Microworkers.com R Client

microworkers provides access to the Microworkers crowdsourcing platform.

Installation

microworkers is available on GitHub and can (soon) be installed from within R from your favorite CRAN mirror:

install.packages("microworkers")
library("Rmonkey")

And the latest development version, available here, can be installed directly using devtools:

if(!require("devtools")) {
    install.packages("devtools")
    library("devtools")
}
install_github("leeper/microworkers")
library("microworkers")

Setup

To use microworkers, the user must have a Microworkers account, which automatically supplies an API access key. To use the API, however, you must contact [email protected] to gain API access.

Once everything is registered, your API key can be loaded into R using options:

options(microworkers_key = 'YourAPIKey')

To confirm that your key has been loaded correctly, you can use the account_info() function to retrieve basic details of your user account, including your username, the email address attached to your account, and the balance available to pay workers.

Code Examples

Below are some code examples showing how to use the package.

Create a Campaign

There are two types of campaigns available on Microworkers:

1. Basic campaigns, which are available to all workers (potentially with geographical restrictions)
2. HireGroup campaigns, which are available only to a specific system or user-defined worker group

# BASIC CAMPAIGN
cmp <- basic_campaign()

# HIREGROUP CAMPAIGN
cmp <- hiregroup_campaign()

Modify a Campaign

Once a campaign is started, it is possible to regulate the availability of the campaign to workers:

# pause a campaign
pause_campaign(cmp)

# resume a campaign
pause_campaign(cmp)

# stop a campaign
pause_campaign(cmp)

To extend a campaign with additional task "positions", use add_positions:

# add twenty positions
add_positions(cmp, 20)

The set_speed function can be used to modify the "speed" of the campaign (must be an integer between 1 and 1000):

# set fastest speed
set_speed(cmp, 1000)

If a worker's performance is unacceptable or it is otherwise necessary to prevent a worker from participating in a campaign, it is possible to enact a campaign-specific block using the worker's ID:

block_worker(cmp, "1712bas23")

Retrieve Tasks and Results

list_campaigns("basic") and list_campaigns("hiregroup") return lists of campaigns.

To monitor the status of a particular campaign, use get_campaign_status, which will indicate whether a campaign has finished. To retrieve a more detailed response use get_campaign, which returns all details of a campaign as specified in basic_campaign or hiregroup_campaign.

The get_results function will return a data.frame of results from a campaign.

Approve or Reject Tasks

To assess individual tasks (rather than the reuslts of a campaign as a whole), there are several functions available:

# list tasks from a campaign and their approval status
tasks <- list_tasks(cmp)

# list tasks from a campaign for a specific worker
list_worker_tasks(cmp, worker = "1712bas23")

# retrieve a specific task
get_task(tasks[1])

# retrieve the "proof" file for a task
get_proof_file(tasks[1])

If a task is satisfactory, it can be approved or rejected:

# approve
approve_task(cmp, tasks[1], comment = "Well done!")

# reject
reject_task(cmp, tasks[1], comment = "Sorry but this is inadequate")

An alternative to manually approving or rejecting work involves VCODE verification, whereby a task is automatically approved or rejected based on whether a worker supplied a valid code (as generated by your server). This has to be configured when the campaign is created.