Sorry to bother everyone, but I'm still learning and trying to optimize my time available on mTurk. I currently work a full-time job of anywhere from 55 to 60 hours a week. I turk on my off time and am averaging $10-15/day. The only scripts that I am using so far is MTS, which is awesome. There are still things about HitFinder that I don't understand, but it had greatly enhanced my productivity. I basically have 2 questions: First of all, is there a "comprehensive" tutorial somewhere that will explain how to "best" use MTS? Secondly, are there any other scripts that you more experienced turkers would call "must-haves" to go along WITH MTS? Thanks for any input, and best of luck to everyone!
I don't have the time I used to so I won't go in depth with MTS but in terms of the functionality it has a lot of scripts integrated. Most that already existed. I would recommend you go and learn up on them all individually and then you can put together each piece and part. In terms of additional scripts, check out some of the guides I wrote up. Theres a lot of extra information and tid bits (including additional scripts) that you may find helpful.
A little more specifically, Along with the tools that MTS provides, the ability to exclude HITS that I've already done from HitFinder would be awesome. And I still don't understand "batches" or "Pandas", but what tools can best be used with MTS for those?
When you just look at a HIT it is from a preview link like this https://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=3K3X4GGOSLN9WHITSDB41LMDI6SMCK You can turn this into a Panda link by added "andaccept" after 'preview' like this https://www.mturk.com/mturk/previewandaccept?groupId=3K3X4GGOSLN9WHITSDB41LMDI6SMCK Preview link = just looking at it but haven't accepted it yet. Panda link = it will try to accept the hit if one is available and you are qualified for the HIT. A panda link works best when used with a script that auto-refreshes the link to keep trying to accept the HIT. I use Panda Crazy for this. It can be found here https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/19168-jr-mturk-panda-crazy You will also want Panda Crazy Helper which adds buttons when looking at or trying to accept a HIT that allow you to add them directly to PC for it to try and accept. https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/20380-jr-mturk-panda-crazy-helper The creator has a website that explains how it works. http://pandacrazy.allbyjohn.com/ It is a bit involved to get started with so if it's too much for you then look at TurkMaster https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/4771-turkmaster-mturk Batches are when you can do multiple tasks from the same HIT. Sometimes they stop you when you get to a specific number that the requester had designated as the max you can do from the batch; this is called capping. The link I used above to explain the difference between a preview and panda link is an example of a batch. It's not a good batch so I don't recommend doing it. So, you could use a Panda Crazy to fill your queue full of a batch and work from queue. You'll want to invest some time in reading the wiki here, especially the Glossary of Terms. You'll also want to look over scripts and see if any others are helpful to you. You now have enough information to work with pandas and on batches. This tells you what MTS does http://mturksuite.com/ Now off you go, read, learn what works best for you, figure out what types of hits make you the most money and you like doing most.
