Turkopticon — a Firefox 3.0 extension — adds functionality to Amazon Mechanical Turk as you browse for HITs and review status of work you’ve done. As you browse HITs, Turkopticon places a button next to each requester and highlights requesters for whom there are reviews from other workers. Bad reviews let you avoid shady employers and good reviews help you find fair ones. You can view reports made against requesters with a quick click. As you review HITs you’ve completed, are there HITs you weren’t fairly paid for? Turkopticon adds a button that lets you review requesters from your “Status Detail” page.

Mechanical Turk is a site where requesters can put up tasks with a set price — usually pennies to a dollar — and find workers who will do those tasks. Some do AMT for fun and many enjoy it as work. However, many use it to make ends meet when they have few other choices.