Steps:
- duplicate existing study with custom blocklisst
- update block list with additional ids
- The number in the confirmation dialogue is not updated, see the numbers screenshot:
Which one is correct? Did my changes work?
Honestly, this mess could simply be avoided if
- I could block participants from studies that are not marked as completed.
- I could add less than 10 participants to an existing study.
Why aren’t these feature available?
Hi Stefano
I am willing to bet that the blocklist will be implemented, with additional ids.
It is just that the matching participants number is not being updated. Perhaps it ignores custom blocklislts. This is strange, because it reflects allowlists. I made a study with only my own participant Prolific ID in an allowlist and it says that there are less than 25 participants.
Could it be that the participants you added
- have not been active in the past 90 days?
- have been expelled from the system?
- have been rejected by you and therefore automatically added to a blacklist PERHAPS (I am not aware of this feature but I would not be surprised if it existed)
But, i am sorry I don’t know why the number of eligible participants does not change. Do you know @Josh?
Tim
Thanks for the answer. The participants are from a study I just ran yesterday, so none of those hypotheses could be true. I tend to believe that the blocklist was applied because the number in the interface changed, but not the number in the popup msg at the end.
Stefano
What is the “mess” that you refer to? It seems to me that your blacklist IS going to be implemented. The only mess I am therefore aware of is that the number of matching participants shown on the study set up dialogue is not being changed, which does not seem to me to be all that messy.
- I could block participants from studies that are not marked as completed.
I am not entirely sure why Prolific is so tight about not changing studies that are not complete. As you can see it says only the number of submissions (places) can be changed. If fact, I recently found out, the payment can also be changed (according to a recent forum poster). But screeners can’t be changed on active studies. Intuitively, I feel that allowing this would result in problems.
- I could add less than 10 participants to an existing study.
Can’t we? I thought we were free to increase the places by 1 participant if we like. Has the minimum been made 10?
Tim
Stefano
I tend to believe that the blocklist was applied because the number in the interface changed, but not the number in the popup msg at the end.
Thank you. Then I think it is a bug in the GUI. Will you report it or shall I?
Tim
It could be a bug of the interface or of the backend. We don’t know for sure. That’s a mess.
Btw, I thought that writing here is making the bug report. What else is needed?
The minimum increase is 10 (at least in my settings). I don’t understand why.
Oh, now I understood it. The number in “increase places” panel is not how many more places I want, it is the total (including those already in there). I think from a UI perspective it is a bit strange, but maybe it’s just me.
Stefano
Yes!
I remember now. That way of calculating increased places has caught people out in the past. They need to add a TOTAL in there sonewhere imho. I am glad the riddle is solved.
Tim
Re bug reports
Josh and others from from Prolific read this forum but here is a section of this forum especially for bug reports at the link below.
Others can vote on the suggestion so the most poular float to the top too.
Tim