Besides doing work for CrowdFlower, I also work for MicroWorkers.  While reading the MW facebook page it's like deja vu when it comes to complaints about employers:

bloody idiot employer, some of them have below average IQ

and I think to myself "I hear ya"

then I read of yet another broken task on CF where the correction goes something like this:

For the question titled "blah blah blah?" You have answered "Yes" and the correct answer is "Yes"

Proof positive that employers/TAs all come from the same special gene pool

With MicroWorkers the rejection/dissatisfied rating isn't permanent.  It'll disappear after a short while and a worker's rating will be restored.

CF has a heckuva lot of nerve giving individual TAs the power to speak for ALL TAs, and making a flag stick for life no matter how intelligence-challenged a TA may be.

And one more thing - MW didn't have a hissy fit over that remark the way CF would.  It seems that MW are well aware of what the workers have to deal with, whereas CF prefers to deny deny deny.

But hey - we did get pretty new colours on the blog.

Update:

Hold the phone!

So  "For the question titled "blah blah blah?" You have answered "Yes" and the correct answer is "Yes""  was from a CF Training Job?

Why am I not surprised.

Lemme guess

It's a Training Job to become a TA

That gene pool is bigger than I thought

It's almost scary

If a worker can be marred for life for messing up on one single task for one single TA, then the whole CF employee base should be sent packing and replaced with someone a wee bit more competent

Like a worker

You know, when you ask for worker's thoughts on specific tasks so they can maybe be passed along to the TAs, and you feel you have to tell the workers to be "kind and polite", that tells me that you KNOW that the workers have every reason to NOT be "kind and polite"

So why doesn't CF do something about it?  Like punish the TAs for a change.  The TAs ARE the cause of everyone's misery.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.

Interesting quotes from workers who are getting fed up with CF and their ridiculous flag system:

Something has to be done for contributors to regain their status if Task Authors can just ZAP us without any review or feedback or even consequences for Task Authors.

It seems that CF will penalize Contributors quicker than Task Authors.

If a TA doesn't want you to work on their tasks, there should be some way to exclude you - other than a ban! If there is absolute solid proof that one has cheated, then that's a different story. But this is way too harsh - how do you prove that you didn't do anything wrong? Very hard to prove a negative!

I don't think that bans should last forever! Just plain wrong.

it is not fair to work and maintain a high accuracy and some idiot flags you and you lose all your progress. 

Makes you wonder what CF's angle is.  It certainly is not one of integrity and fairness.


And you know what?  I think CF is AFRAID to allow workers to give ratings to individual TAs like on mTurk because they know there would be very few with a good rating.

Well this is interesting.  CF peeps have always feigned innocence when accusations were made of quiz mode being a deliberate attempt by the TAs to get free work done since quiz mode doesn't pay.

Then I read this:

CrowdFlower was (and probably still is, just not on the MTurk platform) a bunch of thieves. Not only did they pay garbage, but they bundled their HITs so they always got one free answer before workers got the "Sorry, but your answers weren't what we expected" message. A worker (much smarter than me) figured it out and started raising hell, right about the same time this lawsuit started moving forward.

 How come *I* didn't get an email about the lawsuit?  I did CF HITS on mTurk.  I feel left out.

Maybe I should start raising heck too.  If quiz  mode is going to take my time AND affect my stats, it should also pay me.

No free answers for YOU

Now I don't necessarily believe every word of that passage, but it DOES make me skeptical of CF's motives behind the non paying quiz mode

Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task Broken task

as another worker says:


Enough is enough!

Yeah, I know.  I complain too much about TAs and I haven't given much thought to the other side of the coin.

After reading this post on reddit, even though it's referring to mTurk, I can appreciate that it isn't all roses and sunshine for the TAs either.

That doesn't negate my frustration with the flag system and lazy TAs, but it might make me a little less ornery

maybe

Would someone please tell Mr. Look At Advertisements to check his test questions?  Seriously, he has to be one of the laziest TAs I've come across.

I really take issue with this.  It's inexcusable.

And don't bother with the "everyone else did fine with this task", cuz if they did, then it's because they remembered the bad test questions

I remembered them too, but I was optimistic that they would have been fixed by now.  Look where THAT got me.  Expelled City.

I would post a screencap but then I'm sure I would hear black helicopters flying over my house with someone blaring with a megaphone "delete that post, and STEP AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD"

@CFComm you changed the colours on the blog!  Wow!

is the sentiment of that tweet positive or negative?

you can't answer that without knowing my frame of mind

you have no idea if I said:

"you changed the colours on the blog!  Wow!", while muttering to myself "you've gotta be freakin' kidding me!  the million and one things that need to be fixed and they waste time with pretty colours??"

or if I said:

"you changed the colours on the blog!  Wow!", while thinking to myself "good job!  they have such talented graphic artists!"

and THAT, boys and girls, is why sentiment tasks should NEVER be counted in GA

Otherwise, the TAs should take their work down the street to Psychics-R-Us where their motto is "We KNOW what you're thinking!"

Is the 6th time the charm?

Today there has been FIVE attempts by a TA to get a working task running.  The task is broken - the dropdown boxes don't work.  So it gets pulled, then reposted.  Still broken.  So it gets pulled, then reposted.  Still broken. So it gets pulled...well, you get the idea.

So again I ask.  Why in the name of all that is holy, would ANYONE in their right minds think that these intelligence challenged boneheads should have the power to flag the workers?  They don't even have the smarts to post a gosh danged working task!!

It's like putting Donald Trump in charge of a country

Oh, wait...

Typical response from CF to a plea for help regarding an unfair flag:

"The task author flagged your work after thoroughly reviewing your submissions, support is unable override this decision and am unable to lift the flag on your account as a result."

and this response from another incident:

"It is not appropriate to contact a TA directly"





MY response:

No, what's NOT appropriate is to put the TAs in a virtual witness protection program to shield them from the workers they screw over time and time again.  They need to take responsibility and own their actions.  If they can't take the heat over their carelessness and lack of integrity then they shouldn't be posting tasks in the first place.

To add to my previous post about bad test questions

for example:  What is 2 + 2

obviously the answer is 4

 but wait

"for the question "what is 2 + 2" you answered 4, but the correct answer is 9"

so this gets reported to the CF rep in the forums and quite often the response is "reported, will not affect your accuracy"

but every so often the response is "Most contributors did fine in this job"

Now put on your thinking cap.  Think real hard.  I know you can do it.


Maybe reports of bad test questions should be taken a bit more seriously even though it appears that there are contributors doing fine in a specific job.  That is, if CF is TRULY concerned about bad data

And they are, right?  RIGHT?

Another day, another batch of broken/unfair tasks that are 'cleaned up" by CF.

Yeah, these TAs are who *I* want in charge of handing out flags.  Yeppers.  They've proven themselves deserving of such a high level of responsibility.  They're totally right in not allowing mistakes - they've set a fine example of not making any themselves.

/sarcasm off

awww...really bummed that I didn't win the poetry contest - I thought my poem was great!

I'm reminded of a quote from an old movie:

You can't handle the truth!

Ok, seriously now  - I didn't actually enter my poetic creation.  Why?  Read the movie quote above ;-)

Does CrowdFlower ever get tired of cleaning up the TA's messes?  Today I counted not less than SEVEN broken/unfair tasks (confirmed by CF peep).

Yet these TAs are given the power to ruin a person's tasking "career".

They shouldn't be given the power to scratch their nose, let alone affect someone's income.

Clearly there's a problem here, and that problem ISN'T with the workers.  So WHY are the workers suffering?

With an overwhelming majority, the new task list design is a big fail.  At this moment the votes are 81% saying it sucks (paraphrasing).  Seriously, what was CrowdFlower thinking?  Were they trying to distract us from the REAL issues that need fixing?

Newsflash:  We're not that dumb

Whoever designed it should be flagged for poor quality work.

oh cool...my badges now have 6 sides - yeah, that was worth putting any kind of USEFUL changes on hold...yes indeedy

is CF freaking serious? 

this has to be absolutely THE WORST insult to the workers yet.  Don't fix the flag problem. Don't do anything about the constant broken tasks.  Don't do anything about the bad task authors.

No sirree bub.

Let's work on the important stuff like making the task listing page as ugly as sin.

Ooooohhh...I saw a tweet to CF from a TA today!

I feel my devil horns twitching...must resist...must. resist.

I need a distraction.  I think I'll go check out the new look of the task listings that was promised for today.

Oh wait...it appears they're still working on it

Finally got time to work on that post I mentioned last week.  It took me so long to get back to it because I was busy trying to figure out who Negan killed.  It better not be Glenn or Daryl or I will be:

a) extremely highly annoyed

Humanity

It's something that needs to be stressed.  The human factor.  I'm not talking about the scammers and cheaters.  They can take a long walk off a short pier.

I'm talking about the honest workers. Like me.  And from what has become apparent, Crowdflower has let the scammers and cheaters cloud their vision, and they don't see the rest of us. The "everyday" people.  The human beings who have lives, families, hopes, dreams.  The ones who would rather take a wrong correction for a RIGHT answer than give a WRONG answer that would be accepted.

Some time ago there was a letter writing campaign as part of the turker's We Are Dynamo project.  Turkers wrote to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to tell him a bit about themselves and why they were turking.  They did this to show their humanity, and that they are all different and they turk for different reasons.  They wanted to show that they aren't just some "algorithm" getting the work done.  They are human beings.  Real people that deserve to be treated with respect and be treated fairly.

As an honest Crowdflower worker I feel the same way. We are real people too.  We also deserve to be treated fairly and with respect.  And if only ONE thing gets accomplished with this blog, I hope it's this.

So I will continue with the good fight.  Some may not like what I have to say, but that only means that what I am saying is hitting close to home.

Busy completing some tasks with some, yeah, you guessed it - wrong corrections.

One of the upvotes said that other workers would screen cap the wrong corrections so they can give the wrong, but accepted, answer next time - meaning the TA is getting bad data.

Since CF doesn't seem to encourage the TAs to fix their bad test questions, does that not imply that CF shares in the blame for the bad data the TA gets?

I'd say it is about 80% the (lazy) TA's fault, and 20% the (indifferent) CF's fault.

As for me - I gave the wrong (but accepted) answer ONE time weeks ago, and have felt guilty ever since, so I won't do it again.

My reward as I continue to give the correct (but NOT accepted) answers will probably be expulsion, or worse, A Flag.

Doing the right thing sometimes doesn't pay.

You know what would be really awesome?  If TAs followed their own instructions.  That would be super duper.

And actually fixing their bad test questions would be a bonus.

You wonder why workers get testy sometimes.

This is why.