I run a company called CrowdFlower that provides quality control on top of Mechanical Turk and other pools of workers from traditional outsourcing companies to offerwalls (where people earn in game credits for doing our tasks).
I think this article doesn't reflect everyone's experience with Mechanical Turk. We get lots of high quality work out of Mechanical Turk and lots of other companies do as well. It does take a fair amount of work to get the quality right - that's how we got started as a business and that's why many people still come to us.
As an aside, if the author of the article is reading this thread and wants data, we would be happy to talk about it.
I think this article doesn't reflect everyone's experience with Mechanical Turk. We get lots of high quality work out of Mechanical Turk and lots of other companies do as well. It does take a fair amount of work to get the quality right - that's how we got started as a business and that's why many people still come to us.
As an aside, if the author of the article is reading this thread and wants data, we would be happy to talk about it.