OPW – Jan 4 – Courtland Brooks did a preliminary study of Amazon's Mechanical Turk
service recently. We wondered if it was appropriate to use this
service for profile approvals. Probably not. However, you can see the
study at the Courtland Brooks blog, here.
We look at this a year or two ago – and outsourcing profile approval generally.
The challenge is responsibility for scammer elimination – if you outsource this, you’re outsourcing responsibility for letting scammers on your site. As you get rid of the stupid scammers, you’ll attract the smarter ones and the only way to eliminate these is to carry out checks such as :
– Email verification
– Email duplicate checking
– IP checking
– User behaviour
– Messaging behaviour
– Photo recognition technology
There’s a few more tricks in there as well.
The point is to block scammers properly you need to open up your systems considerably to a point where data protection issues come into play – as well as sensible commercial practise.
The quality of a dating site’s database DIRECTLY affects conversion and retention – profile moderation is key to that and anyone who tries cutting corners using an outsourced solution will see their conversion and retention rates drop.
Ross
We look at this a year or two ago – and outsourcing profile approval generally.
The challenge is responsibility for scammer elimination – if you outsource this, you’re outsourcing responsibility for letting scammers on your site. As you get rid of the stupid scammers, you’ll attract the smarter ones and the only way to eliminate these is to carry out checks such as :
– Email verification
– Email duplicate checking
– IP checking
– User behaviour
– Messaging behaviour
– Photo recognition technology
There’s a few more tricks in there as well.
The point is to block scammers properly you need to open up your systems considerably to a point where data protection issues come into play – as well as sensible commercial practise.
The quality of a dating site’s database DIRECTLY affects conversion and retention – profile moderation is key to that and anyone who tries cutting corners using an outsourced solution will see their conversion and retention rates drop.
Ross
That was brochureware, where is the “study?”
Ross, disagree strongly, the beauty of services like Crowdflower is that they have built-in failsafes to deal with bad calls. If you talked with them like I have several times you would see that they deal with your concerns.
Outsourcing can be powerful rejuvination of resources, leaving people free to do more important things, like testing landing pages and affiliate creative.
Having people look at photos is stupid and will go away in a few years. You can’t imagine how many interesting stats and trends we’re seeing with photo verification and evaluation services, fascinating stuff.
There are no issues with data protection, we’re talking about profile photos which are (should be) covered with the most basic TOS.
That was brochureware, where is the “study?”
Ross, disagree strongly, the beauty of services like Crowdflower is that they have built-in failsafes to deal with bad calls. If you talked with them like I have several times you would see that they deal with your concerns.
Outsourcing can be powerful rejuvination of resources, leaving people free to do more important things, like testing landing pages and affiliate creative.
Having people look at photos is stupid and will go away in a few years. You can’t imagine how many interesting stats and trends we’re seeing with photo verification and evaluation services, fascinating stuff.
There are no issues with data protection, we’re talking about profile photos which are (should be) covered with the most basic TOS.
That was brochureware, where is the “study?”
http://themastercleanse.org/the-lemonade-diet > rel=”dofollow” rel=”nofollow”>lemonade Diet
Ross, disagree strongly, the beauty of services like Crowdflower is that they have built-in failsafes to deal with bad calls. If you talked with them like I have several times you would see that they deal with your concerns.
Outsourcing can be powerful rejuvenation of resources, leaving people free to do more important things, like testing landing pages and affiliate creative.
Having people look at photos is stupid and will go away in a few years. You can’t imagine how many interesting stats and trends we’re seeing with photo verification and evaluation services, fascinating stuff.
There are no issues with data protection, we’re talking about profile photos which are (should be) covered with the most basic TOS.
————————————————
Russ dotson
That was brochureware, where is the “study?”
http://themastercleanse.org/the-lemonade-diet > rel=”dofollow” rel=”nofollow”>lemonade Diet
Ross, disagree strongly, the beauty of services like Crowdflower is that they have built-in failsafes to deal with bad calls. If you talked with them like I have several times you would see that they deal with your concerns.
Outsourcing can be powerful rejuvenation of resources, leaving people free to do more important things, like testing landing pages and affiliate creative.
Having people look at photos is stupid and will go away in a few years. You can’t imagine how many interesting stats and trends we’re seeing with photo verification and evaluation services, fascinating stuff.
There are no issues with data protection, we’re talking about profile photos which are (should be) covered with the most basic TOS.
————————————————
Russ dotson
Well – that spam post above shows that sometimes even with manual moderation mistakes slip through!! 🙂
David, I think Crowdflower is an excellent idea – when we talk about moderation, we’re talking about photos, videos, profile information AND first messages. Photo approval isn’t simply yes/no – the kind of photo used can give you an indication whether someone is a scammer or not, as can the sort of first messages they send, etc.
To spot this requires fairly in-depth training – not the kind of thing I’m yet comfortable outsourcing.
If it were pure photo moderation like most sites operate (simple Yes/No) then I’m sure crowdsourcing is fine – I certainly like the idea of it for the right tasks. It depends how the company views this kind of thing – whether the quality of profiles and customer service is a core part of the business or not.
Well – that spam post above shows that sometimes even with manual moderation mistakes slip through!! 🙂
David, I think Crowdflower is an excellent idea – when we talk about moderation, we’re talking about photos, videos, profile information AND first messages. Photo approval isn’t simply yes/no – the kind of photo used can give you an indication whether someone is a scammer or not, as can the sort of first messages they send, etc.
To spot this requires fairly in-depth training – not the kind of thing I’m yet comfortable outsourcing.
If it were pure photo moderation like most sites operate (simple Yes/No) then I’m sure crowdsourcing is fine – I certainly like the idea of it for the right tasks. It depends how the company views this kind of thing – whether the quality of profiles and customer service is a core part of the business or not.