Penguin Watch FAQs

last updated 26/10/2018

1. General Zooniverse Questions

Q. What is "citizen science"?

A. Citizen science is a general term covering many different forms of including, and engaging, members of the general public in research projects. In the case of Zooniverse, it involves people volunteering online, helping researchers process their large datasets via visual pattern recognition. For example, transcribing weather data from handwritten 19th Century ship logbooks, or counting penguins in pictures from Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.

Q. What is a "subject"?

A. On Zooniverse projects, a subject is the individual piece of data, most commonly a picture. In this project, our subjects are the pages of U.S. Navy logbooks.

Q. What is a "classification"?

A. On Zooniverse projects, when you complete the set of tasks on one subject and click 'Done', you have submitted a classification. You are then given the next subject to classify.

Q. What if I make a mistake?

A. Don't panic! We ask multiple people to classify each subject, and then we take the consensus answer. Just try your best to be as accurate as possible, but don't worry if you make a mistake.

Q. What is the benefit of registering for a Zooniverse account?

A. You do not need to create an account to take part in Zooniverse projects. You can take part anonymously and your answers will still be saved and used in the research. However, if you do register an account you can track how many classifications you make on the projects, take part in the Talk discussion boards, and receive email announcements regarding results, updates, and new projects.

2. Obscured / Blurred / Dark images

Studying night time/winter behaviour in penguins has never been done before because of the logistical difficulties of observing penguins in winter/at night. Sometimes the camera lenses get covered by snow/water/ice due to bad weather conditions in Antarctica. Please, try your best when you get such an image. Thank you!

Fully obscured / Too dark

• If possible, mark as many penguins as you can.
• When you are not able to mark any individual animals (even when you think they’re present), check the box saying ‘This image is too dark or blurry.’ just below the marking options in the classification task.

Partially obscured / Bad lighting

• Mark as many penguins as you can and then answer with 'There were too many penguins to count'.

3. Objects in image margins

Marking objects

• What objects to mark?

Any objects (penguins, ships, …) which are partly/mostly behind the image margin.
Please, also mark visible reflections of vessels being behind the image margin (remember that these should be marked as ‘Other’).

• What objects NOT to mark?

Don’t mark any shadows. Your marks also help develop a recognition tool using machine learning (computers) so we need to mark only animals that are visible.
Don’t mark penguins or other animals swimming in open water.

• Where to place marks in partly visible animals?

Place the mark in the center of the visible part (beak, head, foot, …) as visible in the image above (head marked at the bottom of the image).


3. Close versus distant objects and zoom options

Close versus distant penguin colonies

In the case of penguin colonies, find below the four most common scenarios related to their distance to the camera with instructions on how to mark them. Note that these instructions only apply to penguins and other objects should be marked whenever possible (see 5. Other objects, unlisted animals).

• Scenario 1: The penguin colony is present in the foreground. If so, mark all of the penguins or, if there are too many, mark as many as possible and then click ‘Next’ and select 'There were too many to count’.
  

• Scenario 2: Same as scenario 1, but there are also tiny penguins in the background. If so, mark as many penguins as possible in the foreground and ignore the small ones in background. Then click ‘Next’ and select 'There were too many to count’.
  

• Scenario 3: Penguins are only present in the background. If so, mark a few, click ‘Next’ and select ‘There were too many to count’ again.
  

• Scenario 4: No penguins. If so, click ‘Next’ and select ‘Yes’ (you have marked all the animals).
  

If the penguins on the far side of the colony are too small for you to mark, please see how to use the ‘Zoom-in’ tool in the Zoom Options section below.

You can also 'Hide previous marks' by checking the box at the bottom of the Task window (below the ‘Need some help with this task?' question). This is specially helpful when the penguins are obscured by the marks while standing close to each other. Make sure you check that no penguin has been marked more than once.

Swimming animals / Flying birds

• You don’t have to mark any swimming animals.
• If there are distant birds flying above the sea/land and are too small to be identified, don’t mark them.
• If there are too many other animals, it is OK to mark only those closest to the colony.

Too many penguins to mark

We really appreciate when you mark them all but we understand there may be too many of them for you to mark. In such cases, start with the foreground ones and after you finish marking, don’t forget to answer ‘There were too many to count’.

Zoom options

On the right side of the image, there is a list of useful tools. Use the ‘+’ shaped button to zoom in the image. Then you can pan over the image using the arrow keys on your keyboard. Use the ‘-’ shaped button to zoom-out the image.

5. Penguin species, chick or adult?

What species they are and how do we classify them?

• Penguin species? No need to worry about recognizing individual species (and no way to classify them either). We only need you to recognize adults from chicks. The key features for telling them apart varies in individual species and they change during the chick’s growth. Sometimes you can even see mixed colonies of 2-3 different species.
• Nests? No need to mark them in the ‘Time lapse cameras’ workflow. We only care about eggs/chicks/adults/predators.
• Eggs? We rarely see them. Mark only eggs you can really see. Don’t mark eggs outside the nest or broken ones/empty egg shells.

Empty egg shells or eggs outside the nest - We do not mark them.

• Chicks? Mark only chicks you can see and you are sure about.
• Moulting penguins? As long as you can see chick features on them (see them below) mark them as chicks. Otherwise we mark all moulting penguins as adults.

Moulting chicks of King penguins - you can clearly see some brown feathers = mark them as chicks.

Unsure what you see?

If unsure whether you’re looking at egg/rock then don’t mark it.
If unsure whether a chick/adult, mark it as adult.

These may look like moulting chicks to you but they may be moulting adults as well. When they have all marks of maturity visible = mark them as adults.

6. Other objects, unlisted animals

You can see various objects although some of them aren’t listed for marking.

What to mark:

• Humans, ships and other vessels (as ‘Other/People’).
• Any other animals (on the land), even when unlisted - you can mark them using the ‘Other’ (blue) mark without choosing any option from the list.
• Other flying birds that can be identified.

What “not” to mark:

• Human equipment such as cameras, bags, tents, buildings.
• Animals swimming in the water (neither penguins nor seals) and birds flying in the distance which are too small to be identified.
• Any nests (in time-lapse-cameras images), also we do not mark eggs/chicks that we don’t really see, or broken egg shells, or abandoned eggs (out of nest).
• Carcasses (dead chicks which are torn in pieces, being eaten or shrunken so we’re sure they’re not alive any more).

An abandoned egg - We do not mark these.

Skuas feeding on a dead penguin chick. We do not mark dead animals.

Group of people

If there are many humans present, it is OK to mark only the one closest to the colony. Where there is a group of humans close to the colony, place just one Human mark in the center of the group.

7. Cameras & locations

• Currently there are 100 cameras placed throughout the Southern Ocean and along the Antarctic Peninsula, each capturing 8000 images per year. The places where penguins nest are called rookeries. Most penguin species usually return to the same rookeries each year, but Gentoos tend to move their nests by as little as a few metres or even several kilometres from one year to the next.
• Here is a map showing some of the camera placement (not all!):
  

8. Talk: discussions boards, hashtags, notifications

Discussion boards

PW project Talk consists of:

1. Search
   For filtering the posts by a keyword or by a tag; to be found at the top of the Talk page heading.

2. Notes
   Image comments started by the ‘Done & Talk’ button directly from the classification.
   To get a link to the image in full resolution click on the ‘Subject Image’ button (icon of a picture), below the image on the right. (Only available from the Talk interface.)

3. Individual Discussion boards:

• Science - for discussing project research and its goals, for discussing your observations, scientific discussions about penguins/Antarctica etc.;
• Help - for discussing technical problems with the project interface, FAQs etc.;
• Feedback - to let us know your feedback on the project interface, for sharing your ideas for an improvement;
• Chat - for anything else which doesn’t fit in the previous boards;

You can subscribe to get a notification when a new post appears; to be set just below the discussion title.

4. Recent comments
   The most recent posts are displayed at the top of the page together with an image; 20 posts displayed on a page.

5. Popular Tags
   The most popular tags listed by their frequency; Clicking on an existing tag will load all posts including that tag;

Comment box buttons, emojis

There’s a HELP button (with ‘?’ icon) for composing a new post (to be found in the top right corner of the comment box).
The help includes list of supported emojis and Zooniverse markdown style and hashtags.
You can ‘preview’ your post before submitting by clicking on the ‘eye-shaped’ icon, top right corner of the comment box. To be able to edit your post again, while in the preview-mode, click on the ‘pencil’ icon called ‘Edit’.

Hashtags - How to use them?

Using hashtags in comments is very specific here - it helps us find what we need.
Here is a Hashtag guide to help you understand how to use them properly.
The best way is to choose one of the suggested (existing) keywords that appear once you start typing after the ‘#’ symbol.
List of the most popular tags can be found on the right side of the discussion boards.
Only tag things you are sure that are visible in the image.

You can use:

• #interesting for interesting/extraordinary observations that deserve attention of the PW team.
• #DailyZoo to suggest images for Daily.Zooniverse blog.
  If you want to be sure your suggestion isn’t missed, then share the link to it in the DailyZoo suggestion discussion on the main Zooniverse Talk.

Mentioning/notifying users or moderators

You can use the @ symbol followed by a user name for mentioning and notifying others.
Be careful and write the name accurately - don’t confuse capital with lowercase letters and vice versa.
Also, some users have a different ‘display-name’ than their ‘username’. In such cases, use the one in grey letters, displayed below the ‘display-name'.

Using @researchers will notify the whole PW research team about your post; @moderators will notify all moderators.

When someone mentions you in a post or replies to your comment, you’ll get a notification (at the top level bar on the right, or via email - depends on the personal settings).

Other

Other Talk related information can be found in the ‘PW Interface changes guide’ on the Talk under the Help discussion board.

9. Technical problems, mistakes in the classification & other questions

Troubles with the interface

Zooniverse projects, such as PenguinWatch, which require you to mark an item on your screen have not been designed for touch screen devices. During any zooming/panning action marks can be left on the screen mistakenly thereby reducing the accuracy of the data submitted. The exception would be a large format television or whiteboard, the type found in class rooms, although even these are likely to be less accurate than a non-touch screen device. We therefore encourage you to always use non-touch screen devices.

When having any technical problems with the interface, there are few suggestions to try first:

• If the image/classification interface doesn’t load properly, go to the project Talk and then click on the ‘Classify’ page again (the same image is supposed to load for the classification).
• Reload the page (a different image is supposed to load).
• Clear your browser cache. Here is a clearing cache tutorial showing how to do that in various browsers.
• Open the project page in a private/incognito window/tab of your browser.

If none of them helps, please, let us know via the HELP discussion board, and mention @researchers or @moderators in your post. We’ll need to know what exactly happens (what steps have you taken; the more details the better), and also what device, what Operating System and what browser version you’re working on. You can use this page to figure out what we’re asking for and just copy & paste your details for us: http://www.whatsmybrowser.org/
If the problem is visible on the page, you can also make a screenshot and share it with us. (You’ll have to upload it somewhere on the internet first, using a free online gallery like www.imgur.com)
You can also report issues directly on GitHub (first make sure it hasn’t been reported by someone else already).

'Already Seen' or 'Finished' banner over the image

If you see 'Already seen' banner over the image in the classification, it means you have seen all the available images.
If you see 'Finished' banner over the image, it means that all images have reached the required number of classifications.

Mistakes in the classification

Don’t worry if you think you have made a mistake in the classification.
Each image is reviewed by multiple volunteers (the retirement limit is currently set on 10 volunteers per image). The scientists will compare the classifications with each other and the consensus will be used as the result. Any mistakes should get sorted out this way.
You can comment on the picture if you’d like to learn what to do another time. But remember that the comments are not part of the classification results. They can be read on the Talk only.

What to do when you aren’t sure how to classify?

• Check out the FAQs again, there may be a helpful section you have missed 😉
• Revisit the project Tutorial on the classification page (to be found on the right side of the ‘Task’ window).
• If you aren’t sure whether the object is a penguin or a rock, then it is always better not to mark that.
• If you aren’t sure whether there are two chicks huddling in the nest or just one, mark it as one please.
• If you aren’t sure whether you have marked all the penguins, just answer ‘There were too many to count’ after you finish marking.
• Take it easy & have fun!

Thank you for reading our FAQs. Let us know if we have missed something there. We very much appreciate all your help with the project!

Thank you!! <3
Your PW team (")>