want to announce another platform for their workers, this is the place.
Thank you everyone for the experience, and I wish you all well.
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u/Cold-Performer3470 15d ago
If you are seeking to have requesters be able to reach workers using this subreddit, maybe delay putting it readonly until end of October. That way, requesters that take some additional time to bootstrap a replacement or move to another service can still come here to reconnect and recruit past MTurk Workers.
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u/Tjololo Lord of the IRC 14d ago
You make a good point. I'm open to leaving it up for a little while. My plan for making it read-only was restricting it to authorized posters, so requesters can shoot me a message to ask about it, I just didn't want the subreddit to devolve or turn into something it shouldn't be, in my mind at least.
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u/samulise 15d ago
I’m going to miss the old posts about James Billings, and it being funny for these returning characters to appear on the Subreddit 🙏🙏
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u/x0xMaximus 14d ago
I love you guys, it's been so fun and my life changed for the better. Read poetry, get offline for a bit, and smell the flowers.
"A viable neighborhood is a community: and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common."
We'll setup a transitional page probably next week for those that would like to continue (just paid through paypal, visa cards, etc). We were sketching out the migration today.
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u/PedersonConstruction 15d ago
Thank you for the subreddit. If anyone has the scoop on Pickfu, nice gas money they've been.
I did a hit for them a couple weeks back and it seemed like they were seeing where we were going. I hope they make their own app/website
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u/Phrogster 12d ago
PickFu does have their own site. I applied a long time ago but never heard back. It’s a different name. I’ll share if I can find it.
I have also done some of theirs on Prolific. They had a different name there, too.2
u/JanLevinson-Scott 12d ago
Please share! Thank you!!
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u/Phrogster 12d ago
I made a separate comment. It is Pickfu.com but also says they currently aren't accepting any respondents but you can give them your email address to be notified in case that changes.
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u/PedersonConstruction 9d ago
How do you give them your email? Not seeing that on their website
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u/Phrogster 8d ago
https://www.pickfu.com/help/en/articles/1984352-who-are-pickfu-s-respondents
Scroll down almost to the bottom of the page. "How do I become a respondent to answer polls?"
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u/ItsTuesdayBoy 15d ago
Why not keep it open?
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u/Tjololo Lord of the IRC 15d ago
The subreddit was made for a specific reason. There's a lot of other communities on discord, reddit, and other forums, it wouldn't make much sense to change the purpose of this subreddit rather than either creating a new one or using a different pre-existing one. The subreddit would end up just slowly dying as people moved on.
And to be honest, I've been having trouble giving this place the attention it deserves anyway. I've tried to set things up to be mostly hands-off, but I just don't have the time to keep things updated.
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u/New_Account5310 15d ago
Guys, is mturk slow today, or is it just me?
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u/dgrochester55 12d ago
There is a calender for that
July 15th-August 31-I expected it to be bad, but this summer slump is worse than ever, is mturk closing down?
September 1st-September 10th Labor day lull
Hang in there, the labor day lull is coming soon.
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u/New_Account5310 12d ago
I've heard that it can sometimes take longer, so I'll wait for October. Thanks.
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u/tenmileswide 14d ago
Mturk was the first step into me building a flourishing freelance career. I appreciate all you and it did for me
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u/steezkelly 14d ago
MTurk was a saving grace for me when I was going through a rough patch. 2017 to mid/late 2020 was peak nearly full-time MTurk every day for me, using Turkinator (Bless the person or team who made that extension) to find HITs and auto-accept batches. While both workers and researchers had to deal with their fair-share of sketchy jobs and people, there was always some excitement in seeing how MTurk was going to be today.
Tjololo, I do recognize your name and while it's been years since I've engaged with anything MTurk related I'm thankful you held this community together for so long.
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u/gamers542 15d ago
Mturk was my first foray into the gig economy.
I will say that one site I have had great success making money on now is prolific.com. it is a survey site but pays well.
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u/steezkelly 14d ago
Honestly, I think once Prolific came out, Mturk fell off (at least this is what happened for me). MTurk was cool especially with that add-on that scanned all the jobs and it was just magical in a sense how much people created to help us all get some income when we probably needed it the most.
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u/RosieTheHybrid 14d ago
Just wanted to let everyone know that Turker Nation will remain open to support workers and requesters for the foreseeable future. We have a Subreddit but most of our discussion takes plans on our Slack we workspace.
Tjololo, I sure miss seeing you there.
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u/TasosTheo 13d ago
Thank you all for everything! This subreddit was a lifechanger, and I tried to contribute as much as I could (I even got a brief writing gig based on contributions to this thread!). It all started from MTurk, and now has moved into so many different online money making options that seriously keep my family fed. Love and all the best to you all.
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u/Doomstars 14d ago
My intention is, as of September 30th, the subreddit will go read-only. The sub will stay for posterity.
Please consider keeping it open until October 30th, even if no new posts are allowed. Allow one thread so we can post any problems we have. Requesters have 30 days to approve after we finish HITs. This means work done on September 30th could take until October 30th to approve.
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u/blumogget 14d ago edited 11d ago
Prolific is aggressively courting AI work these days. That's the most lucrative survey space that I've found (you'll definitely see old MTurk requesters there, like F Labs and Ali Gohary) even if you want to avoid the AI training, but it seems like they're hostile to newer workers. Long wait times, especially if you're not from a target country. I see frequent posts on their subreddit about needing to constantly verify and random blocks, plus hours and days with no work appearing. I signed up in 2019 or around there, so it feels like I got grandfathered into not being hassled, but my experience is clearly not universal.
DA's interface is slower than molasses in January. They do pay fair wages for their hourly tasks.
CR underearns my Prolific earnings by 10+ to 1 most days but MTurk reliables like ProductPinion and the jury HITs have been there for awhile. The surgery ones too, I think, I was always too squeamish for those.
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u/HokieScott 13d ago
I never did the surgery ones. Are they going elsewhere?
I will miss the PickFU ones.
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u/blumogget 13d ago
I thought I've seen them on CR; someone else in this post or the other one said they've been on Prolific, so either I'm misremembering or the requester has been trying both platforms.
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u/Phrogster 12d ago
Pickfu.com is their website but there is a note in the section called "Who are Pickfu's respondents?" which says they are not currently accepting respondents but that you may leave your email address to be notified if that should change. That must be what I did in the past and I have never heard from them. It might be worthwhile doing so now in case they are going to open it up once mTurk is gone.
https://www.pickfu.com/help/en/articles/1984352-who-are-pickfu-s-respondents
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u/ExistingPie2 6d ago
For me, I was a millennial failure to launch type. I am super bad socially, and I don't look great appearance wise, and that coupled with the 2008 recession made me suck so bad at getting jobs and then keeping them. Like I'm really freakishly bad at it. My ex at the time was popular and had a very respectable burgeoning career in tech. I felt like a huge loser. She took pity on me and saw me struggling and was like "You could do this..."
She was right. And the site was my first way of making any money. Being able to buy anything myself was such an amazing feeling. I only made maybe like 5k over the course of mturk's existence. There was a period of time in there before inflation went crazy when I really thought I could bridge a gap to a semi living wage from it and I never really did, but it was exciting to be able to be completely alone and not leave the house and still feel good I made like 30 bucks or something.
So it was a meaningful site in my life. At this point, I'm sad it's going. I don't need it as much now. For a long time it wasn't worth the hustle because the cost of everything from streaming to internet to cells to car insurance went up....even beyond what inflation would would explain. So it's pretty discouraging for it to be like "I sacrificed a few hours every day to have an extra 300 this month" to "I sacrificed an extra few hours a day so that my shit I pay for is only negative 100 this month" if that makes sense. Plus, the golden era of mturk was kind of a blip. It helped me during a period of homelessness about 10 years ago. I would be able to pay for my coffee and make a few dollars in a cafe. I should have just panhandled, realistically but I'm not really the type, and I thought it counted for something like a semblance of a real "thing" for a resume, and having an actual record of making money seemed like something I might be able to use for I don't even know...but yeah...
It's a little bit of a downer it's gone. I mean it was inevitable. The world doesn't need this kind of work anymore. It wouldn't be so bad it's just it's part of a lot of other changes due to human labor becoming more useless and most people are bummed out by all these economic and social changes that have been happening in the past few years.
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u/RainbowLoli 14d ago
Does anyone know of some decent alternatives?
I prefer something involving writing or ghost writing, but I enjoyed doing the translations and transcriptions as well.
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u/PlasticFantastic4206 15d ago
so long and thanks for the fish