09/30 - Well, Where is it? Wednesday

I am so incredibly loathe to do this, I don't think I have ever actually pre-announced a thing instead of just handing it to folks in the thread it gets publicized in, but I recognize a lot of people will probably drop in today/tomorrow and never come back if I don't, so:



I built the platform I always wished I was actually working on. Its done, but it is not publicly live yet.. I don't have a compelling reason to move it to live right now, so building against nothing is nice. As-is, though:

Workers
Have basically the whole suite up and running, plus a bunch of niceties that without MTurk don't really exist anymore (a fully functional queue, for instance).

You can accept work, submit/return/report it (the form should even look familiar! lol):

You don't need third party scripts or extensions to have a functional platform either. In fact, I have some cool things cooked up that are (IMO) massive QOL wins for folks, fire off conversations mid-task and you don't lose a single typed character in your task. Enjoying working on a project? Your queue will keep itself filled as long as work is available to you, no "pandas" or PREs to stress about.



Payouts go out through Stripe so you can withdraw to pretty much any bank/whatever you've got going on out there.

Downside, CT?

It is 2026, you have to verify your identity (through Stripe, I don't want your selfies). There is no workarounds for this y'all lol.

Requesters
Fund through Stripe, setup qualifications, publish projects/tasks, manage everything from an API or the web portal. Sign into the worker portal directly to preview your tasks and make sure they work correctly exactly how workers will see them. You can even keep the exact &turkSubmitTo URL parameter attached to your ExternalURL forms and the platform will catch it for you (assuming you set it up to MTurk's specs).

Fully featured Teams, multiple members, API keys to manage everything, and Teams own most resources:

• Projects/tasks
• Qualifications
• Allow multiple members / tiers
• Customizable naming

The obvious question: fee structure?

At base 25%, I really wanted to match MTurk's 20% but with Stripe as the payout rail its just too expensive in most scenarios, but I can evaluate individual scenarios pretty easily if a requester is interested. Vast majority of any costs are when workers actually withdraw money, so if everyone is only withdrawing $5 repeatedly it gets super expensive, if projects are running frequently enough that most withdrawals sit at $10 or more its so much easier to work with a requester on.

If you're a requester with no great options still / you're in contact with one still debating their options:

If you have any interest in this, please DM me directly or toss me an email (chris @aboundly.ai). I'll get folks set up with an account on the testing portal and I'll walk through it to see if it'd actually work for what you need. I really built this to fit what folks were losing with MTurk, and a lot that went into it came from looking at who was still using the platform so I'm happy to work out targeted asks honestly. Finding and helping workers is sort of on the homepage of this place so I am going to self-brag and say that's not a problem either.

That said I'm enjoying building this so I haven't actually gone and pitched any actual requesters. I'd really appreciate recs/connections if anyone here is still in a work/qual group and their requester is still without a great settled/natural replacement. I've looked and nothing really looks ideal (or its 2x the cost) but maybe I missed something / have the rose tints on.

I also recognize a lot of requesters have put up their own platforms & trust me I have respect for it because this is a lot of work. Honestly a little surprised how many scaffolded them up... Buuuut for me the thing that always made MTurk something I came to every day was at least partially the variety. It gave some insurance that if Requester ABC wasn't around when I was, well, at least there was a good shot Requester XYZ would be. I've signed up for some of these places and its just a closed browser tab away from the void.

Can workers get in?
I do not want anyone to sign up and sit around with no work, and I don't have much to sell here, I'm only putting this in the daily thread (probably today/tomorrow) so workers who might be interested don't miss it thinking MTurk is DOA and the forum is going to go with it (its not, regardless of this platform launching or staying a personal pet project).

But if you're a worker and you want to hang around "just in case" yeah you sure can check it out. Honestly please do, DM me or just @ me in any thread & I'll give you access to the tester forum.

This is something I've always wanted to do. You can go lookup the domain, I've owned it since 2020 which is far back enough to when a fair few "ai chat bots" were still Turkers saying "beep boop" at their desks lol.



It may never hit the public, even as-is the forum gets a few hundred folks/mo passing through which would be great for a handful of requesters who just needed steady, engaged workers to handle their stuff, but you can check https://aboundly.ai occasionally if you want to and see if it ever makes it out of its baby shell.

Ok back to your popcorn waiting for the implosion.
This was such an awkward thread to write I regret ever starting this project lmao. "Hey guys, look at this super cool thing I'm not going to actually release despite this long winded thread" - sick job, CT.

 

I'd give this a shot @ChrisTurk
Do I still get badges?

 

Please good sir, I would like an invitation

 

who gets masters? I made way more money after I got masters. then I made more after I had masters and a bunch of closed quals. I would work more on prolific and similar sites if I had masters there. which they don't even have, so what is the point if I'm always entry level.

 

also can we script the batches? a big part of what made mturk so fun and interesting is that I could learn how to script batches. and so could anyone else who had the time or interest. boring batches weren't boring if I could write a script, plus then vastly improve the hourly rate.

prolific and similar sites don't let us write scripts. so they are boring and you can't really change the hourly based on learning stuff.

 

p.s. I hate stripe if I wanted to verify my ID I would get a regular job not a fun one. just my opinion other people disagree I'm sure.

I think it's the best idea ever overall even if it doesn't go public or even work well. those are just ideas from me from why mturk worked so well for me but other similar sites are just bleh compared to mturk.

 

why do you hate stripe? ive never used them, only paypal, circle, zelle, and vemo.

 

I think that's the ID verification thing that prolific uses. I might be wrong. but I had to verify my ID twice to work on prolific. it just felt like a bad idea in general and the data gained will definitely be misused somehow. but I mean a lot of people verify their id these days so maybe it's just me who hates doing that.

also I tried to submit my parents' cat photos to verify my id and it didn't work at all.

edit: no sorry the prolific ID verification is called "onfido" it's not stripe

 

Hotel Photos [A118AXJ9FMBSRF] Image Moderation (Adult content) - $0.05 | PANDA

Underpaid

Unrated

Unrated

$15.00 / hour
00:00:12 / completion time

​

Pros:
RIP in peace MTurk o7

Cons:

Catchability: Great (HIT Last Seen: 60 minutes ago)
Qualifications: Super Users Exists ; HIT approval rate (%) >= 0; Total approved HITs >= 0; Adult Content Qualification EqualTo 1;

To read Hotel Photos's full profile check out TurkerView!​

 

aye aye will get it added today

 

That's because you needed to submit a photo of the cat's driver's license, not a photo of the cat itself. Rookie mistake.

 

prolific uses persona which is an entirely different universe edit: you're right its onfido, same/same & not what stripe does lol. Stripe is only concerned that they have enough information to satisfy the government's demands for tax information

 

@ChrisTurk sure why not, i'll give it a try!

 

@ChrisTurk skeptical if it can compete with cash4surveys.fun but would be curious to see how close it can get to it

 

I would not mind a invite @ChrisTurk . Mostly because I am nosey and wanna see it lol

 

CT right now on closing day....

 

@ChrisTurk Congratulations on the initiative. I’d love to work on your platform!

 

I’ve got $7.25 sitting there waiting to be withdrawn hahaha.