In reply to khufkens's comment:
Hi Brooke,

Thanks for the feedback!

The suggestion to put a hint in the workflow text is very useful. This might resolve some of the issues indeed. Although a tutorial remains a nicer way of doing it. Is there any way to contribute code and help out in this front? As I mentioned, I wouldn't mind contributing / helping out on this front. I'm used to the open source community spirit, if the feature doesn't exist write it yourself

The text in the questions is indeed still a bit funky but this is a rough working version for me so I should rewrite in less ambiguous terms. I'm waiting with the launch until we get another project out of the door, so I've got some time to refine everything as well as provide some more context / history.

The polygon tool is necessary for several reasons, the middle line doesn't always appear in the middle of the rectangle, and the rectangle isn't always a perfect rectangle. I corrected most original images as good as possible but not all final snippets are perfect. To accurately extract the dates from the marked lines I need the reference points of both the end, start and midpoint of the year to be well referenced. So, yes I need the polygon (sadly the data is too messy).

I didn't find a required tick box for polygons so I'm not sure how I could enforce this. Maybe I'm missing something. You can define a subtask, but this will only generate a text bubble which you can close or ignore using the next button. This subtask can be helpful as a tutorial, but if it pops up consistently this will drive people up the wall as well. I'm not sure what purpose it currently serves.

I'll keep you posted on progress! Again, thanks to you and the community at large for making this possible. Some interesting science will come from this, no doubt.

Cheers,
Koen

Hi Koen -
Unfortunately we don't yet have a way to require drawing tools, but it's something we hope to implement in the future.

The subtask option allows you to ask an additional question about a mark/shape you've just drawn. In Kitteh Zoo, for example, we ask how cute the cat is that volunteers have just drawn an ellipse for. You can make a sub-task required (since it's a question).

Hope that's helpful...and good luck!

I'm trying to create my own project using your awesome tools but haven't figured out how to create a subtask (or how to call that). I mean the question about "Cuteness rating" which appears after drawing an ellipse on the cat face. I would like to have such subtasks appearing after drawing each ellipse in the image (for the cases with more than 1 face in the image).
Can you help me, please?

Hi yshish,
I followed the guide and this seems to do what you want automatically. It produces a pop-up cuteness subtask after marking each cat face even if there are multiple faces in the same image. Have you tried classifying on your project to see if it works?

In reply to jules's comment:
Hi yshish,
I followed the guide and this seems to do what you want automatically. It produces a pop-up cuteness subtask after marking each cat face even if there are multiple faces in the same image. Have you tried classifying on your project to see if it works?

Thanks, @jules ,that would make sense!

No, I haven't tried the classification ,and neither uploaded any images yet. Have to figure out, how to do so first.

I would appreciate a Preview function, at least for the Help text.

Edit: I've read the Guide again and found it there! Sorry for the confusion, I misunderstood it a bit.

I just started participating because my friend told me about the Chicago Wildlife Watch, where I can tag photos of cute animals (like this rabbit!) taken on cameras posted around the city parks.

It's kind of addictive.

@yshish

I replied to your post before. Following is in addition:

Perhaps this blog post could help you to imagine how a voluntary CS lesson can look like:
http://blog.zooniverse.org/2016/02/19/primary-school-zooniverse-volunteers/

I wrote in my previous reply.: "They might even continue classifying at home!"
My guess was right! In the blog post, there is given following statement.:

When the lesson ended, many of them asked to create their own accounts, so they could participate on their own from home.

http://blog.zooniverse.org/2016/02/19/primary-school-zooniverse-volunteers/

They are 8-9 year old kids! They created maybe their own accounts without probably understanding the entire "Zooniverse Privacy Policy and User Agreement"!
Did they ask their parents for allowance before creating accounts? Did their parents read the "Zooniverse Privacy Policy and User Agreement"? Did parents create accounts on behalf of children?
I wonder, how many classifications they have done at home?

Copy from blog post:

Initially, they didn’t want to stop classifying, but when they heard the name of the following project to try – Penguin Watch, they were totally into it!
This project, available in Czech, shows wintery images of remote locations in Antarctica, usually crowded with nesting penguins. The tasks here are to mark adult penguins, chicks, or their eggs, and any predators, if present. They took turns marking, trying to mark at least 30 penguins as quickly as possible so they could see another image. They couldn’t wait to find an egg. And after only 9 images they succeeded!

http://blog.zooniverse.org/2016/02/19/primary-school-zooniverse-volunteers/

In the VOLCROWE paper "Playing With Science: Exploring How Game Activity Motivates Users Participation on an Online Citizen Science Platform", which I mentioned before and I critisized it, there is given following statement.:

Other examples of users creating or perceiving serious scientific projects as games have also been referred to throughout other projects on the platform.Penguin Watch (Penguinwatch.org) involves users counting how many penguins are featured in each picture by marking them on the image, which some users have described as being like the finding game ‘Where’s Wally’; a popular children’s book where the reader has to spot the eponymous character within the scenery (BBC News, 2014).
The potentially cute imagery of the penguins along with the aspects of fun created by comparing it to a game, creates a very accessible project for a wide range of users.

Those users, which had described "Penguin Watch" as a sort of the game "Where's Wally", are adults!
I guess, that many children perceive "Penguin Watch" also like a game, e.g. in the blog post, there is said, that they wanted to find an egg!
If children participate in PW, because they perceive it as a game, this doesn't seem to be ethical, in my opinion!

In another blog post a teacher had done following statement.:

They might even start doing Galaxy Zoo classifications at home . . . instead of MineCraft. (...)

http://blog.zooniverse.org/2014/01/29/thoughts-from-the-classroom-thinking-of-using-galaxy-zoo-in-your-middle-school-classroom-do-it/

She said "instead of", but it could be, that they continue playing Minecraft (or other computer games) and in addition they participate in Zooniverse projects!
If so: They would spent more time using computers! This isn't actually good for kids, in my opinion!
Maybe some kids actually don't play computer games!

PS: Wikipedia article "Where's Wally?" (known in the United States and Canada as "Where's Waldo?") is available!

s.Most of the text on here is too pale to see, so I writing to ask rather that "read the book, stupid".
I filled in the project page and it is public, but I do not know how to tell anyone about it.
The form wants "Researchers" but I do not know anyone.
Everything seems to take a lot of clicking around, massive amounts of reading and searching for thing
I went to the project and clicked "view" to get URL below. Is there some easier way to refer to projects?
Do new projects automatically get listed? Is there any way to find people who might be interested?
All those social media sites, I do not use. Mainly they also use low contrast text and seem so chatty and disorganized. I write things, then can never find anything again. No way to summarize or organize anything. It is hard enough what I am doing, I cannot learn dozens of new - to me - random sites to attract people who are only looking for cute things or the latest gossip. I am old and tired and have not much patience at the moment. I only came here because so many lives and economies are at stake, and I have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done - for the Internet anyway - that will help. You tell me if this is a hopeless path. I would rather quit and go look elsewhere than waste time when "we don't do that sort of thing", or "thats too hard", or "Thats too much like real work". You can tell I have very low expectations. On the Internet which I have studied for the last 22 years daily, most of it is disorganized and massively wasteful of human time. Especially for these global and systemic issues like "covid-19".

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/richardkcollins/curate-covid-19-coronavirus-websites-worldwide

Thank anyone for suggestions. Maybe I should ask for a project coordinator who speaks "Zooniverse". I am working 18 hours a day on simulations, finding research groups, locating data, writing programs, making videos, writing key organizations to try to get them to make small changes.

I am probably my own worst enemy. I work until I am exhausted, then work another ten hours to complete some small part that might make a difference. I waste massive amounts of time because I have no one to help with the simplest things. I am willing to devote 100 hours a week to this, and the people I have been asking begrudge 5 minutes.

Please ignore my grumbling. Do you think people would help organize and document the Internet materials related to Covid? and related viruses and impacts?

Richard Collins, Director, The Internet Foundation

1b) Global All Collection's Page.
I wonder if there are still any good points for Zoo to continue having a global collection's page.
As:

• Collection's can now be looked at per project.
• There are now +10_000 (+500*20) collections. (ordered by collection name (only)).

btw. Love that adorable cute (although its getting a bit fat) index. (was fixed/changed)

In the past there has clearly been episodes where students have been directed to participate in zooniverse projects, and in general this is encouraged. This is not meant to discourage you in any way but is a few pointers to help you do this smoothly:

1. In one project I work with some students were given a requirement to do a set number of classifications as part of an assignment. Unfortunately the project ran out of data and some (tardy) students were caught. Once a project finishes its data there is a small group of subjects which continue to be presented to keep the project alive for those exploring zooniverse but not in any useful way - the data is effectively wasted and there can be issues accessing subjects which are not labeled "Finished" or "Already Seen". You might want to coordinate with specific project teams; I am sure many projects would welcome the help.

2. With minimal understanding of the zooniverse platform any new user has learning curve of how things work. Recently a group of elementary school kids (grade 6?) were directed here with a general question linked to a specific project, but without the background of how zooniverse is structured they posted their question everywhere - across practically every zooniverse forum. - It was somewhere between kind of cute and rather annoying. Project specific comments in the general zooniverse forums is an ongoing issue as is easy to see. I would suggest your students be tasked with learning a bit about zooniverse prior to being set loose.

3. While zooniverse is open and anyone can classify, the reality is that many projects here require considerable learning and skill to classify correctly. While a lot of noise is made about crowd wisdom and open consensus, many projects are actually done by a small core group that do the vast majority of the work. The top ten contributors doing 25% of the total work, or the top 15% doing 80% of the classifications are actual stats for the projects I am familiar with. These core users become expert and put a lot of effort into learning the fine points of their project. A very large number of newbies directed to a project with a limited number of experienced users could shift results. Again it might be best to coordinate with specific projects or spread the new users out so one vulnerable project with a big learning curve does not get a big hit of inexperienced taggers. On the other hand experienced users started somewhere, and there is the possibility your students may continue to tag...

I'm sure this must have been discussed before, but I could really do with some meaningless incentivisation as part of the system. Levels, badges, little popup messages of thanks with cute animals in them when I submit something. I say this is someone who spends a vast amount of time completing pointless tasks on the internet because I get little showers of stars, and messages telling me I saved all the bears, and to run time limited races against complete strangers etc etc. I am aware that despite their pointlessness these things make me feel good, I would love to put the time into zooniverse that I put into Candy Crush, but it just doesn't make my dopamine receptors buzz.