Notice: Mount Olympus is a required parallel install to make Athena work. Visit the linked page for more information.
Capsule improvements
The bulk of Athena's functions as they pertain to browsing Turk is improving the HIT capsule in a variety of ways:
We'll take a look at the individual changes in the following sections.
Qualification tiering and feasibility
At the bottom left of the above screenshot you can see that Athena parses all qualifications and assigns them an icon based on their feasibility, which represents your ability to complete the HIT or become qualified to complete it. These icons are a lot easier to decipher at a glance as compared to the sentence that existed here previously.
When all qualifications for a HIT have been parsed, Athena assigns the entire HIT a feasibility based on the most restrictive qualification and places an icon at the top left of the HIT capsule to denote that. Using this labeled feasibility, you can filter out HITs that would otherwise waste your time to even look at.
We'll get into the filtering part a bit later, but first I'll provide an overview of the feasibility tiers. Qualification feasibility and HIT feasibility are based on the same five tiers and icons presented here in the order least to most restrictive. The HIT's feasibility is always equal to that of the most restrictive qualification (that is, the furthest tier down this list.)
Qualified
When this appears next to a qualification, that means you possess the qual and its value meets the requester's criteria.
Used as a HIT feasibility, it means that you are qualified to accept the HIT and work on it right now because the HIT either has no qualifications or you meet all of the criteria. Here are examples of qualified HITs:
You are automatically qualified for this HIT because it has no qualifications.
I am qualified for this HIT because I meet all of the qualification criteria at the bottom of the capsule.
Testable
Qualifications with this icon mean that the qual is granted as the result of a test. These are almost always automatically granted following the completion of the test, so you can often quickly and autonomously discover if you can gain the qualification or not.
HITs that are marked "testable" mean that you do not possess some necessary qualifications, but all of them can be tested for. Examples of testable HITs:
As outlined above, HITs are given an overall feasibility based on the most restrictive qualification. While I meet the MyID qual, I am missing the rest. Since all of these missing quals are testable, that makes the entire HIT have a feasibility of testable.
Requestable
A qualification with this icon means that you do not have the qual but you can ask for it from the requester. This seems like a nonissue on the surface, but requested qualifications are almost universally ignored.
HITs marked as requestable means that at least one qual must be requested. Examples of a requestable HIT:
While I have one of the qualifications, the other two must be requested and this HIT is marked as requestable tier overall. As explained, the most restrictive qualification sets the feasibility of the HIT.
Another example of qualification tiering at work. The testable quals trump the qualified one, but the requestable qual hiding in there trumps the testable tier.
Unqualified
Qualifications followed by this icon mean that you have the qualification but its value is does not meet the requester's criteria. These are almost always demographics or quality control values that you cannot change without completing some other HIT(s).
A HIT marked as unqualified means that at least one qualification does not meet the necessary criteria. I personally filter these out because there isn't anything I can do about it looking at the HIT I'm not qualified for. Here's an example of an unqualified HIT:
I have the Age qualification from PickFu, but it is not the required value as denoted by the criteria. That unqualified tier trumps both of the other qualified tiers, and makes this hit unqualified overall.
Impossible
My favorite type of qualification because it can filter out a ton of time-wasting junk. Qualifications marked impossible are ones that you can never possess, either by a function of your account data (e.g. if you do not meet location quals, since you can't change your account's location), because requesting it is universally ignored (Masters, Ibotta), or because the criteria are somehow impossible for you to obtain (such as requiring a maximum approval volume that you have exceeded, or 100% approval rating if you have >0 rejections.)
HITs marked impossible contain at least one impossible qual, which makes even looking at the HIT a huge waste of time. Examples of impossible HITs:
This is a classic example of "may as well be impossible." Because absolutely nobody knows what the criteria for Masters actually are and it gets handed out at a rate of perhaps 10 people per year, not having the Masters status makes these HITs impossible. If you have Masters then this is handled like any other qual, but for the rest of us it remains classified as impossible.
A perfect example of truly impossible. If you have 1001 approved HITs or greater, then you will never be qualified for this HIT and it's a waste of time to even look at it.
Turkopticon
You'll have likely noticed by now that each one of the examples I've provided has a colorized title. The requester's Turkopticon information appears just below the title of the HIT, which also contains the average score that the color is based on. The Turkopticon score ranges from 5 to 0 and is rounded to the nearest integer.
To refresh your memory, here's the complete example HIT again:
These are the Turkopticon color ratings present in the capsule above:
A great TO rating, ranging from 4.51 to 5.
A good TO rating, ranging from 3.51 to 4.50.
A fair TO rating, ranging from 2.51 to 3.50.
A poor TO rating, ranging from 1.51 to 2.50.
An awful TO rating, with an average 1.50 or below.
The requester has no TO score. This can happen when reviews are submitted without scores just to comment on the HIT being broken, etc.
The pay rating is also colorized independently using that one attribute of the Turkopticon data. It is not intentionally designed to be the same color as the title, but it often is.
Blocking and highlighting
What may be more difficult to notice are the block and highlight icons on the left side of the requester name and HIT title: the asterisk will highlight HITs and the X will block them. The astute among you may have noticed these in the above examples already. Here's a few more examples:
This makes 411Richmond a highlighted requester, which means any HITs they post will be highlighted.
CrowdSurf as a blocked requester. This will hide any and all HITs posted by CrowdSurf Support.
Highlighting a single HIT, and not all HITs from a requester.
Similarly, blocks only this one HIT and does not institute a sweeping block against the requester.
Extra accept options
At the top right of the HIT, you'll see the addition of an Accept link which will automatically accept this HIT without first having to preview it. For the uninitiated among you, this is called a "panda" because you preview*anda*accept the HIT. You are still bound by qualifications, though -- using the accept link does not get you a HIT that you could not otherwise complete.
This step also fixes a rather silly screwup from Amazon, because this is simply no bueno:
Each of these qualification test links appears in the table at the bottom of the HIT, so there's no reason for them to also be up here.
Athena also uses a strikeout when the requester does not allow unqualified workers to preview HITs:
This goes for all capsules
In addition, Athena will also perform these same improvements on capsules when viewing/working on a HIT:
The HIT's auto-approval (AA) time is also displayed when this information can be gleaned.
Your queue also benefits:
(If you're wondering why the title extends out of the capsule in these two screenshots, it's because Amazon uses CSS border-radius in the list of HITs, which easily expands around content inside, but uses images everywhere else, which are a fixed size.)
HIT filtering
When browsing on Mechanical Turk, you will meet a spiffy new companion just above the list of HITs:
Each of these icons and checkboxes allows you to filter the list of HITs by all of the above mentioned qualification tiers and Turkopticon scores. These are the only buttons you have not been introduced to:
Blocked HITs. When you click the little X next to a requester's name or a HIT's title, it will not automatically disappear if this icon is not enabled. This allows you to un-block items as well as view blocked HITs anyway without requiring any manner of rigmarole via editing your raw blocklist by hand.
Highlighted HITs. Similar to blocked HITs, highlighted HITs will not be highlighted unless this icon is enabled.
Opens the Help window, which contains all of the above information for future reference.
Work frame improvements
Athena also does some helpful stuff when you're actually working on HITs. It will place a red screen over the HIT area when you have not accepted it, which prevents accidentally completing HITs when you have not accepted them:
Clicking on the red box will leave a red screen over the HIT content until you accept it:
Athena has an option to not use the first box if you choose, and will instead skip right to the red screen shpwn in the second screenshot without having to click the box shown in the first one each time.
You may have also noticed the batch mode checkbox and the work area height textbox. Batch mode will keep the auto-accept checkbox checked, will jump the page down to the work area on load, and focus the work area automatically so that any scripts that use keyboard functions don't require extra clicks. The work area height textbox changes the height of the box containing the HIT so that you can size it to the height of your browser window.
Athena will also automatically focus the textbox for CAPTCHAs when you run afoul of them.
Notes
Athena performs all the functions of, is a replacement for, and does not play well with:
- any script that employs HitScraper's blocklist, such as CH Block Using Hit Scraper's Blocklist
- any script that uses Turkopticon, like mmmturkeybacon Color Coded Search with Checkpoints, mmmturkeybacon Color Coded Queue, or Turkopticon itself
- any script that displays the auto approval time of a HIT, e.g. mmmturkeybacon Enhanced HIT Information Capsule
- any script that adds links to the HIT capsules, like MTurk Add PANDA link to capsule and Preview and Accept MTurk HITs
- any script that manipulates the auto-accept check box, e.g. Keep Mturk Autoaccept Box Checked
- any script that modifies the work frame, like MTurk Max Job Window Height, Focus mTurk IFrame, or MTurk resize iframe and setfocus
This script does play well with:
- HIT Database. Athena does nothing that interferes with its operation.
- TurkMaster for the same reason as above.
- HIT Scraper. All Olympian scripts are explicitly prevented from launching on the Hit Scraper page.
- HIT Monitor for the same reason as above
