How can we know if we're performing the task well?

I'd not like to be doing hundreds of images and missing many that should be marked or marking many that aren't useful!

Posted December 14, 2014 11:08 PM

by Whoandwhatitis moderator in response to ahooper1's comment.

The FAQ and tutorial are currently the best resources for this project. I understand that the tutorial will be expanded and the FAQ is being updated frequently.

The inability to clearly see your individual impact and verify your classifications is a behavior that I see across the Zooniverse. From what I've read, there seems to be some great reasons for the abstraction of this information from the user interface. The reasons and level of abstraction will of course vary between projects, but I think the overall goal is to obtain statistically significant amounts of classifications without providing sources that can bias observations. This I think is the embodiment of citizen science.

The best overview I can find to support this is on the Zooniverse > About Us > Researchers menu item: https://www.zooniverse.org/researchers

Here are some resources that I've "followed" in this project. These may help a bit:

Posted December 15, 2014 2:04 AM

by DZM admin

Hi @ahooper, welcome to the project! Yes, the links that @Whoandwhatitis provided are extremely useful; please read through them.

In addition, I would advise that you not worry too much about how well you're doing. Citizen science supports educated guessing! Many people see each object, and we combine and reduce their classifications to produce what tends to be the same answer a trained scientist would give. And if the classifications are all over the place, that tells us it's a tough one that a scientist should look at... so no matter what, you're helping. 😃

Thanks for being a part of the project!

Posted December 15, 2014 2:50 PM

by jokergirl moderator in response to Whoandwhatitis's comment.

I like this list. I would like to add those links to my FAQ post, with your permission.

Posted December 16, 2014 12:41 PM

by DZM admin

Please do! I'm still trying to work on getting that FAQ button on the classification interface.

Posted December 16, 2014 4:21 PM

by Mark_..._a_physicist_of_sorts

I appreciate this is how Citizen Science works (and statistically you're doubtless bang on) but it is human to want feedback and it would be SO nice (even if it was just on the sim data) to get a 'tick' if we're correct!

Posted December 16, 2014 7:47 PM

by DZM admin

I think that would have had to have been built in at the beginning of the project, unfortunately.

It's definitely a good thing to keep in mind as we go forward!!

Posted December 16, 2014 11:02 PM

by Whoandwhatitis moderator in response to jokergirl's comment.

Absolutely, @jokergirl. You're doing a fantastic job with the FAQ! I especially like that there's an advanced section that provides some handy tips, but isn't really "required reading" in order to be involved in the project.

Posted December 17, 2014 3:48 AM

by DZM admin

I absolutely agree. The FAQ is brilliant and I think will be a mandatory implementation on all new projects going forward!

Posted December 18, 2014 2:28 PM