Creating a Task

At the admin home, select “Add interactive task”. A new task requires an owner and a title and can be marked as an external task via a checkbox. Embeddable code is provided for external tasks so that users can take advantage of auditor functionality without being forced to use MmmTurkey to host the task. Hit “Save and continue editing” before adding steps or auditors. When you are finished creating your task, you can “publish” it so that workers can begin to view and complete your task. Once published, tasks cannot be changed (e.g., no new steps or auditors can be added).

Steps

Simply put, a step is a question or interaction in the task. A step can be a multiple choice question, text response, checkbox question, or a custom interaction written by a requester. A task can have any number of steps, either in a specified order or a randomized order.

Auditors

Inspired by the work of Jeff Rzeszotarski and Aniket Kittur, auditors act as spies that record a worker’s interactions while working on a task. Information such as what the user is clicking or typing, the position of his mouse at a certain time, or how often he tabs out is recorded and stored in the database. Information about a worker’s interactions can be used to observe trends in worker behaviors and potentially identify poor responses. Any number of auditors can be added to a task, but only one instance of each is allowed to be added.

Note that data recording begins whenever a worker starts working on a HIT rather than just sending all the information when the submit button is clicked. Tasks cannot be modified after data recording begins; this includes modifying the task name, adding more steps or auditors, or modifying a step’s text prompt.