Spam has taken another turn for the worse, to the point that now somone has set up a program which automatically creates accounts on BOINC projects and puts spam messages in the account profile.

One way to deal with this is to use a CAPTCHA to prove that the account was created by a human. I've been investigating one such system, called reCAPTCHA. The great thing about this is that solving these puzzles aids a project to digitize old books. You can read more about this at http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html

As a simple test of using this system I set up a "mechanical turk" page, where you can solve reCAPTCHA tasks for BOINC credit.

You may see reCAPTCHA's appearing on other BOINC projects, either for account creation, to allow you to edit your profile, or perhaps even to post in the forums. It may be an annoying bit of extra effort, but at least you'll know you are also helping a good cause.

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

Works fine for me.

Nifty!
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Kathryn :o)
The BOINC FAQ Service
The Unofficial BOINC Wiki
The Trac System

Cool!

good idea.. i reckon for registration and/or profile updates... to do it each time you need to post in a forum would be a bit much i reckon....


cheers,

Paul.


edit - is it possible to get it to use occasionally use misspelled words? just thinking that if a bot could manage to read part of the word, it could make a fair guess as to the rest of it... but if it was mispelled, say letters swapped or extra letters, then it would make things that much harder. From playing with it, it uses alot of dictionary words (ie not just random numbers and letters) so a bot can use the same thing!


edit 2 - i wonder will we see some people suddenly soot up the rankings now!!
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Join BOINC Synergy Team

Works Fine here also ! Tried the Voice Code one sucessfully too. New challange/Question buttons also worked fine. :)

Might add "Not Case Sensitive" to make it easier as it isn't (For Now at Least hehe).
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5.10.21/Xp-Pro/6600gt/3800x2

is it possible to get it to use occasionally use misspelled words? just thinking that if a bot could manage to read part of the word, it could make a fair guess as to the rest of it... but if it was mispelled, say letters swapped or extra letters, then it would make things that much harder.

Might add "Not Case Sensitive" to make it easier as it isn't (For Now at Least hehe).

Arg..Server bumped me for awhile...Like Paul said, I could misspell a letter in each word, And it still accepted it as valid. I do like it also though, Especially the vocal aspect. As at some of these places, Its almost impossible to get the wording correctly (Or you give up after a couple of attempts, Which isn't good for said website)hehe.
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5.10.21/Xp-Pro/6600gt/3800x2

Paul@home]i wonder will we see some people suddenly soot up the rankings now!!

Cap'n does have it listed seperately as far as credits goes. :)

I'm guessing that maybe the misspelled words that are still accepted as valid, Are the ones that weren't Digitalized yet ? If so, Will it then be seen as correct spelling if it was accepted but was really not spelled correctly ? Or will it take the majority entered as correct instead ?
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5.10.21/Xp-Pro/6600gt/3800x2

Cap'n does have it listed seperately as far as credits goes. :)

This brings to mind another question, How is this going to be looked upon as far as the Pirate Community as far as credits go ? As on the one hand, "By entering the words in the box, you are also helping to digitize texts that were written before the computer age." Are helping this task. But on the other hand, Some users will find it strickly as a means of someone getting credits only, Thus being considered a credit ho. So how does the Cap'n see it in general ? Is there a limit to entering the forms that should be part of the pirates code ?

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5.10.21/Xp-Pro/6600gt/3800x2

Limit would be ok, but then again this is like Stardust (but much easier!) ... people with more free time will sit there for hours, then will eventually get bored. It's for a good cause, the credit is nice, however if someone wants to do this for hours on end to get credit then the task is getting completed anyway. My two cents ... and thanks for the cool little side project Capt'n! Aaarrggh!
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So, why is it noted twice, once as reCAPTCHA credit - Credit obtained from solving tasks on the Pirates@Home mechanical turk and second time as credit from the Mechanical Turk?

BTW, is it somehow possible to put "[B^S] Gamma^Ray" correctly into the quotation string?

It's not possible for me to do anything to change the word selection. They are provided to us by the reCAPTCHA server.

Will this be rolled across all projects. If so, how will it affect BAM and other account managers?

There's a bug in the credit giving to captcha's Eric. It also gives credit for wrong captcha's. I just had one that I filled in wrong and it gave me a credit anyway.

Did it say the solution was incorrect, or you know it was incorrect even though it said it was correct?

On my first look i thought this is plain credit cheating.
My second thought was: Wow i can still reach the 10.000 even if capt'n turned the workunits off.
Pondering the whole thing for a while leaves me still indecisive.

Fighting spambots is necessary.
Testing reCAPTCHA seems a good thing.
Giving treasure to those who do help testing as well.
Digitalizing worthy books, too.

Pirates Credits are more worthy than most others, as they are hard fought for.
Giving credits by hundreds for short effort seems unbalanced.
Participants who never computed WUs can now overtake those who helped the project for a long time.

After some further while of pondering i think it is not good to give normal pirate credits, still we should do this testing and reward it. Maybe with a smaller amount of credit per word pair, or with a dubloon for each 500 wordpairs. But with this high rate our treasured credits lose theit exclusiveness.

Still I, being a greedy dragon, will not surrender the gold once I have found it.
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Dragons can fly because they don't fit into pirate ships

Not sure if it's possible to ever have a totally fair system when it comes to effort vs. credit. Looking at some users here with 20,000+ Credits compared to how long its taken me (With my mainly one Pc) over the past year and a half just to get to 250 credits doesn't add up as far as the effort goes in my opinion. As I have to put in alot more time or effort just to get the occasional work units/credit with one Pc, Than someone with 10 or more. Simply based on the fact that with more pc's the chance that several of them will grab available work units is greater versus my one. Now thats the nature of BOINC and I'm fine with that, As the more pc's the better, And those pc's do obtain and do the work, So should get the credit. But still, My 250 doesn't look like I try very hard when actually, I have.

So adding this sideline task for credits is good, As far as the very users with 10 or 100 pc's that can just turn them on and let them do the work, Might not have the time to sit there and type out each M/T question box for one credit each and thus doesn't, While say someone with the one pc does have the time and decides to participate in the task and does get the credit still seems like fair play, As now even the user with one pc is equal as far as effort goes to anyone with 100, As either way, Only each user can sit there and type out the search boxes one at a time.

Still, It does make my year and a half of crunchin here and there as best as I can for 250 credits seem off, As for maybe 15 minutes give or take, I made 100 more with M/T, Seem off too. But like I originally said, I don't think its possible for it all to ever be totally fair or even so to speak.

That said, I might would agree that dropping the credit to .50 percent of a work unit as opposed to a full credit per M/T box entry, Might make it more even if possible ?

Just my opinions
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5.10.21/Xp-Pro/6600gt/3800x2

I filled in the two words, and was just moved to the next screen to fill in two words again, without the option of cutting&pasting the code in between.

Maybe with a smaller amount of credit per word pair, or with a dubloon for each 500 wordpairs. But with this high rate our treasured credits lose theit exclusiveness.

You must now have a verified e-mail address to create or edit a profile. This was dead easy to add. Of course a bot can do that exchange, but if we then add a reCAPTCHA to the verification process only a human can verify the address.

When we got spammed I disabled account creation. I'll now turn it back on, and we'll see what happens.

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

Stainless Cutlass wrote:

I filled in the two words, and was just moved to the next screen to fill in two words again, without the option of cutting&pasting the code in between.

That sounds like the non-JavaScript interface. Is the cut&paste step actually required? Did you turn on JavaScript mid-step? Most importantly, can you reproduce it?

The C&P step is required to get credit. Or at least, when you have filled in the words correctly and just hit submit without C&P'ing, you don't get credit.

I had to allow noscript for recaptcha, then the copy and paste window did not show again.
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Dragons can fly because they don't fit into pirate ships

Stainless Cutlass wrote:

There's a bug in the credit giving to captcha's Eric. It also gives credit for wrong captcha's. I just had one that I filled in wrong and it gave me a credit anyway.

Did it say the solution was incorrect, or you know it was incorrect even though it said it was correct?

One of the words is known, one unkown. You only have to type the known word to get it correct. [...]

And it should also give you the RAC to become an able_seaman. Solve one CAPTCHA and you can post to the wiki? That sounded reasonable. (But I think I have to make some adjustments for the captcha credits to be counted in RAC.)

It made sense to me to award credit for work done, by either machine or human.
If the award is too high, or too low, then what is the appropriate price? Perhaps we should start high (like an iPhone) and then drop the price to get those who didn't jump in immediately. Only in reverse (high -vs- low) since we are buying, not selling. You get the idea.

As for the worth of Pirates@Home credit, I agree it's more valuable. I'd estimate that each Pirates credit is worth 8 times a normal BOINC credit. That's why some call 'em "pieces of eight!" But I don't know if we'll get the team and stats sites to agree to that factor. :-)

I've found that this isn't 100% reliable. Some words I deliberately mistyped and received credit anyway. It seems to let me misspell the first word but the second word is where it does want it correct, at least on my testing so far.

Some of the word generations are tricky and you do have to take a close look but that flaw where it occaisionally accepts a misspelled word anyway defeats the effectiveness of the system.

edit: I take that back, I put in words that weren't close to what was displayed, even longer in some cases and it accepted them on both the first and second word.

This reCaptcha thing needs alot of work before being put out in the real world, that's for sure. My testing so far shows it to be hit & miss for effectiveness with it leaning more towards a miss.


____________

I played with it for a bit. Tried the audio, and ran into a problem. When I tried it with the default QuickTime, I only got a shortened version, with 3 to 5 numbers before it cut off. Clicked the "Can't hear the sound?" link so it went through RealPlayer, and the entire clip played and I could get all the numbers.

Using Firefox 2.0.0.7, Windows XP Media Center, QuickTime 7.1.5, RealPlayer 10.5.

MJ
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Hail, Poetry, thou heav'n-born maid!
Thou gildest e'en the pirate's trade.
Hail, flowing fount of sentiment!
Hail, all hail, divine emollient!

Okay, credit is now also given to your team. But the reward has gone down to 1/8 cobblestone for each correct solution. Comments?

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

...the reward has gone down to 1/8 cobblestone for each correct solution...

The text at the top of the page still says that a correct answer gives 1 cobblestone.

From my testing, it seems that up to one character error is allowed in each of the two words....

Pepo wrote:

From my testing, it seems that up to one character error is allowed in each of the two words....

I wonder if it matters which character it is that is uncertain. In most of the cases where I've been stumped, it's been between an 'e' and an 'o', because of the line through the word (which is there to make it harder for a machine to separate the letters). Maybe they accept either e or o, and then rely on matching the rest of the letters to an existing word.

On the other hand, the important thing for us is that a machine is not able to even get close to the right word. Or at least not close enough.

In the past few days since this became active, we have solved nearly 22,000 correct reCAPTCHA tasks.

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

I agree credit is based on time and effort but you also have to take into consideration a faster more powerful computer gets credits faster, and on that point the credit for this project should be worked out taking into consideration the number of operations per second the human brain can calculate.
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noticed the credit change today ... I think the task is simple, and the 1 credit per task was too high. It's taken me a long time to get the credit I have also, so the credit change was appropriate and I agree with other comments above about credit/effort/time. However, I spent an hour typing yesterday, and only 5 minutes today!! So, .125 is now worth a lot of work for all that typing. Double-however, I like that credit amount ... and a difficult choice for the Capt'n most certainly.

When I started I thought of it like a typing test, so I only got a few incorrect that I noticed. Then I saw a big factor for incorrect was missing a special character or number - those are the ones I get wrong when not being careful.
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Just courious, Has anyone had the thought that giving any credit for something done manually by a user, Is maybe going against the very core of the BOINC idea and or purpose basically ? Dont get me wrong, I like the project at hand, And getting some gold is nice for it, But then again, I keep thinking that if its ok to give users credit based on other things than actual Coblestones and or actual Pc Crunchin', Then whats to stop other new projects in the future, From popping up to also take advantage of the give users credit, For whats basically just data entry ?

Seems that one could convert data input to dollars with the many get rich quick guys on the internet, If all they have to do in return to the users, Is give "Credit" which actually costs them nothing. Or even say what if a valid project offers 100, or 1000 credits for someone to type up a essay or whatever for that project ? Or person who creates the best Logo for a project gets 1000 credits etc. Maybe Mods will be paid 200 credits a month for modding ?

Not sure where it might lead to if anywhere, And I was just courious if anyone else has thought of that, Or is it just me ?
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5.10.21/Xp-Pro/6600gt/3800x2

Good to be #1 for a day!

Seems that one could convert data input to dollars with the many get rich quick guys on the internet

Yea, I'm a member on that one also. But so far I haven't gotten any BOINC credits for it yet ? Maybe its only a matter of time for that one. :?
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5.10.21/Xp-Pro/6600gt/3800x2

something here but it seems to me that this would be a bit of a weakness to say the least.

Just courious, Has anyone had the thought that giving any credit for something done manually by a user, Is maybe going against the very core of the BOINC idea and or purpose basically? ...

It's a grey area for me, As on the one hand its nice to get credit for places like Pirates, Thats hard to get credit for normally, But on the other hand it just seems to me as a different entity all together. Kinda like when the Original Seti with from their 1 credit for 1 work unit plan, Decided to switch to the current one of computer cycles, It was to help (Supposedly) made things more even for users Pc Crunchin wise. Thus they decided to not add the old Seti Credits to the BOINC ones as to start off new with everyone starting at zero, And no one having the old credits added as they were made with different rules (1 wu to 1 credit).

So I kinda feel that M/T is a good idea, But maybe the credits shouldn't be added with the regular BOINC credits, But maybe seperate such as a Dc type project or something. And if more and more of these types of mini-projects pop up then a seperate stat could be added to the BOINC stats site call Mechanical Turk's Project or something that lists the credits seperately, But still is shown as to how much someone has helped.

Any ideas of what the original designers of BOINC think of credits gotten like this ? Just courious .
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5.10.21/Xp-Pro/6600gt/3800x2

I think that's an important point to discuss here. There are some similarities between the reCAPTCHA project and most BOINC projects, but the reCAPTCHA work is done by a human rather than a machine. Is that an important distinction?

Do i get TEAM points for solving reCAPTCHA ?

What about cheating the credit system, is that real computation too?

What about cheating the credit system, is that real computation too?

Woody Woodpecker wrote:

What about cheating the credit system, is that real computation too?

No, but finding a way to game the system and reporting it so that we know about the problem is certainly worth some reward.

Have you found a hole in the system, or are you just very fast and patient with the reCAPTCHAs?

I ment those "optimized clients" as a way to cheat some BOINC projects credit systems.

I think reCAPTCHAs cannot be cheated. All you need is quick fingers and some spare time...

Ah, there was indeed a bug in awarding team credit. It should now be fixed.

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

Wormholio wrote:

Ah, there was indeed a bug in awarding team credit. It should now be fixed.

But it isn't.

Then the question is what to do with credit already awarded.

I'm now seriously thinking of not awarding BOINC credit for the Mechanical Turk. We would still track work done on the Mechanical Turk, but entirely separate from BOINC credit. So far I've heard voices in favor of that, but nobody opposed. Speak now if you are in favor of BOINC credit for M/T work.

Then the question is what to do with credit already awarded. Since we have the separate total I could take it away from the BOINC credit, for a clean separation, or I can just leave it as it is but not award future credit.

I realized that the first option would not work if we also awarded credit to teams, so I decided not to award team credit, pending a decision.

We all know some see BOINC credits as a very serious matter (the most surprising aspect of distributed computing for me) so it seems you'll take heat no matter what you decide now :)
Me thinks you should leave the credits earned for this as is, but discontinue to award BOINC credits in the future and keep track of work done with Turk in the separate database only.
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Click and enter your name for your BOINC Statistics

I definately think the previously granted credit should not be changed.

I am less sure about future credit. I am leaning towards continuing to grant credit for using the turk. It is a contribution to the project, just not in the normal manner. There has been talk in the past about granting credit for contributions other than simple crunching. Testing these aspects does seem like a job for the pirate crew.
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BOINC WIKI

Dirty John Rackham

I agree. BOINC stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.
Credits aren't a bad thing, but I think they should be seperated from the credits gained by computations, too, as it's done in the certificate.

While I am normally not in favor of awarding credits for work outside of applications (e.g., for recruiting more crunchers, etc.), I do not believe that this falls in that class of contributions. Since the actual task of digitizing books is a kind of distributed computing, then regular BOINC credit seems appropriate. The real question lies not in the method of granting credit (at least IMHO), but in the amount of credit to award. Is the 0.1 current value really comparable to 10 seconds of computer time for one of the regular Pirates@home apps (assuming some sort of standardized reference computer)?


Edit:
From my own computer list, the comparable value for 10 seconds of work from the standard applications runs mostly between .02 and .04 credits. Given the extra effort involved in 'active' participation, a value of between .05 and .1 seems reasonable.

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4567,8 M/T credits is enough for me so I quit now.
If you want to remove M/T credits from BOINC credits, I don't complain.
Anyway they are just credits, not my bank balance!

4567,8 M/T credits is enough for me so I quit now.

Woody Woodpecker wrote:

4567,8 M/T credits is enough for me so I quit now...

You had some pretty high scoring days, I have to sleep once and a while so I knew I’d never catch you LOL.

Nice work!

Woody Woodpecker wrote:

4567,8 M/T credits is enough for me so I quit now.

You must be getting cramped fingers.

I lowered the reward for each reCAPTCHA to 0.1 to see who would continue. You did, for a while. Would you do more if I raised the reward?

I also made it possible to easily change the reward. One could imagine it varying depending on time of day (which is not so meaningful for a world-wide project), but I'm not sure how this would be most useful.

you have three gold dubloons and I have none :-)

Thanks, but you have three gold dubloons and I have none :-)

Woody Woodpecker wrote:

Thanks, but you have three gold dubloons and I have none :-)

You can fix that by creating a profile, which would make you eligible for UOTD.

As a dragon me would never ever surrender any of the gold me gained with brave robbery or piracy!
But the turk gold is still stained by the suspicion of cheating. Ok cheating is quite obvious an honorable thing for pirates to do, but not among ourselves. So me might keep my sharp claws to meself if Capt'n sneaks into me lair to rob back the fake gold.
Perhaps he lets flow the real gold again for while so that me could regain my 10.000 milestone, this time truly and only through brave screensaver robbery!
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Dragons can fly because they don't fit into pirate ships

If you're not going to recognise MT credits as BOINC credits and export them to teams then delete/deduct them from individuals totals, don't bottle out halfway.

I've got nothing against awarding MT credits as BOINC credits - if someone wants to sit there and punch keys for credit - go for it. It's not as though they are manipulating benchmarks so it's hardly cheating.

EDIT: typo
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Free Tibet/ Tibet Libre Team Forum

If this is the reason then you should really change the MT web page to reflect this at the momment after each compleated task it claims your team has recieved 0.1 credits.

For what it's worth I believe it would be wrong to take back or alter in any way credits ALREADY EARNED through MT

What I still need to decide is whether to continue giving BOINC credit for the mechanical turk, or just add to a separate count.

My thought would be to not continue to give BOINC credit for it, A seperate total for Pirates or something maybe, But not for BOINC.
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5.10.21/Xp-Pro/6600gt/3800x2

I afraid that I just don't get the "devalues BOINC credit argument." At such a low credit value per unit, one would have to spend hours if not days at the task to significantly impact BOINC credits at a project level (even on here Pirates@home where normal crunching work is intermittent). I also agree that if BOINC credits are not given for the Turk, then considerbaly less work by the crew will be performed in this task. If the task is deemed at all worthwhile by the Captain, then there is little reason not to give BOINC credit for it.

A question for the Captain...other than the stated purpose of the task, is there any other project benefit or I2U2 benefit? (e.g., webserver load test, tracking active participation, etc.)
____________

I definately think the previously granted credit should not be changed.

I am less sure about future credit. I am leaning towards continuing to grant credit for using the turk. It is a contribution to the project, just not in the normal manner. There has been talk in the past about granting credit for contributions other than simple crunching. Testing these aspects does seem like a job for the pirate crew.

On it's own, as you say MT credits will have little affect overall (allthough some have managed to achieve scores in the thousands. On this project that makes a big difference) What I was refering to was the possibillity that should awarding Boinc credit for non Boinc tasks become commonplace and accepted in the wider comunity then who knows where it will lead? Boinc credit for the cutest cat picture in the seti forum maybe or even boinc credit for advertising car insurance or personal loans. Okay maybe I'm Exagerating a bit (I hope) but allowing boinc credit out side boinc is a risky bussiness.

What may make the MT different is that there is actually a distributed task occuring. Thus, it might seem right to setup a separate credit system (maybe more dubloons...we can always use more Gold!). On the other hand, if the credits can easily be made comparable, then why not use the BOINC accounting?

Scott Brown wrote:

...As for the thousands of credits earned by some using the MT, I think that those were all achieved during the brief period of 1 credit for 1 MT unit. Since the chnage to reduced credit, I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone with more than 100 or so MT credits added.

Well I guess I must have too much time on my hands, I have put up well over 1K since the credit was reduced to 0.1 cobbies. Woody Woodpecker has done even more! In a quick check of the stats it appears a few others have put up in excess of 300.

Some people have server farm to do crunching. All I have is twelve fingers!

Scott Brown wrote:

...What may make the MT different is that there is actually a distributed task occuring. Thus, it might seem right to setup a separate credit system (maybe more dubloons...we can always use more Gold!). On the other hand, if the credits can easily be made comparable, then why not use the BOINC accounting?...

Since the Mechanical Turk page still says the task is worth BOINC credit, in all fairness I believe the current earned by those participating should stand. If the captain wants to use a separate reward system for future reCAPTCHA tasks I have no argument.
Yeah, gold Dubloons sound OK, a pirate can never get enough of those, set a high target goal though. Whatever compensation the captain finally decides on is all right with me.

Some people have server farm to do crunching. All I have is twelve fingers!

A question for the Captain...other than the stated purpose of the task, is there any other project benefit or I2U2 benefit? (e.g., webserver load test, tracking active participation, etc.)

Wormholio wrote:

...So the real question is what to do now? We could just turn off the turk and call it a success. Or leave it running, since it does do something useful for someone. If it's left running then what reward is to be offered? BOINC credit for this project, a dubloon per thousand CAPTCHAs (or at what rate?), or just a separate high score?

Previously awarded BOINC credit will remain. Once given, I don't want to take it away, though I did consider doing so. Some folks profited greatly from the initial high reward per task, but they also helped greatly by being the first to try it out. They deserve some reward for that.

If you leave it running Captain a Gold Dubloon per thousand CAPTCHAs sounds like a fair reward to me.

A thousand per dubloon sounds good to me. I also like the idea of a high score list with a count of the CAPTCHAs done so that anyone could see how close they are to their next gold reward.
____________

I do not ,-)
This would immeditely mean doubloon inflation .-D

I would consider the test as successful and finished, but as we already have separate counters for succesful reCaptcha answers, I'd leave these still functional.
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Peter .-)

Possibly, but crewmembers currently get a doubloon for being User of the Day and that requires no work at all.

So here is what I'm thinking we might do with the Mechanical Turk:

* At some point in the future, which will be announced, credit for the Mechanical Turk will no longer be BOINC credit, but a separate tally.

* At that point, I will reset the M/T scores to zero. If someone wants to preserve the current scores they can. Perhaps Contact will want to preserve the high scores page, or people will want to put their scores in sigs. It's up to the crew to save the records.

* After that, each M/T task will be worth 0.1 "points", as they are now. Whenever someone gets 100 more points they will be awarded a Dubloon. This works out to 1000 M/T tasks per dubloon, which seems to be an agreeable number, but 100 is also a nice number for points. As I now recall, 100 Cobblestones was the target for a real work-horse workunit in BOINC (not the small things we give out here). M/T and BOINC credit will be separate, but it's still nice to have some rough level of comparison, from when they were more closely related during the initial testing.

Comments or additions?
____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

I still think the MTpoints are not equal to real pirate credits. Therefore I keep up my invitation for the capt'n to sneak into my lair.

I would propose to transform all MT Boinc- credits into MT Credits even those already given as Boinc Credits. At a rate of 0.1 even for those given with another ratio.
And then I wouldn't devalue the dubloons too much:
1,000 recaptchas for the first D; 5,000 for the second 10,000 for the third; 50,000 for the fourth.
____________
Dragons can fly because they don't fit into pirate ships

And then I wouldn't devalue the dubloons too much:
1,000 recaptchas for the first D; 5,000 for the second 10,000 for the third; 50,000 for the fourth.

So far the crew have solved 120836 reCAPTCHA tasks since the Mechanical Turk started. At 10,000 per dubloon, that would be 12 dubloons, which sounds about right. Certainly 120 dubloons for what he have done so far would be too much.

I don't want to take BOINC credit away once it has been awarded.

But I also don't want to award dubloons for work already rewarded with BOINC credit. That would be double-dipping.

A graduated scale of 5,000 for first, 10,000 for next, 20,000 for next, 40,000 and so one has some attraction. It would be easy to get to the first reward level, but harder and harder to get higher and higher in the Pirates' exclusive Dubloon Club. Twice as much work for each level, in fact.

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

I don't want to take BOINC credit away once it has been awarded.

But I also don't want to award dubloons for work already rewarded with BOINC credit. That would be double-dipping.

A graduated scale of 5,000 for first, 10,000 for next, 20,000 for next, 40,000 and so one has some attraction. It would be easy to get to the first reward level, but harder and harder to get higher and higher in the Pirates' exclusive Dubloon Club. Twice as much work for each level, in fact.

I definitely like the idea of a graduated scale. I wonder though if dubloons are the right currency (though more gold is always good!) since they are tied already to the POTD? While it would be more work for the Cap'n, I wonder if a third reward wouldn't work as well (maybe different levels of ships--sloop, two-master, schooner, barque, ,brigantine, etc.--since a pirate fleet would be nice to hall all the gold)?

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...Perhaps Contact will want to preserve the high scores page...

I definitely like the idea of a graduated scale. I wonder though if dubloons are the right currency (though more gold is always good!) ...

Mechanical Turk credit pages are now archived!

http://www.inetsonic.com/piskun/Archives/turk/top_turks.php

I'll try to update before the captain resets the M/T scores to zero.
Later, I'll attempt to figure out why I can't make images and tables to both display properly at the same time. (The more I learn, the less I know).

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Click and enter your name for your BOINC Statistics

Looks like the Turk is broken? It just repeated the exact same two words ten times in a row?


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Looks like the Turk is broken? It just repeated the exact same two words ten times in a row?

Scott Brown wrote:

I definitely like the idea of a graduated scale. I wonder though if dubloons are the right currency (though more gold is always good!) ...

Perhaps silver instead of gold?

Disregard this post. I was just having a Misfit moment.

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Several questions/comments on M/T:

1. Do the caps matter? Is it important to type exactly as showed or can we type all small?

2. How can there be any feedback about the solution if we try to solve OCR-problems? If the solution is known already, what is the whole thing good for?

3. Feedback about what I type is completely random. In many cases it reports "Correct solution" although there is a mistake in the spelling, in other cases I receive "Error: incorrect solution." although what I typed was definitely correct.

Looks like the Turk is broken? It just repeated the exact same two words ten times in a row?

Late last night it was working again for me and I have not been able to reproduce it since. I didn't try the "choose a different challenge" button. The same challenge came up after bith incorrect and correct answers as well as just refreshing the page. Earlier (a few minutes before that) the reCAPTCHA box itself was missing...everything else on the page was there (including the 'submit' button). I thought that I was just getting a loading problem with the browser, but it was probably related.

The conneciton I was on was wireless with my laptop through my home connection on Road Runner, so I am doubtful about the caching proxy. I am guessing it was some sort of glitch from the reCAPTCHA issuing source?


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...I am guessing it was some sort of glitch from the reCAPTCHA issuing source?

I was able to repeat part of this error yesterday morning. Specifically, the reCAPTCHA box was entirely missing for a brief period (just had the submit button again) and then later the entry section was there without the surrounding box graphics. In the later case, I was able to enter items successfully. No problems since, though.

The interesting aspect of this was the timing of these events. The first error happened around 9am EST and the second around 10am EST. With the holidays here, this is now not possible to test for a while, but I really suspect that the reCAPTCHA servers get hit with work login spikes since those times slots match work start times for the Eastern and Central US time zones. Has anyone else noticed this (and for other possible big hit time slots...Europe, Japan, etc.)?

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I was able to repeat part of this error yesterday morning. Specifically, the reCAPTCHA box was entirely missing for a brief period (just had the submit button again) and then later the entry section was there without the surrounding box graphics.

The interesting aspect of this was the timing of these events. The first error happened around 9am EST and the second around 10am EST. With the holidays here, this is now not possible to test for a while, but I really suspect that the reCAPTCHA servers get hit with work login spikes since those times slots match work start times for the Eastern and Central US time zones. Has anyone else noticed this (and for other possible big hit time slots...Europe, Japan, etc.)?

The interesting aspect of this was the timing of these events. The first error happened around 9am EST and the second around 10am EST. With the holidays here, this is now not possible to test for a while, but I really suspect that the reCAPTCHA servers get hit with work login spikes since those times slots match work start times for the Eastern and Central US time zones. Has anyone else noticed this (and for other possible big hit time slots...Europe, Japan, etc.)?

Interesting hypothesis! And the best thing is, this can be tested. We can start with your observations and others around those times, but I will also see if I can easily add a button or link to register an "error" in the reCAPTCHA presentation and add that to our activity logging.

Too bad we can't use this as a kind of turk:

http://www.freerice.com/index.php


A good cause anyway...

Too bad we can't use this as a kind of turk:
http://www.freerice.com/index.php
A good cause anyway...