The "X" Rejection and Feedback on HITs

Amazon is pretty clear on how to reject workers using both the GUI and the API. When rejecting work in the GUI, Amazon forces requesters to put a reason for the rejection. When rejecting offline using downloaded .csv files, requesters do not have to input a reason for the rejection. Amazon docs state to use an "X" to approve workers in the column for approval and then upload the .csv file to approve all. They even provide a photo to guide requesters on how to do this.

In the reject column, we even can see that a reason is given for the rejection. Some requesters just use an "X" to reject in the same way they approve. This is really a bad idea. These are some posts from today from a requester review site Turkopticon.

We all try our best to avoid rejecting workers unless it is absolutely necessary. It can lower a workers approval percentage which can have an impact on their ability to perform future work. If you have to reject a worker, a detailed explanation for the rejection will help the worker improve in the future and also help protect your reputation on requester review sites.

If you want to communicate with a worker, putting a comment in the approval column will probably never be seen. This is a screenshot of the worker dashboard.

With over 24K submitted HITs, it is highly unlikely that the worker would ever see any message left in the approval column. But the one rejection, the worker will definitely take a look at that. 

Here is the message left with the one rejection on Jan. 19th. 

The feedback column is shown on both rejected and approved HITs, but the worker is unlikely to ever see feedback on approvals. This feedback on the rejection was unclear and did not help in improving work quality. I am not advocating rejecting workers in order to communicate with them, because you can do that through the API and also through the bonus feature in the GUI.

If you do have to reject, give a detailed reason for the rejection because neither worker nor requester will benefit from an "X".