Some detailed Speculation on Approvals

I just wanted to draw attention to drekmonger's comment on how the HIT's are approved or rejected which has some very nice speculation and a few bits on the API

"drekmonger said...

I've already scanned through the API. The mechanism for approval is entirely up to the requester...

There's a call to retrieve a completed HIT, reject a completed HIT, and approve a completed HIT. Whether or not to approve a HIT is logic that is coded by the requester.

From my observations, the critia for approval and disapproval of the A9 HITs is evolving. As of late Saturday, early Sunday, the HITs seem to approve if X (possible 3 or 4) people click the same answer to a single HIT. Otherwise, the HIT is reguritated for a tie-breaker.

The system doesn't seem to keep track of who's done what HIT--at least it doesn't seem as such based on my quick read of the API. And HITs can be set to done multiple times.

So, it's possible that a single person (or bot) to receive the same HIT 3 or 4 times. If you answer it the same way each time, then you'll get that many HITs accepted.

I've noticed HITs I've completed end up in what I believe are the "tie-breaker" requests. These are the HIT groups for a city that contain just a few dozen HITs. When I complete such a HIT idetically to a prior HIT, I've noticed the number of HITs accepted in my dashboard increment by 2.

The trick would then be to guess how other people would answer the HIT, rather than try to answer the HIT itself. Unfortunately, I think there's a lot of people zipping through the HITs and not paying close attention--so even if a single person correctly identifies a business, he could be outvoted by 3 zombies clicking "none of the above"