Disclaimer
==========

**psiTurk** is free, open source software provided to scientists
to aid in research.  Because it helps you run paid experiments online
using Amazon Mechanical Turk errors in the software, or in your
use of the software, can lead to **loss of money**.  This is the very
nature of online research (errors may mean someone will actually
do your task and you need to pay them as a result).

Our belief is that these types of errors can be best limited
by having open, peer-reviewable software and sharing bug reports
between labs and research groups.  In other words, even if you
wrote this software yourself it is possible that some bug could
cost you money when getting started.

.. danger::

	**We take no responsibility for your use of the software**. We make
	no claims that it is bug-free and any errors are not our
	responsibility.  This is a community-run, community-supported
	system and not a company selling a product.  We use
	the software in our lab and, when used correctly, has never caused
	us to lose money on Mechanical Turk due to mistakes.  However, it is
	**always possible to mis-use the software in a costly way.**

In addition, while we strive to keep the psiturk.org Secure Ad Server running,
crashes in that system could, in the short-term, affect your ability to
collect data.  Again, using the system you must understand what the
risks are.  The good news is that because the system is open source
if there is a problem everyone can read the code themselves and make
suggestions on how to fix things.

Some suggestion to avoid costly mistakes from happening are

1. Test your code a lot in the sandbox to make sure every stage is working
and you understand what **psiTurk** is doing.

2. Run small batches at a time to verify everything is working

3. Keep your Amazon payments account balance reasonably low at any point
in time.  It is impossible to spend more money than is in your account
at any point in time.

4. Exit the **psiTurk** server when you are not using it to collect data
(i.e., do not leave **psiTurk** server running indefinitely).  This ensures
that no one will be able to actually perform your task and then claim
they are owed payment.  This also limits the ability of bots and other
scammers to reverse engineer your task.

5. When testing "live", explain in the text of your Ad that this is a test and
you are looking for feedback.  Workers get fustrated when you put bad
or broken experiments online, but are often very helpful if you explain
that you are hoping to get feedback on an unfinished project.