My experience with MTurk suggests that Amazon has mostly abandoned the product. Amazon still uses it for product classification, but does not participate in the community forums (even on the official AWS MTurk developer forum). No new features have appeared in several years, and enhancement requests have fallen on deaf ears.
That said, MTurk still works. The API still does what its documentation claims. People still perform tasks. Payment still works.
Nathan, thank you for the kind words -- but I really can't take any credit. Just know we are actively listening and we take all the feedback, even the controversial bits, very seriously.
The obvious question: do you have a computer program set to alert you if "natala" appears on a tech site in a mturk context, or a mechanical turk task set with a 10 cent payment to email you whenever you're mentioned?
;-) No. I found out the old fashioned way -- a friend saw the post and sent it to me. He reads YCombinator news much more frequently than me! It does help to have a unique name...
But what have they done lately? Do you seriously consider opening a blog and a twitter account to be "sort of active"? The blog contains a single fluffy marketing piece.
My experience with MTurk suggests that Amazon has mostly abandoned the product. Amazon still uses it for product classification, but does not participate in the community forums (even on the official AWS MTurk developer forum). No new features have appeared in several years, and enhancement requests have fallen on deaf ears.
That said, MTurk still works. The API still does what its documentation claims. People still perform tasks. Payment still works.