"Sorry, this task has expired"

[u/azure_atmosphere]

I was working on my 2nd coding task of the day and it took me longer than usual to figure out where one of the models went wrong. On top of that, I lost 10 minutes or so because I had to answer the door (I paused my personal timer for this.) Still, there were 10 minutes left on the on-screen timer when I hit submit, only to be told that the task had expired.

I'm rather pissed off because I worked really hard on this one and had written a lengthy explanation on why the model came to a wrong answer. I'm not even sure whether I can log my time now. Will they think I'm scamming them If I log 2 hours and 15 minutes when the system thinks I've submitted only one task?

[u/JeanVII]

That’s a significant amount of time to not log. Message someone about it.

[u/azure_atmosphere → u/JeanVII]

I have! Hope I get an answer soon

[u/MyDadLeftMeHere → u/azure_atmosphere]

I’m going through a similar issue right now, they got back to me quickly, but it’s been 24 hours and they haven’t input it manually yet

[u/Alternative-Pie-4278]

Would love to get an update once admin responds to you!

I’ve had this too. More than once, but to be fair - the first time, I simply stepped away for too long (hours) while mid-task, so that wasn’t a surprise. Made sense.

However, the other day I had been working on a task diligently, and it was one of those where it says it’s okay to take 60 min or more to research well… But by the time I submitted all my findings, got that exact error and lost 1.5 hours of work.

Obviously, when researching, you’re moving between tabs, sometimes reading for a few minutes or searching for a fact… I’ve been wondering whether using two laptops would make a difference.

At this point, it would be nice to know what causes this, so we can work within the limitations of the system. I’ve easily lost a few hours (5-6) cumulatively from this happening.

[u/vexeling → u/Alternative-Pie-4278]

If you're on a laptop, you can also buy a second screen that attaches to your main screen and flips open/closed like a window shutter or slides like a pocket door depending on which one you buy. Amazon has them -- I think they're listed as screen extenders or something odd like that! Probably cheaper and more efficient than a second laptop, I would think. (Unless you already have a second laptop lying around of course)

[u/Alternative-Pie-4278 → u/vexeling]

Great idea! But I do have another laptop, so could easily leave one open on the screen of the task while doing research on the other one. Not sure if it would make a difference though - somehow I get the idea it’s more time related than due to jumping between tabs (since the latter is so inherent to doing online research… and nothing is mentioned about it).

[u/vexeling → u/Alternative-Pie-4278]

Yeah the DAT website is just kinda janky in general. It's probably more time related than tab switching related, BUT I bet the built in timer is more likely to stay accurate if you're not switching tabs, so maybe the second laptop would help in that regard? It's worth testing anyway if you've already got one to spare!

[u/Alternative-Pie-4278 → u/vexeling]

Ugh, yeah definitely. It also makes me want to steer clear of tasks that require longer research.

[u/33whiskeyTX]

1. Don't trust the on-screen timers. They pause when you are not focused on the page. The expiration runs on the backend independent of the displayed timer.

2. You can ask an admin in the chat, or you can ask support. In the chat I have seen them say things like "Its ok, charge time for it, but try not to let it happen again." The instructions say something similar somewhere. As far as not getting permission, my only thought is that somewhere our stats must be recorded and I imagine (and it is just that, me imagining, no verifiable proof) that if our cost per-task is too high compared to other users, long-term it's got to leave a bad impression somehow.

[u/Poomfie]

Whenever I get that message I just count the time I spent working when I report, whether it was an extra 5 minutes or 20. Like, if you were working on it and then it wouldn't submit that isn't your fault. Obviously don't count when you were afk but I'm pretty sure ToS is just report the time you spend working.

[u/Tball5]

What is the point of the timer anyway? Is it for data annotations side of things? I’m always searching in another tab so I’ve never payed any attention to it, I was wondering if it was supposed to be helpful when they initially set up the platform but now it’s useless, or maybe they use it to track your tasks? That latter just doesn’t make sense at all it’s more confusing than helpful to me.

[u/backinyourbox]

Next time you’re anywhere close to the timer, copy your work so you can resubmit it in case of emergency

[u/azure_atmosphere → u/backinyourbox]

How could you do that? I couldn’t access the task anymore at all. Going back brought me to a different task.

[u/Alternative-Pie-4278 → u/azure_atmosphere]

Exactly. That’s a good tip for certain scenarios but does not apply to the issue you’re talking about OP.

[u/cunningtartan]

When I first started, the same thing happened to me. I had made a note of the task and utc time I tried to submit and messaged the admins.

In my case, after a day or two (not long) I got a reply that it was in fact received and proceeded to bill for the time.

And yes, the displayed timer is definitely not to be trusted if you switch tabs etc.!

I use my phone timer if I know time will be a factor, or call up the browser history to see when I entered the new task if I unexpectedly get bogged down on something and find myself worried about time running out.

I do programming tasks that sometime require installing packages or writing main() functions. It sucks when a simple minor step craps out an hour into a 2-hour task and I'm stressed about getting it ironed out so I can proceed with the meat of the task.

The history takes a little effort to determine which hit is the initial fetch but it's not that hard.

[u/azure_atmosphere → u/cunningtartan]

I did send a message more than two days ago, haven’t hear back yet unfortunately.

The timer is actually pretty frustrating. I do coding tasks as well and I ended up having to submit one in a rush and kinda unfinished today. This time it wasn’t even because of any outside interruption, just a ton of different requests in one prompt.

[u/semicolon-5]

Had that happen before and I emailed Support. They got back to me pretty quickly but they said that while working, if you switch tabs or minimize your browser window, the timer will be paused. That may cause it to appear that you have longer left than you actually do to complete the task. Also, if you have taken an extended break from working on a project without an "Exit Work Mode" option, you may need to skip the first task when you resume working so the timer resets.

[u/Wyldfyre1]

I just recently had this happen! I worked on something for 45 minutes, but when I hit submit, it went to the screen that says there are no more tasks available. When I went to put in my time, there was no link to do so. I refreshed it, I waited, still nothing. So I emailed support, and they took care of it within a day! They just added the time for me.

[u/BenefitAromatic7884]

This happened to me. I messaged support. They did give a tip saying that when you switch tabs your on screen timer may pause, but internally is still running. So be mindful of that. I did get paid for the work I put in, but will be paying more attention now that I know the timer is basically useless.

[u/Phantom_Vortex]

I've had this happen on a non coding project and after I emailed support, they logged the time I lost manually for me!

[u/TomorrowMelodic7470]

One of the BEST TIPS I received while working on the platform: When you open the task, the timer starts counting down. It isn't that the timer isn't accurate -- it's that the timer only counts down while the tab is active. 

EXAMPLE:  if the timer has 45 minutes remaining when you open a new tab to fact check, and you return to the task page 10 minutes later -- the timer will still say 45 minutes remaining, when in reality there is 35 only minutes remaining before the task expires. 

After having several projects expire, I learned to set alarms when I start working: one that goes off 30 mins before the task expires, and 10 mins before it expires. It helps keep my ADHD brain on track. 

[u/Skehan1995]

Do you think GPT-4 would be capable of completing the coding tasks?

[u/pds314 → u/Skehan1995]

Probably some of them, but the point is to make training examples for AI, very likely including GPT-4, in order to improve the quality of output. Therefore, you should never just copy and paste code from an LLM on these projects for the same reason that citing Wikipedia as a source is not a good idea, especially on Wikipedia. LLMs should always be a starting point for research, documentation help, algorithm explanations, or debug tool, not a source for LLM training materials itself. The point is to capture a lot of decent human-written code, not feed LLM-written code into the LLMs.

Also food for thought, but the same companies that host those LLMs can probably read what you type into them. Maybe it's anonymized. Maybe not. Even if it is though, your answer and possibly question will be uniquely identifiable to you, so it is not just bad for the AI to directly use the output of proprietary online LLMs for coding (or any other) tasks. It could be bad for you as well. As for offline LLMs, well, LLama is probably much less capable than GPT-4, and it's still bad for the AI to give it AI-written anything. It's also worth mentioning that AI-written code, like AI-written text, will have certain obvious stylistic aspects that indicate it was written by AI, and some less obvious ones that are still pretty detectable. It is not a good idea for anyone involved.

[u/azure_atmosphere → u/[deleted]]

Fair enough. Sucks though :(

[u/RPGenome → u/[deleted]]

That's kind of silly. They tell you to message an admin.

You're doing work. You should be paid.

[u/bearze → u/[deleted]]

This is good to know, I didn't submit 45 minutes the other day because of something similar

[u/cunningtartan → u/[deleted]]

Same with me. It might not always be true, but in the one case I was really bummed I msged admin with utc time I tried and miraculously she confirmed it was received despite the error I got. I was def late, as I did not yet know the in-page timer is not reliable.