Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst working in the lab of Dr. Stuart Shulman (http://people.umass.edu/stu/) are recruiting coders for a crowd sourcing experiment that will begin Friday September 23, 2011 and run though 5:00 PM EST Monday September 26, 2011.

Participants will be asked to "code" or rate at least 750 tweets using a simple scheme designed to find the funniest Tweet in a large sample collected after the death of Osama bin Laden. We estimate the task will take no more than 2.5 hours. Our team will review a sample of each persons' coding to ensure there is basic compliance with the coding manual. After the task is completed and validated, you will receive a $25 Amazon.Com gift card.

If you sign up and are selected, you will receive further instructions within 8 hours. The email that you enter will be the email address that your $25 Amazon code will be sent to.

ALL 750 ITEMS OF CODING MUST BE COMPLETED BY 5PM MONDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 2011.

The top five funniest Tweets--to be selected by an expert panel of comedic software engineers--will be presented to a large conference plenary session (AoIR 2011) where participants will vote for a winner using Twitter.The coder who identifies the funniest Tweet will receive a $100 gift card in addition to the $25 reward for doing the coding. Participants will need to sign up for a free DiscoverText (http://DiscoverText.com) account to be able to do the coding. The five coders who uncover the finalist "funniest Tweets" will further receive a complimentary Professional account subscription to DiscoverText for 6 months worth $150.00.

We anticipate more applicants than we can support. Please take a minute to explain why you would be a good coder for this task.