turn off automatic acceptance of HITS in Otto

[GinnyTurk]

I started using Otto tonight and every hit it thinks I should work on it automatically accepts it. How do I turn off that feature? Now my return rate has increased by 1 percent.
I have searched through the instructions and looked all through Otto lite and cannot see how to turn off the automatic acceptance of a HIT. Now I don't want to run this thing at all because it will open a HIT. and some of these were in Spanish!! I can't read Spanish!!
I had to return about 15 hits in a row. Why did Otto do this???

[CrazyCatLady]

Hi GinnyTurk - yes, Otto will grab everything you are eligible for. I tend to put requesters I don't want to work with (or hits I don't want to work with) on the block list (I'm on Otto Heavy). Your return rate will go up a bit while using Otto - but according to many of the old timers that isn't really a metric that's used anymore. I know I've never seen it in play and I've been doing this since 2017. And frankly, I'd rather have a higher return rate and more hits to choose from

[CrazyCatLady]

You've got a lot of questions, so I'm going to try and answer them somewhat in the order you ask:

1) Any time you accept a hit, it will go into your queue and your timer starts. This happens whether you are using Otto, Panda Crazy, or just plain accepting them from the site. Many people work by keeping their queues full - it helps to ensure that you never have down time.

1.5) ALL scraper scripts and extensions work this way, whether it's panda crazy or hit catcher from MTS.

2) you will not get rejected for a hit that has run out of time. If you do not submit it, it won't get rejected. You may or may not get to work on it again, but you will not be rejected for work you did not do.

3) As I mentioned in #1 - as soon as your hit is accepted, the timer starts. You cannot reserve a hit by sticking it somewhere and then start the timer later. Mturk doesn't work like that.

You might want to check out the video Fisherman did on scripts and how they work. It might help you get a better feel for how turkers (not just the ones here on OHS) use them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da07ZYgM66c

[GinnyTurk]

CrazyCatLady thank you. I guess I thought that if Otto found a HIT, it would give you the opportunity to accept or ignore it. But it sounds like it automatically accepts it for you without having read the instructions, and even when they're in a foreign language. This seems like a BIG factor that should have been explained in the instructions.

[smartin]

Sorry for any confusion that you might have had about Otto GinnyTurk.
In the video and stated I thought a few other places it does state it's a catcher. Yes it searches for hits but it also catches them. Meaning it will attempt to catch (accept) the hit and place it in your queue to work on.

I've been a worker for just shy of a decade and your return rate has never mattered. Yes mturk still tracks it but it's more a for your own information. A requester cannot decide they don't want to qualify you for a hit because you have a high return rate. For example my return rate is at 11%. It's literally just a number and it doesn't matter. Don't stress over it.

If you are catching a bunch of "garbage" hits that you really don't want to do or can't do you can change that. Make sure you don't have your amount is not set too low. For example if I have it set at .25 I'm going to catch a lot of stuff I have no desire to work on for one reason or another. I personally keep Otto at $1 the majority of the time unless I'm staring at an empty que and I don't see anything exciting on the other finder I use to look for hits I'll get ballsy and drop it down to .50 or even .30 for a few seconds just to see what I can catch but usually end up only doing about 10% of what I catch when I drop it down low.

You should also utilize your blocking capabilities. Under settings (gear icon next to start/stop) click "block list" and when it expands next to the search box at the right there is a "+" click that and add requesters you are catching hits from that you don't want to work on and click save for each one. It'll help out immensely and weed out the stuff you don't want using those two things.

Hope this helps.

[GinnyTurk]

Thank you all for your help. My beef is that it automatically opens the HIT. You are calling it a catcher, but when I hear catcher, I think of something that actually procures something, not opens it and starts an activity. If you go fishing, you catch fish, but you don't automatically start gutting it for dinner.
This should be called a HIT opener, something more akin to its purpose. I have not used a scraper, catcher - whatever the nomenclature is - before.
So it boils down to two issues/dilemmas I need closure on before I can move forward with this program:
1. Otto opens multiple jobs at once....some are not even in English. Now I've got a timer running on 12 jobs in my personal queue. Do I return them all or work on them? If I work on one, does the timer run out on the others?
2. If I return all 12, you're saying my return rate shouldn't matter, but I've learned from all of my research on Mturk that you don't want the timer to run out because you could get a rejection from the requester. If there are 12 HITs opened in my queue, it's bound to happen that the time will run out on one of them. I have read conversations in FB where several folks received a rejection when their time ran out.

Ultimately, I wish this program simply scooped up the HITs, placed them into your personal queue, and provided you the opportunity to click preview to decide for yourself if you want to accept it. That is the way Mturk works in the basic format and it's the way I've been using Mturk since starting.

Banter welcomed.

[ZeldaFoot]

GinnyTurk when you say it automatically opens a hit for you, are you saying it is opening every hit it catches in a new tab? So you suddenly have 12 tabs open at once? -If this is the case, it should not be doing this. Check your settings on Otto, look in the "Auto Accept" category. There should only be the option to "Accept in the background" If you see something other than that, we'll need to get Fisherman involved in the conversation.

If it's not opening tabs for you on its own, it's working. Otto's job is to search hits available to you, and catch them. Catching a hit means putting it in your queue, same as if you went to the mturk hits page and clicked accept. Every time a hit goes into your queue, you've accepted it and the count down timer will begin. There isn't any other way to do it.
Your return rate doesn't matter. I've been turking since 2016 and I've never once seen a hit where return rate was a qualification. Letting a survey expire (meaning the timer runs out before you submit) will not give you a rejection, because the requester cannot reject something you didn't submit. So if you get 10 hits in your queue, and the last two run out of time (expire) you won't automatically receive rejections for those two, you just can't submit them and be paid.
If you keep catching hits in foreign languages, you can consider blocking that requester. If your queue is filling up faster than you would like, you have two options: turn Otto off while you work through some of your queue, or increase the reward amount on Otto so it'll catch stuff a little less often (since higher paying hits aren't posted as often as lower paying hits.)

I hope that somehow helps you out, but please feel free to post/ask more if you need to! Otto has helped so many people spend more time working and earning, and less time searching. There is a learning curve to it though. A lot of answers are found in the YouTube videos Fisherman has made. But we are more than happy to help answer any questions you have!

[GinnyTurk]

Thank you, ZeldaFoot. That does help. And I have watched and read everything I can but nothing was mentioned about how you automatically start working on them.
I do have hits to open in the background, so no tabs at the top.
And I have worked a bit more with it and understand better, but still not comfortable with this new way of turking - 12 or so HITs open in my personal queue.
I have always just sat at the main menu of HITs and keep hitting it over and over to refresh. Then I would click preview on a HIT to see more details, maybe click on the button at the top where folks have returned the hit with comments....none of this automatically opened files in the personal queue with a timer running. It feels stressful seeing all of those with the timer going down. It makes me work too fast and possibly make mistakes.
So now I have returned over 40 HITs and my return rate has gone from 3% to about 9% in less than 12 hours. But I am trusting you guys that the return rate matters not.
I'll keep working with it, but Otto is not picking up some of the regular HITs that I see in the traditional setting, so I don't know...

[ZeldaFoot]

It definitely is a bit different than the way you were previously getting hits, but it's more efficient and gives you the chance to earn more in the long run. Working straight from the HITs page means you won't always see some hits, because they just get grabbed by other workers too fast. Otto can see and grab them before you can in almost every instance. Which means you can work on things you otherwise wouldn't have known was there.
Most surveys have generous timers. So if a hit says it takes 5 minutes, sometimes it'll have a 30 minute (or longer!) timer. Just try not to let those stress you out too much. And if you have several things in your queue, and one seems more appealing to you, start that one first and see if you have time to work around to the others afterwards.
I think you said you're still working on hitting your first 1000 hits, so your return rate will fluctuate as you get more hits under your belt.

[Fisherman]

GinnyTurk I'm sorry that this has been an "mTurk shock" to your system. honestly what you're saying is that Otto is working Too well for you. Let me work with you here and try and clear up some things. Please refer to these numbers if you can, and I'm going to be very forward and blunt to get things clear for you, so please don't be offended as that's NOT my intent.

1. From your descriptions I can tell that you have amassed a lot of completed hits for someone that is doing mTurk all wrong.

2. To be honest, the ultimate goal of working mTurk efficiently (which you are on the opposite end of currently) is to have a full queue of 25 Hits at all times and be furiously working on them at peak speed.

3. Returns are something you need NEVER concern yourself with again.

4. If you don't like a Hit for whatever reason, that Otto catches for you...such as it isn't in English...return it.

5. Some definitions...

Finding a Hit = Either yourself, or some application locating a Hit that you may want to do that is active...You've been doing this manually, Hit Forker, or some other SCRAPER does this for you.

Catching a Hit = The act of putting a Hit into your work queue.

Auto Catching a Hit = (what Otto Does) Combining "Finding a Hit, and Catching a Hit"

6. If you are stressed by having so many Hits in your Queue...then let Otto put some in there, and then turn Otto Off until you whittle them down...but get used to a work routine...and you can expand how many Hits you can psychologically handle being in your queue.

7. Now, understand something else...I understand the tendency to be ultra-cautious doing Hits...but the correct mindset is one of a "Risk (of rejections) vs. Reward" situation. It's better to do 100+ Hits per day and not worry about the occasional rejection than to do 10 per day and try to be hyper-vigilant about accuracy...accuracy is something that you'll acquire over time.

8. I routinely do nearly a thousand Hits a week...while running this forum and raising a family. You can work up to a nice fat work routine.

[Fisherman]

Honestly, going from what you've been doing to Otto is like this...

buggy.jpg

to this...


dragster.jpg

[GinnyTurk]

Yes, that does make sense, and not offended by the comments.
This is new to me - this concept of turking like this. It's a paradigm shift in the brain. It maybe should be explained to folks before using Otto so that they are not shocked when the auto catching happens. I was under the impression that Otto was going to scoop them up and you can preview them first. And if they're still available, great; but, if not, then at least you got to see what was out there that Otto caught.
However, I think I am cognitively understanding this method now and will try to work with it that way and not stress about the return statistic anymore.
I appreciate your help today, in spite of having surgery. I hope I have not added to any stress in your day and that you are on the mend soon.

[Fisherman]

the mTurk system wouldn't allow for a Hit to be scooped up and then previewed. What would happen would be that it'd be scooped up, then while you're previewing it everybody else got it. Then, when you accepted it...there'd be no more available. Otto makes sure that it's "yours" first and then you have the option of returning it.

[smartin]

GinnyTurk I finally had some time to read everything from this morning and process things. I hope ZeldaFoot and Fisherman have helped explain things a lot and I know it's overwhelming to change. I worked without any extra tools for almost 5 years before I started finally venturing into them. I have to say Otto is by far the greatest although I supplement with other tools.

Thinking back to your fishing reference. You are correct you don't catch a fish and typically automatically gut it. You usually put it on a stringer. That fish technically has a limited life span left and can very well expire and start floating in the water on that stringer. Think of turk as that. You caught a fish (hit) and put it on your stringer (in your que) from that point you decide if you want to keep the hit that's in your que and work on it or return it.

Hits are like a marketplace. There's only so many good available and a lot more workers than hits available. The good hits are hard to catch (even some bad ones) on your own without a tool like Otto to catch them for you.

Have you ever clicked accept on a hit on the Mturk website and you get told no hits available? It's because someone else accepted it before you and that opportunity just slipped through your fingers to work on that hit. When Otto catches a hit, it's yours, you can do with it what you choose Work, return or let it expire. You que is holding hits that are yours to make that choice with, yes you have a limited time window to complete them but that's when your skills and judgements come into play. I personally allow 1minute or working time per .10 the hit is. For example a $1 I should be able to complete in 10 mins or less, if there's less time left on the hit before it expires I'll look at it and see if I think I can complete it before the timer expires, otherwise I'll just let it expire in hopes I'll catch it again some other time and move on to the next hit in my que.

[GinnyTurk]

smartin yes, that does make sense. I have had some time to wrap my brain around this and do now see the value in having Otto secure/save/hold the hit for me and it's mine. I just wish there had been a better explanation of it at the outset. I think it might be assumed that folks know how Otto works (as an auto catcher) before using it.
Now I get it and have been working with it today. I appreciate everyone's help.