Requesters and Workers

A Requester is a person (or company or organization) who asks questions to Mechanical Turk. As a Requester, you use a software application to interact with the Amazon Mechanical Turk Service to submit questions, retrieve answers, and perform other automated tasks. You can use the Requester Console (http://requester.mturk.amazon.com/) to check the status of your questions, and manage your account.

To Workers, you are known as the creator of your HITs, and as the creator and maintainer of your Qualification types. Workers see your name, as specified with your Amazon.com account, on the Mechanical Turk web site.

You perform actions with the Amazon Mechanical Turk Service by using an AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Key to cryptographically sign each request. You obtain an AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Key by signing in to the Amazon Web Services web site, at http://aws.amazon.com/mturk, using your Amazon.com account e-mail address and password.

A Worker is a person who answers questions for Mechanical Turk. A Worker uses the Mechanical Turk web site (http://mturk.amazon.com/) to find questions, submit answers, and manage his or her account.

To Requesters, a Worker is known as the submitter of a HIT assignment, and as a user requesting a Qualification. You see the Worker's account ID (an alphanumeric string assigned by the system) included with assignment data and Qualification requests.

Qualifications represent the Worker's reputation and abilities. A Worker's Qualifications are matched against a HIT's Qualification requirements to allow or disallow the Worker to accept the HIT. A Worker's Qualifications cannot be accessed directly by other users.

Requesters and Workers are Mechanical Turk users, and have Amazon.com accounts. Account information is managed by Amazon.com, so anyone with an Amazon.com account can use that account's e-mail address and password to sign in to Mechanical Turk.

Your Amazon.com account holds the money you will pay to Workers as rewards for completing HITs, as well as the money to pay for Mechanical Turk listing fees. A Worker's Amazon.com account holds the money the Worker receives from Requesters for completing HITs. You can transfer money to and from your Amazon.com account at any time using the Requester Console. Workers transfer money using the Mechanical Turk web site.

Mechanical Turk keeps statistics about every user's activity in the system. Workers can view their own statistics using the Mechanical Turk web site. You can view your own statistics using the Requester Console.

HITs can use some Worker statistics as the basis for Qualification requirements. These are known as system Qualifications.

The NotifyWorkers operation lets you send e-mail to Workers who have interacted with you in the past. Using the Worker ID included with the data the Worker submits to you, you can send a Worker a message without having to know his or her name or e-mail address.

If you have work in the system, Workers can contact you using the Mechanical Turk web site. Mechanical Turk relays the message to you by e-mail.