Katharine Mieszkowski recently had an article at Salon about Amazon's Mechanical Turk, asking if it was, "a boon for the bored or a virtual sweatshop?" (Note: you have to click thru an ad to read the whole article for free if you're not a subscrinber.)

From the article:

A number of service companies use Mechanical Turk to do a "human augmented search." Say you're in a sports bar and having an argument about whether Roger Clemens has ever thrown a no-hitter. You can end the debate once and for all with a call to one of the services, which instantly posts the question on Mechanical Turk. Turkers then surf the Web and generally earn 2 cents for each answer.

Back in the sports bar, when you get the answer -- "Clemens has never pitched a no-hitter" -- you can rate the answer as great, good, lame or junk. Answers deemed "lame" or "junk" are rejected and the worker is not paid. If you don't rate the answer at all, the worker is automatically paid his or her 2 cents after seven days. Turkers who get the most "great" votes in a week get bonuses of as much as $75. In a good week, Milland can answer 100 research questions, making all of $2, but scoring one of those lucrative performance bonuses, she says, makes the search worthwhile.

The trivia pursuits are so competitive that they're snatched up by turkers within a minute of being posted. So Milland has set up software to notify her whenever a new question shows up on Mechanical Turk, so she can be the first to grab it. Plus, she's armed her Web browser with links to her top 100 reference sites so she can answer the questions as efficiently and accurately as possible. Turkers can choose to be paid in Amazon credit, making it easy to shop at the company store. Just the other day, Milland ordered $600 worth of DVDs and books for her family, as well as prizes for contests on her RealityBBQ. "It still doesn't add up to a lot of money per hour, but if I'm sitting there watching TV anyway, it's more than I'd make just sitting there," she says.

All in all a pretty in depth and helpful article if you don't know a lot about Amazon's Mechanical Turk (which is still in Beta - as in I imagine we'll be hearing more and more about it as time goes on...) They forgot to mention this blog in the piece, although a 'community' never formed around this site (too many people used to forums like at Turker Nation.

Anyway, the article is worth a read.

What are your thoughts on it?

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