Galaxy Zoo Talk

Wikipedia and Citizen Science.

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    Galaxy Zoo and the other projects contained within Zooniverse all happen because of 'Citizen science' (CS). CS is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists. By taking part in a project within the Zooniverse, we become Citizen scientists and so help professional scientists with their work.

    The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is the 7th most-visited website and contains much CS. Its open source editing means that a vast array of people can participate in making articles covering a huge range of subjects. A lot of these articles are first-resource; when you need to know something fast, Wiki is the site to visit. However, It is often criticized for inaccurate or out-of-date information, yet it has ~3.5 daily page views per visitor. How often have you used Wiki in the last week, month or year?

    So it is important to Galaxy Zoo and the larger Zooniverse that related articles are kept as up-to-date as possible. Unfortunately, this rarely happens, for whatever reasons. This thread seeks to remedy that! Hopefully, by having a central hub, questions and suggestions can be easily viewed and acted upon. Indeed, at the September ZooCon in Portsmouth, there will be a "Wikiathon to improve coverage of Citizen Science on Wikipedia".

    There are at least four Zooniverse-related articles in Wiki that are in need of varying amounts of attention. These are: Galaxy Zoo,
    Zooniverse, Hanny's Voorwerp, Pea galaxies and other related articles such as Green bean galaxies. No doubt these can be added to, although lots of smaller articles are often counter-productive. Editing articles can be difficult and time-consuming for the uninitiated, so it is often best to leave it to someone else, such as myself. So, please can any suggestions, questions or comments be posted here.

    Posted

  • Capella05 by Capella05 moderator

    Just moving this to the correct board 😃

    Posted

  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    Thanks for starting this Rick N.

    There are at least four Zooniverse-related articles in Wiki that are in need of varying amounts of attention. These are: Galaxy Zoo, Zooniverse, Hanny's Voorwerp, Pea galaxies and other related articles such as Green bean galaxies.

    Would it be useful to have a separate thread discussion on each, "Wikipedia on Galaxy Zoo", "Wikipedia on Zooniverse", etc?

    Here in Talk, with the inability to locate specific posts - especially annoying in long threads discussions - focus is highly important, I feel. Also, presumably the kind of attention each needs differs, or at least the balance does.

    Perhaps this thread discussion could be left to focus on the general, like what makes editing difficult and time-consuming?

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    Personally, I feel that if it is all kept in one 'discussion', that might help continuity, rather than having subjects spread out. There is a limited number of applicable articles, so a single discussion on one might be counter:productive i.e. hints and rules might get posted in one but not another. There are some interesting pages to visit though if one wants to browse.

    Did you know Wikipedia has a forum?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Astronomy always useful

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales the Talk page of Jimbo Wales (founder)

    http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/index.php part of Wikipediocracy

    The forum isn't hugely active, but does have some interesting threads and pics. Such as this:
    The computers are Robotron PC 1715

    Posted

  • zookeeper by zookeeper admin, scientist

    That picture shows the installation of new servers in the Zooniverse officers. If you look closely you can see Stuart driving the float.

    More seriously - Wikipedia is hugely important to us. A lot of the traffic we got back on the first day of Galaxy Zoo was from an appearance on the front page of English wikipedia, and still a lot of new people arriving come through Wikipedia. We've been very good and stuck to the site rules that forbids us from editing articles about ourselves; any volunteer effort would be much appreciated. As Rick says, we're happy to help provide technical information where it's needed.

    Posted

  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    Fair enough.

    What, in your opinion, is the attention which the Galaxy Zoo entry needs (start with perhaps the most pertinent)?

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    Wiki/Galaxy Zoo has begun to be updated. If you look at the Talk page, at the section 'Too Many Papers?', you can read that the main 'bone of contention' at the moment is the list of papers. The original list had become very large and could be even larger if every GZ paper was included. This has been deemed 'un-encyclopedic' by another editor and so The List has been moved to Talk. The editor gives his reasoning, which is fair enough. So I started a section describing 'selected papers', which was then also moved to Talk as it was deemed to be arbitrary and 'original research'. Original research is permissible in Talk but not upfront.

    So, in order to put any papers on the article's main page, a third-party source would have to be referenced. It would have to be, say, a journal writing that the best discoveries by GZ are... None such exist. As our own Karen M. points out, this is hard to achieve. That is the present state-of-play. The List is too large to be outfront and is out-of-date anyway. In order to put any refs outfront to 'significant discoveries made', third party sources must be found. This is all described anyway.

    The way forward is definitely not an editing war! The List is OK on Talk but needs to be updated. The 'selected papers' can be added to as and when. Out front, a section needs to be added, which I've started in prep., which describes the various GZs that have happened, and any results papers that can be cited. Deep breath...

    Basically, can you find reliable third-party sources which say what GZs greatest, most noteworthy discoveries are?

    Posted

  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    Basically, can you find reliable third-party sources which say what GZs greatest, most noteworthy discoveries are?

    I guess The SEVEN wonders of Galaxy Zoo, by R Smethurst, on the GZ blog does not count at 'third-party', does it? 😉

    Thanks, I can now see what one problem with WP is (or at least its entry on GZ), and it reinforces the oft-said "WP is a good place to start, but should never be considered the only place to look" 😃

    One such source does spring to mind: Virginia Trimble (I think that's who it was) produced an annual "Astronomy in the year X" (or similar) review. Maybe our greatest discoveries get a mention in such a review (doesn't have to be hers)?

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    Blogs and Forums are not reliable sources:

    "Wikipedia:Reliable source examples section 1.3', from which I quote: "Web forums and the talkback section of weblogs are rarely regarded as reliable."

    "Wikipedia:Verifiability Self-published sources', from which I quote: "Internet forum postings, and tweets, are largely not acceptable as sources".

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:V

    Posted

  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to JeanTate's comment.

    One such source does spring to mind: Virginia Trimble (I think that's who it was) produced an annual "Astronomy in the year X" (or similar) review.

    It was indeed her, and it's Astrophysics in X. Unfortunately, the last one seems to be Astrophysics in 2006 ... so no GZ 😦

    What about an article in Astronomy Now, or Sky&Telescope?

    Posted

  • zookeeper by zookeeper admin, scientist in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    I believe that the text of blogs themselves, but not the comments, are acceptable - so a blog post on the Galaxy Zoo blog by one of the team would be an acceptable source. Might be worth asking.

    Posted

  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to zookeeper's comment.

    @Rick N. - wouldn't the use of a Zooniverse/Galaxy Zoo blog text (as zookeeper describes), as a third party source, be against self-promotion (I assume WP frowns on self-promotion)?

    Come to think of it, if an article in a paper-based magazine (Sky&Telescope, say) were acceptable as a third-party source, wouldn't that be open to use as self-promotion too? Given WP's importance, no doubt this sort of thing has arisen many times before ...

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    I've changed the article's main page to update. Refs etc. can be added more easily. A few adjustments and wikification need to be made. I can only repeat that blogs and forums can't be used as they are not deemed reliable: they can be changed afterwards and anyone can write anything. I'll give an example in a subsequent post which will make the issue clearer. Sources must be published.
    So journals, online magazines, media sites are ok as they are published. Blogs and forums cannot be used (nor should they need to be if you think about it).

    Quoting Wiki: "In general, the most reliable sources are:1) peer-reviewed journals 2) books published by university presses
    3) university-level textbooks 4)magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses 5)mainstream newspapers"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SECONDARY#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources

    "Wikipedia:Reliable source examples section 1.3', from which I quote: "Web forums and the talkback section of weblogs are rarely regarded as reliable."

    "Wikipedia:Verifiability Self-published sources', from which I quote: "Internet forum postings, and tweets, are largely not acceptable as sources".

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:V

    Blogs and Forums can contain 'Original Research', i.e. research that has not been published. It violates 'Conflict of Interest': you could write in a blog 'Galaxy Zoo is the best astronomical site ever'. It can be deemed as advertisment 'Come to Galaxy Zoo, the best ever'. Verifiability from published sources: easy really!

    Posted

  • planetaryscience by planetaryscience

    I haven't been active as I would like to be on wikipedia recently, but I have contributed to many articles on it, including (somewhat) those related to galaxy zoo

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    It is only when one takes an article apart and puts it back together, one realises how bad it was. Wiki/GZ was bad but is getting better.

    Wiki/GZ had half-a-dozen links to press releases about Hanny's Voorwerp (some dead), but not even ONE single reference to:

    "Galaxy Zoo 1: data release of morphological classifications for nearly 900,000 galaxies" or

    "Galaxy Zoo 2: detailed morphological classifications for 304,122 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey".

    Definitive papers- what else do you need? There was no mention of

    "Galaxy Zoo:Exploring the motivations of citizen science volunteers" or the new paper on Hubble:

    "Galaxy Zoo: an independent look at the evolution of the bar fraction over the last eight billion years from HST-COSMOS".

    "Galaxy Zoo Supernovae" didn't even have a section on it, let alone a ref to its paper. Five definitive papers that weren't even mentioned.

    Press releases are all very well (I'm using them as sources for GZ4 and RGZ as no papers have yet been published), but if there are science papers that do the job, then they should be used.

    As for the for the intro, that was embarrassing. The intro is THE most important part of a Wiki article. When someone does a web search for whatever, it is the intro that appears. The previous intro had no refs and didn't explain there were seven versions. I've halved it and put three refs to papers- a beginning.

    GZ has 44 papers as a result of its science. We should ref these as much as possible, not put long lists of papers published. GZ no longer needs to prove itself, but shouldn't suffer from self-agrandisement either.

    Can someone expand the section on GZ Supernovae, please? I didn't take part and know almost nothing about it. Is there more than one paper published? Were many supernovae found? etc.

    Posted

  • planetaryscience by planetaryscience

    I find that most people who contribute to wikipedia would much rather point out the issues with an article than fix it themselves.

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    If the contents of the 44 published papers are actually used in the article, then we wouldn't need large lists. This will be the next step I feel. Now the 'skeleton' of the article has been constructed, the' flesh' will be expanded and added sections which use the published papers. Refs to papers are more encyclopedic and demonstrates understanding- the article could be so much larger with continued effort.

    The article is getting better, but it still has ratings of 'low importance' and 'start class'. That is not acceptable for GZ.

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    It's progressing... One can of course use material from blogs if it has been used in a third-party source, for instance in a book.

    'Reinventing discovery' by Michael Nielsen has some good blog material, including this quote from Alice "I don't quite know what it is, but GZ does something to people. The contributions, both creative and academic, that people have made to the forum are as stunning as the sight of any spiral, and never fail to move me." I'm sure we all wish Global Moderator Alice well.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinventing_Discovery

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    Getting there... Just need to source some pretty pictures and general wikification. Then on to 'hanny's voorwerp', which I've tried to tackle earlier. Another bad GZ article.

    Did you know Wiki only likes 1 external link? Some articles have a dozen or more. GZ has 5, all to GZ sites!
    Wikipedia:ELMINOFFICIAL#Minimize_the_number_of_links,

    Posted

  • planetaryscience by planetaryscience in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    Well Wikipedia generally wants you to get all of your knowledge from them, and external links are just the opposite, directing you to other websites that have similar information. I've also seen that Wikipedia absolutely forbids any links to wikias, blogs, and talk areas like this for external links or sources.

    On another topic, I've been working on an unbelievably gigantic article on Wikipedia that I'm almost finished with, although I won't say what the article is exactly yet. However it does have nearly 600,000 bytes in it so far.

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N. in response to planetaryscience's comment.

    600,000 bytes? Hmm... Wiki/DarkMatter is 100,000 bytes, Wiki/USA is 250,000 bytes. Size isn't everything though. I look forward to editing it! Does it have anything to do with inter-planetary science? List of NGC galaxies?

    Posted

  • planetaryscience by planetaryscience in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    No, it's rather on the topic of what my username is. I certainly learned a lot more about planetary science working on it, too. Of course there are probably tons of errors to edit out, but it's in my best interest that there are none. At its current size, I estimate it to be done in 1-2 weeks.

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    Just downloaded my first free paper from the Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society, entitled: "Web Science: a new frontier" by Shadbolt et al 2013. It includes Galaxy Zoo! Quoting from it:

    "Emergence is one of the key features of the Web- whether it is the emergence of the 'blogosphere' or the appearance of Wikipedia, the increasing linking of scientific data or social networks- complex structures emerge from apparently simple principles."

    One could say that the complex structure of the Zooniverse has emerged from the simple principles of GZ1.

    Also quoting:

    "We are trying to understand how to exploit human participation to solve a range of computationally challenging tasks. Tasks that range from classifying astronomical objects (www.galaxyzoo.org) to deciphering faded texts and manuscripts...Collaborative behaviours with light rules of coordination leads to the emergence of large scale resources such as Wikipedia."

    Wiki and GZ are large scale resources based on collaborative behaviours.

    Exploiting human participation does not sound very pleasant though. Are we just classifiers being exploited for others' benefits? Citizen science largely depends on goodwill: however that is something that can evaporate overnight.

    Published 18 February 2013 doi: 10.1098/rsta.2012.0512

    Posted

  • zutopian by zutopian in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    Exploiting human participation does not sound very pleasant though. Are we just classifiers being exploited for others' benefits? Citizen science largely depends on goodwill: however that is something that can evaporate overnight.

    I entered at a search engine the words "Exploiting citizen scientists" and found a statement related to your question in following article.:

    Citizen science: People power
    by Eric Hand

    If nothing else, says Kearns, as human computing becomes ubiquitous, "people will no longer marvel at being a part of these networks and may start to feel exploited by them". The day may come when (...)

    Published online 4 August 2010
    Nature 466, 685-687 (2010)
    doi:10.1038/466685a

    http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100804/full/466685a.html

    Galaxy Zoo is presented briefly together with other projects and there are statements by co-founder Chris. Interestingly, the representatives praise their own projects and critisize other kind of projects!

    Posted

  • ElisabethB by ElisabethB moderator

    And your point is ?

    Posted

  • Capella05 by Capella05 moderator

    Hi all, can we please get this thread back on topic?

    I think it will be useful to gauge, analyse, critique the zooniverse wikipedia articles before Portsmouth, but looking at the last few posts, they all seem to be diverging from the threads original purpose.

    If you would want to talk about something other than 'Wikipedia and Citizen Science', then please create a separate discussion.

    Thanks!

    Posted

  • zutopian by zutopian

    Concerning the wikipedia article about Galaxy Zoo:

    The GZ Quench project is missing in the section "Galaxy Zoo Projects (active and retired)", though it is mentioned in another section, namely "Galaxy Mergers and Interactions"!

    EDIT on 09.09.: I guess, that it was updated!

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    The GZ article in Wiki should have some balance; not everyone thinks that citizen science and crowdsourcing produces worthy results, or, as in the case of 'Foldit', is medically ethical. I've started to outline this in the third paragragh in the section 'Importance of Volunteers', using as a ref a recent article on the 'USA Today' website. Having just spent two weeks re-writing this article, my commitment to GZ is clear. However, all good science should have arguments against. The Wiki/GZ article should have some of these, IMHO, otherwise it appears to be biased and of a fawning disposition. I guess the GZ science team might agree to something along those lines. What anybody else's agenda on this thread is, is up to them.

    The study by Shadbolt 'Web Science: a new frontier' is a good read generally. The quoted sentence: "We are trying to understand how to exploit human participation to solve a range of computationally challenging tasks" does bring to my mind issues about Citizen Science though. For instance, at what point does the work of CSs, through goodwill, become just another opportunity for someone else to make money? Does it matter anyway? Is being a Citizen Scientist fundamentally naive? Also, is crowdsourcing of significant value, or just a sideshow, as written about in Nielsen's 'Reinventing Discovery'? All worthwhile questions I think.

    Of course, how one reads "how to exploit human participation" can be read in different ways. In my dictionary there are two definitions of 'exploit' that might help understanding. 1. "To take unfair advantage of something or someone so as to achieve one's own aim" or 2. "To make good use of something." It is for the reader to judge which is applicable. Does GZ take 'unfair advantage' or
    'make good use of'?

    Quoting from Shadbolt's paper: "Humans use the web to exhibit 'collective' intelligence'. Collaborative behaviour with light rule of construction leads to the emergence of large scale structures such as Wikpedia. The challenge is to technically enable such collective resources and also to understand what drives people to collaborate in such environments". So surely, part of the analysis of GZ has social science questions: for instance, why do classifiers partake in something they will not financially benefit from? Which goes back to the question posed earlier in this reply as to whether CSs are fundamentally naive.

    So the points I'm trying to put across can be used in Wiki/GZ. Surely it is more encyclopedic to have arguments for and against? All part of trying to understand the phenomena WE are engaged in.

    Posted

  • planetaryscience by planetaryscience

    I'm done the huge article I was talking about.- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comets_by_type

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    That certainly is a big article! Trying to navigate it is a task-and-a-half though. Like the section 'lost comets'. I guess Wiki will split it up into more manageable chunks sooner-or-later however. It is evident that a great deal of time and effort has been spent on the article.

    Posted

  • planetaryscience by planetaryscience in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    I was considering breaking it up into chunks, but I figured it would be better to let Wikipedia do that instead.

    Posted

  • elizabeth_s by elizabeth_s in response to planetaryscience's comment.

    Oh! A total newbi question here . How will Wikipedia do that i.e. break into chunks like do they have the staff to do that? Just wondering ? 😃

    Posted

  • planetaryscience by planetaryscience in response to elizabeth's comment.

    Well Wikipedia is run 99% by general users on the internet, me being one of them. Nothing is done by admins or staff unless there's an article edit war (e.g. the 2010-2013 Hummus origin dispute) or a user conflict (why did you revert my edits?) or a user specifically asks for a favor (hey can you delete this article for me?)

    Basically the idea of breaking things into chunks is a slow and manual process; the individual sections of an article are copied and pasted into their own articles, and taken out of the big article, which is made into a redirect to the smaller articles.

    Posted

  • elizabeth_s by elizabeth_s in response to planetaryscience's comment.

    Thanks for the info. It helps put it right in my grey matter. 😃

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    What is apparent after a lot of searching in the world wide web for the Wiki/GZ article is how much material there is. However, quite a lot of it is factually inaccurate. That's a polite way of writing it. This is one example:

    "In one day, it had generated thousands of times more traffic than vandenBerg's academic outfit usually sees in a month: 15 million hits, a number that only makes sense for sites like AOL or Google."

    15 million hits in a day? Really?

    Posted

  • elizabeth_s by elizabeth_s in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    That one is a little hard to swallow. "15 million hits in a day"

    Posted

  • zutopian by zutopian in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    However, all good science should have arguments against. The Wiki/GZ article should have some of these, IMHO, otherwise it appears to be biased and of a fawning disposition. I guess the GZ science team might agree to something along those lines. What anybody else's agenda on this thread is, is up to them.

    Astonishingly, there is even the wikipedia article "Criticism of Wikipedia" available!
    In the wikipedia article about wikipedia there is the section Criticism and the link to the "Criticism of Wikipedia" article.

    Posted

  • zutopian by zutopian

    I would suggest a section about machine learning in the wikipedia article about Galaxy Zoo.:

    There are following papers.:

    Besides:

    PS: There might be also related information available in the book by Nielsen.

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    Firstly, as with anyone, you are free to add to the article (unless you expect me to run round after your learned contributions).

    Secondly, the first two in your list are already used in the article, so don't need to be added.

    Thirdly, I don't think there is a justification for a whole section, but if no-one else does, I will endeavour to read the above articles and use them as-and-when.

    Fourthly, that's not going to happen very soon, as Lovethetropics is writing a paragraph on the Irregulars Project which will have to be ref'd.

    Fifthly, I have a large amount of work to do on the Voorwerp article and the language thread I have started.

    Sixthly, I doubt whether competitions can be used as a reliable source.

    But, as I mentioned in the first point, anyone can edit Wiki, and if you can find an appropriate place to feed your contributions in then please do so: it only takes an elementary knowledge of HTML (wiki version).

    Posted

  • zutopian by zutopian in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    But, as I mentioned in the first point, anyone can edit Wiki, and if you can find an appropriate place to feed your contributions in then please do so: it only takes an elementary knowledge of HTML (wiki version).

    Currently, I haven't the intention to become a wikipedian.

    Posted

  • zutopian by zutopian in response to Rick N.'s comment.

    Of course, how one reads "how to exploit human participation" can be read in different ways. In my dictionary there are two definitions of 'exploit' that might help understanding. 1. "To take unfair advantage of something or someone so as to achieve one's own aim" or 2. "To make good use of something." It is for the reader to judge which is applicable. Does GZ take 'unfair advantage' or 'make good use of'?

    It is an interesting/ thought-provoking question! It is a philosophical/ ethical matter. Since I am neither a philosopher nor adequately familiar with philosophy, I can't judge it. Please be informed about the article "Exploitation" on the webpage "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy". EDIT: There is given a statement concerning voluntary work!

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N. in response to zutopian's comment.

    Trust goes a very long way- the citizen scientist has to be confident that what they are doing is worthwhile and respected by the people who benefit most i.e. the professional scientist.

    As Chris Lintott stated: "Rather than letting anyone pitch for volunteers, we'd like to be a place where people can come and expect a certain level of commitment".

    The citizen scientist (the clickworker) has to believe. After a while, they get to know, one way or another if the 'promises' hold true.

    Citizen science: People power: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100804/full/466685a.html

    Posted

  • zutopian by zutopian

    Concerning Exploitation:

    Please be informed, that there are the sections "Exploitation" and "The moral force of exploitation" on page 124 ff. in the "European Textbook on Ethics in Research".:

    http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.topic&id=1362

    Posted

  • p.titchin by p.titchin

    This is the thread I have arrived at via the links for remote participation in the zoocon14 at Portsmouth, but------ where is it?? ~Pete

    Posted

  • ElisabethB by ElisabethB moderator in response to p.titchin's comment.

    Here it is : Link to view online should be: https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/clpbvql9ij278h0dabdusrgb2p0

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    Going to attempt to live record discussion here.

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    We've moved upstairs to talk about Wikipedia and our experiences with it.

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    Now Mike is giving us an overview of wikipedia. Reminds us wikipedia in many languages. We'll focus on English today, but everything is the same for the other languages.

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    Mike is talking about the Five Pillars of Wikipedia which are list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars

    Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia
    Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view
    Wikipedia is free content which anyone can use, edit and distribute.
    Editors should treat each other with respect and civility
    Wikipedia has no firm rules.

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    Facts need to be reference - including that the sky is blue!

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    We've just talked about what makes reliable references, what conflict of interest rules wikipedia has, and now talking about notability. We need to think about what bits of citizen science are notable.

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    Guardian article about Galaxy Zoo from March 2012: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/mar/18/galaxy-zoo-crowdsourcing-citizen-scientists

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    Another Guardian article - this one with many mentions of Zooniverse: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/12/you-can-find-planet-citizen-science

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    John says hello. Sitting next to John right now. 😃

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    It was very handy to have some expert wikimedians to converse and exchange ideas with. Certainly one thing I learned was that editing wiki is a lot easier and more creative when there are others to bounce ideas off. A consensus of opinions between several people about differing points-of-view and specialists doing referencing work is a very powerful editing group. Really, we didn't have enough time (ideally, several days) but I hope people got the chance to edit and feel they had achieved something. A GZ Wiki-editing group is definitely a positive move and also, to me personally, a revelation.

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    Hey @RickN - I agree it was an interesting day, and way too short. I made just one tiny change to this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science but I think it's given me a lot of confidence and understand of what Wikipedia wants in an article, so I will feel happier making more edits in future. 😃 I think the Citizen Science page could use a lot of tidying up, so I may (very slowly) work on that.

    Posted

  • Rick_N. by Rick_N. in response to klmasters's comment.

    The Citizen Science article needs a lot of tidying up I venture. Pity the quotations from Zookeeper Kevin are referenced from a personal blog... Will try to find proper ones.

    Posted

  • zutopian by zutopian

    Here are two new papers.:

    Ideas for Citizen Science in Astronomy
    Philip J. Marshall, Chris J. Lintott, Leigh N. Fletcher
    (Submitted on 15 Sep 2014)
    Comments: In progress. The most up to date PDF file should be downloaded from this http URL . We invite feedback via github issues at this http URL, and aim to submit to ARAA on September 26
    http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.4291

    Commons at the Intersection of Peer Production, Citizen Science, and Big Data: Galaxy Zoo
    Michael J. Madison
    (Submitted on 15 Sep 2014)
    Comments: 47 pages. Published in Governing Knowledge Commons, Brett M. Frischmann, Michael J. Madison and Katherine J. Strandburg, eds., Oxford University Press, 2014
    http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.4296

    Posted

  • zutopian by zutopian

    Daily Zooniverse:

    ‘citizen science’ added to Oxford English Dictionary Posted on September 16, 2014 by The Zooniverse:

    The terms ‘citizen science’ and ‘citizen scientist’ have been added to the OED. Here are the official definitions according to the dictionary:

    citizen science n. scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions.

    citizen scientist n. (a) a scientist whose work is characterized by a sense of responsibility to serve the best interests of the wider community (now rare); (b) a member of the general public who engages in scientific work, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions; an amateur scientist.

    Sadly, there is no mention of the Zooniverse …yet. You can read more about their addition in this blog post by Prof. Muki Hacklay.
    http://povesham.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/citizen-science-in-oxford-english-dictionary/

    http://daily.zooniverse.org/2014/09/16/citizen-science-in-dictionary/

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  • Rick_N. by Rick_N. in response to klmasters's comment.

    Have helped tidy and enlarge the Wiki/Citizen Science article. Ideas always welcome, especially on noteworthy CS projects that use smartphone apps.

    Commons at the Intersection of Peer Production, Citizen Science, and Big Data: Galaxy Zoo by Michael J. Madison is well worth a read.

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  • JeanTate by JeanTate

    Not sure if this is the best - or even an appropriate - place for this, but ...

    ... how you calculate radio luminosity. Here goes. First, there are two useful pages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminosity explains what luminosity is, and http://www.astro.soton.ac.uk/~td/flux_convert.html gives you a handy calculator

    That's Ray Norris, a Radio Galaxy Zoo Science Team member, kicking off ar RGZ Talk thread What is radio luminosity?

    Just an hour later, he wrote another post:

    I've now inserted an abbreviated version of the above into the wikipedia article on luminosity on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminosity

    And indeed he did! 😃 Further, in apparent response to my questions on what he'd written, he amended it to include things like k-correction*. Interesting, eh?

    I find it quite amazing that Wikipedia seems to be playing an important role in how the term 'luminosity' is understood, doubly so given how complex this topic is (it "has been listed as a level-4 vital article in Science", "is within the scope of WikiProject Physics", and "is within the scope of WikiProject Astronomy", whatever these things mean). There's a huge amount of work still to do; from my own reading, I have learned that, just among astronomers, "luminosity" is a term used with several different meanings, and is called something else (several something elses actually) in many papers. The Wikipedia Talk page covers some of this, but it seems to me that there's still a lot of work to do.

    *or not; I do not know how much of the Radio Luminosity text was there before (last week, say), nor how much was changed in the last ~half day.

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  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    Wiki's 'Chris Lintott' article left a great deal to be desired- there was no mention of Zooniverse even- so I took it upon myself to improve and expand it. Comments welcome... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lintott

    Interesting video of Zookeeper Chris, in a dinner jacket and bow tie, giving an interview as the result of a prize he won.
    http://awards.oii.ox.ac.uk/galaxy-zoo/

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  • DZM by DZM admin

    Rick, excellent! Thanks! The more we can do to increase awareness of and knowledge about Zooniverse, the better. 😃

    I know that a lot of people here read the Reinventing Discovery book because Galaxy Zoo was prominently featured... I was really interested by the discussion about how hard it was to get scientists to contribute to wikis because the establishment only really rewards scientific papers. So I'm really happy to see the smart, knowledgeable people here doing good work sprucing up Wiki pages!

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  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    Thanks, it was truly an article in need of a makeover: Zookeeper Chris deserves something better than what was there. Good interview as well.

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  • Rick_N. by Rick_N.

    The English Wiki article on Zookeeper Kevin needs expansion (there is also a German one):
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Schawinski

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  • Rick_Nowell by Rick_Nowell

    In March 2015, the state of Wyoming USA criminalised Citizen Science by passing laws (Senate File 12 & 80) making it a crime to collect environmental data on behalf of the government. Concerns have been voiced that this law will make Citizen Scientists criminals if they take, for instance, water samples from both public and private land. It might well create a unique new category of crime called "data trespass."

    A new Wikipedia article has been created to cover this.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Senate_Files_12_and_80_2015_'Trespassing_To_Collect_Data'

    Well worth reading!

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