Mechanical Turk Concepts

This chapter introduces the concepts of Mechanical Turk, the business objects and mechanisms of the system, and when and why you would use them.

This chapter has the following sections:

• Overview

  A brief introduction to the elements of Mechanical Turk.

• Requesters and Workers

  The actors in the system, user accounts, money and payments, the Mechanical Turk web site.

• HITs

  All about Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs), putting your work into the system, how your HITs appear to a Worker.

• Assignments

  How a Worker completes a HIT, how you retrieve the results, how assignments are managed, and how the Worker gets paid.

• Qualifications

  How Mechanical Turk helps you manage Workers to produce the highest quality results for your HITs.