Penguin Watch Talk

BBC coverage

  • etreadwe by etreadwe

    imagine you all have seen this already, but in case you didn't BBC's News Science page today has story on Penguin Watch

    http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150424-cameras-and-volunteers-reveal-the-secret-life-of-penguins

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  • AvastMH by AvastMH moderator

    Oooo! Thanks for posting this etreadwe. That's exciting! It's nice to know that we are on the news. Not sure about 1.5 million volunteers though. Seems awfully high 😃

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  • etreadwe by etreadwe

    maybe they are counting the penguins too, as volunteers???

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  • Nickypeng by Nickypeng moderator

    Thanks for the link

    And what a lovely thought, all those penguins volunteering to stand around in front of a camera so we can count them!

    (I wonder if there are 1.5 million volunteers on the whole of Zooniverse? I have heard that figure mentioned before)

    Nicky & Peng

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  • AvastMH by AvastMH moderator

    1.5 million registered on Zooniverse I can understand. Between all the projects it sounds feasible. I bet DZM might know.

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  • yshish by yshish moderator, translator in response to AvastMH's comment.

    There should be 1,322,950 users at this time! (According to the Zooniverse website)

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  • DZM by DZM admin

    Yep, that's the all-time registered user count. 😃 I believe that it goes back to 2007 and the initial version of Galaxy Zoo, so... eight years of accumulated participants.

    PW is at about 18,250 participating users by itself.

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  • AvastMH by AvastMH moderator

    Whoa! 18250-ish! I'm very impressed 😃

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  • Motherjoanne by Motherjoanne

    When I logged on today I noticed that the count was missing from the home page. I have been watching how many people are logged on every time I have logged on in the last three weeks and it has never exceeded twelve (three currently). Bit of a reality check. I love this site and counting penguins but it seems most of those volunteers don't stick around. I am amazed at the patience of the volunteer moderators in answering the same questions about #night and #foggy and #blurry over and over again from the new people that try the site (or sight) of penguins. Thanks moderators.

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  • Nickypeng by Nickypeng moderator

    Thank you Motherjoanne
    With the announcement of the Antarctic Cruise competition we have had an absolute deluge of new counters who, as you have noticed, don't stay long (possibly just long enough to count their daily quota of 10 pictures). Absolutely nothing wrong with that of course, the more counters we have the better, and hopefully we will convert a few of them to the joys of penguin counting!
    We suspect that the number of new counters will drop off again once the competition closes.
    In the mean time, it is great to hear from you and the other "pre-competition" counters.

    Which time zone you are in also has an impact on how many people are logged on at the same time. I'm in Australia, so when I am logged in the evening here, it is mid morning in Europe and early morning in the USA, so I am not surprised that there are only a smallish number of people logged on then.
    And even if there are only a very few of us, we are still going to be able to count the penguins a lot more quickly than the scientists could if they had to do it all themselves.

    Nicky&Peng

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  • gardenmaeve by gardenmaeve moderator

    The new FAQs go a long way to making that same material available. It's great to see many of the counters helping the new ones using reference to the FAQs. We have good moderator models. 😃

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  • Nickypeng by Nickypeng moderator

    Its great to see people helping each other. We put out a call recently for anyone who spoke Russian and would be able to help us with translating for a couple of Russian counters. And we had a reply the same day, and another 2 days later. We have no idea where anyone is, or who they are, but PenguinWatch is obviously a very diverse community.

    Like the Antarctic in fact!

    Nicky&Peng

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  • yshish by yshish moderator, translator

    And there is even a possibility to translate Zooniverse projects to other languages for other users from your country! Btw, it looks like we have no translations of the Penguin Watch yet!

    Are there any volunteers who would like to help with that? If so, let me know please..

    Cheers,

    Zuzi

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