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FAQ
FAQS
- Why is there no "I don't know" button? What should I do when I have no idea what's in the photo?
- What should I do if I get an "Already Seen" banner?
- Why do some photos appear in groups of two or more and others appear by themselves?
- Why are there photos of humans included in the project?
- Why are there so many dogs?
- Should bikes be classified as "human" or "vehicle"?
Why is there no "I don't know" button? What should I do when I have no idea what's in the photo?
Other Zooniverse projects, such as Snapshot Serengeti, have great information about this - we are paraphrasing from them. We recognize that many photos will be difficult or impossible to classify due to poor lighting, blur, etc.
It is better to have some information about what's in the photo than nothing. We show each image to many people, so we get closer to the right answer by looking at everyone's identifications. Maybe you can see that it's a large animal, and you guess "Moose", while the next person guesses "Elk". At least we have an idea that it's probably a large ungulate. On the other hand, if 5 people classify a photo and the classifications are "person", "deer", "porcupine", "nothing here" and "bird", then we can conclude that it's likely impossible to tell what's in the photo since the identifications vary so wildly.
What should I do if I get an "Already Seen" banner?
This means that the project is getting low on new photos to classify. We need 10 volunteers to classify an image before it is retired, so photos will still be in the system until they get classified 10 times. As we approach the end of the pool of photos, volunteers who have done a lot of classifications are likely to start seeing the banner since the images are served up randomly.
If you see the banner, try refreshing the page to get a new photo. If all you see are photos with the "Already Seen" banner, you might have completed all the photos currently on the site and may have to wait until the project team uploads a new batch.
Why do some photos appear in groups of two or more while others appear by themselves?
Our cameras are programmed to take 2-3 photos each time they are triggered. We recognize that viewing photos in sets makes it easier to identify animals, so we try to keep them together whenever possible. However, we pre-process our photos with Microsoft's AI for Earth Camera Trap Tools to remove photos that are blank or that have people in them. Sometimes, this results in sets of photos being broken up if one photo is tagged as 'animal' and the rest are tagged as 'blank' or 'human'. We are confident that breaking up sets of images is a better result than including tens or hundreds of thousands of photos with no animals in them!
Why are there some photos of humans?
Since our project deals with the interactions of humans and wildlife, we necessarily get photos of humans on our trail cameras. We recognize that there are privacy concerns associated with having photos of people appear on Zooniverse, so we do all we can to minimize the number that appear on this page. First, we pre-process our images through an artificial intelligence (AI) processor, which tags images as animal, human, or vehicle. We only upload those tagged as animal to our Zooniverse project. However, because the AI is not perfect, we still get some photos of humans on the project page. For instance, a photo of a person with a dog would most likely be classified as animal AND human, and would therefore go in the group of photos to upload. As soon as a photo is identified by a volunteer as containing a human, it is removed from the Zooniverse project. Do not share any photos of people that you encounter or post them to the Talk page.
Why are there so many dogs?
We get lots of photos of people and dogs because our cameras are in an area used for recreation. As described above, we do our best to minimize the number of photos of people that end up on Zooniverse by pre-processing with an artificial intelligence processor, which separates photos into animal, human, or vehicle. That means that dogs that are far enough away from their people will be tagged as 'animal' and uploaded to Zooniverse for classification. In much of our study area, dogs are not required to be leashed. More information on the dog policies in our study area is available here
Should bikes be classified as "human" or "vehicle"?
Please classify people on bikes, or pictures with just a bit of a bike tire, as "human" and use the "vehicle" tag for motorized vehicles like maintenance trucks, off-highway vehicles, etc.