Radio Galaxy Zoo Talk

Suggestions on how to improve RGZ Talk ...

  • JeanTate by JeanTate

    ... to make it more like the tool Carol Christian, Chris Lintott, Arfon Smith, Lucy Fortson, and Steven Bamford envisioned*. Not entirely specific to Radio Galaxy Zoo; likely to be of benefit/value to other extra-solar system astronomy Zooniverse project:

    • combine all "The Objects" sections into one; as almost all the non-stickied threads in the three "The Objects" sections - one each in Help, Science, and Chat - are of the same general type, why not combine them into a single section?

    • a text-string search capability that is up to contemporary standards (Talk's search is woefully inadequate)

    • easy-to-use identifiers for individual posts within a thread (so you can point/link to an individual post not just a whole thread)

    • "edited on" (or similar) text string, and timestamp, added when a post is edited

    • a stickied section/thread - under Science -> General perhaps - with short summaries of how the data were obtained (telescope, filters, pipeline, etc), what the plate scale is, size of the PSF, etc. As most of this is already available in external sites, the summaries would likely contain lots of links (we already have bits and pieces of this)

    • similar stickied section/thread on how to navigate a big Collection, how to find all objects with the hashtag X, how to get a list of hashtags, etc

    • a similar stickied thread/whatever on artifacts and how they are produced/arise (we already have bits and pieces of this)

    • a 'cone search' tool: input an (RA, Dec) and a radius, and you'll get all the images, Collections, posts, etc which fall within the circle (some variant of this is standard in many external, online astronomy databases, e.g. NED).

    • top level "Bug reports" (or similarly named) section: there are always bugs, having (almost) all of them in one thread surely helps resolve them (we have one, but it's second level, under Help)

    • top level "News" (or similar), in which new threads can be started by only mods and scientists: news is a vital activity for a community

    • within News, sub-sections "Blog posts", "Project Developments", (and maybe others): all important project news should be conveyed in blog posts; Talk should serve as the vehicle for discussing these (not the extremely poorly enabled comments that is the current method). If there are important project developments not covered in blog posts - e.g. major bug fixes to Talk itself - they need their own section

    • within Science, sub-sections "Publications", "Discoveries", and "Conferences": yes, these may duplicate blog posts, but as they are focused they'll be found more easily, and discussions will also be more likely to be focused. Also, Conferences can be used to convey to ordinary zooites that they are welcome to attend professional conferences too

    And one that's not directly related to Talk:

    • if/when control (simulated) features are added to images, a means to identify them as such (post-classification); and preferably to be able to select (in or out).

    *"Citizen Science: Contributions to Astronomy Research", arXiv:1202.2577:

    In addition to the main site, tools which encourage communication between the volunteers and the project scientists and developers are of vital importance in attracting and sustaining a community. Much of the serendipitous science from Galaxy Zoo came from a basic forum, and a new ‘Talk’ tool that can be more closely integrated with the process of classification itself has been developed and released21. The ultimate goal of such tools should be to bring questions and interesting discoveries to the scientists’ attention only when expert input is necessary, reducing the time needed for appropriate mentoring while still ensuring nothing gets lost.

    21 https://github.com/zooniverse/Talk

    I've posted similar suggestions in Galaxy Zoo Quench Talk, Galaxy Zoo Talk, and Talk Project Star Date. Also a related suggestion in the Galaxy Zoo forum: Suggested topic for a GZ Hackathon: Searchable Database of Image Coords ... For more background, there's A thread to talk about Talk in the GZ forum.

    Posted

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

    Bump.

    Now that we seem to have more participation in RGZ Talk, perhaps readers might be interested to comment on my suggestions?

    Posted

  • DocR by DocR scientist

    I love the idea of searchable by coordinates, and would certainly use it, but Ii think for RGZ we need to wait. We still need to get the pipeline done and expert-vetted, which are still being worked on,

    Posted

  • JeanTate by JeanTate

    Thanks DocR. Anyone else?

    Here's one of the suggestions I made:

    top level "News" (or similar), in which new threads can be started by only mods and scientists: news is a vital activity for a community

    I'll give an example of what I mean here.

    Are you ready to be a radio astronomy detective? is the title of a universe@CSIRO blog post, posted on May 19, 2014. The second para reads:

    Now, five months on, we thought we’d check in with CSIRO’s Dr Julie Banfield, Radio Galaxy Zoo Project Scientist, to see how the project is going.

    That's pretty cool! 😃 Wouldn't it be even cooler if 42jkb herself* had posted at least a link to that interview, in the News board, here in RGZ Talk? 😄

    Reading on ...

    What’s the most interesting object you’ve found so far?
    Two of our citizen scientists have discovered an unknown source and compiled useful information for us to follow up. It’s known as a ‘wide angle tail’ radio source. The interesting thing about it is it’s the largest one observed and lives in an area where we don’t expect to find these types of objects.

    😮 How AWESOME is that!!!

    I guess that these two zooites made their discovery by posting in a comment on an ARG object, or perhaps in a discussion thread/post. But where? And who? I tried to find it myself, using Talk's Search, but gave up (have you too experienced frustration at just how hopeless Search is? 😦)

    So, how about it 42jkb (or any other SCIENTIST in the know), this is just the sort of thing which zooites get very excited about! Since you've already let readers of the CSIRO blog know about these two zooites' discovery, why not RGZ zooites who hang out here in Talk too? 😃

    *Didn't know that Dr Julie Banfield = 42jkb? It's right there, on the RGZ Team page

    Posted

  • 42jkb by 42jkb scientist, admin

    The discovery was announced in January via a newsletter to the whole Zooniverse community (posted below). Are you on the email list for these newsletters?

    As for the discovery, Larry and Heinz are leading up the follow-up work and have put together another newsletter and blog post on their work which is in line to be posted. The discussion on Talk is here: http://radiotalk.galaxyzoo.org/#/subjects/ARG0003lhy

    -----Original Message-----
    From: "Julie at Radio Galaxy Zoo" [team@ZOONIVERSE.ORG]
    Date: 01/21/2014 12:43 PM
    To: ZOONIVERSE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
    Subject: Radio Galaxy Zoo - Update

    It has been four weeks since we launched our Zooniverse project hunting
    for supermassive black holes. Everything is progressing smoothly and I want

    to thank everyone for getting involved and pointing out all the interesting radio

    sources for follow-up.

    We already have over 350,000 classifications and 2,300 volunteers, exceeding my expectations! We have retired almost 8,000 sources. To put this into perspective, that is my whole PhD thesis 200 times over in just four weeks. Unbelievable!

    We have made some changes to our Talk page with suggestions from you. Now you can browse other surveys to look at a larger area around the radio source. Many of you are noticing that these radio sources are much larger than the image we provide on radio.galaxyzoo.org; a quick glance at these other surveys can provide much more information on the radio source.

    We have made some unexpected discoveries thus far. One of our citizen scientists, Dolorous Edd, compared our image of a particularly interesting Wide-Angle Tail (WAT) radio source to an image in the NVSS and found a larger associated structure within the field. Two of our scientists, Professors Larry Rudnick and Heinz Andernach, jumped at the chance to investigate this object further. They are in the process of getting information on the redshift and environment of this WAT. A truly remarkable find.

    I am sure that we have just begun to scratch the surface of the potential of Radio

    Galaxy Zoo. I am excited at the prospect of all the unexpected objects we will

    discover!

    Keep up-to-date with all news from this project and more by following us on Facebook and Twitter.

    Keep up the great hunting at radio.galaxyzoo.org!

    Thank you,

    Dr Julie Banfield and the Zooniverse Team

    PS: If you would like to help the Zooniverse test one of our awesome new space projects, please email team@zooniverse.org with solar beta as the subject.

    UNSUBSCRIBE INSTRUCTIONS: You are receiving this email because you have taken part in Radio Galaxy Zoo. To unsubscribe instantly to these messages, visit http://www.zooniverse.org/unsubscribe. To manage your newsletter settings, visit http://www.zooniverse.org/account/newsletters

    Posted

  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to 42jkb's comment.

    Thanks Julie. 😃

    Yes, I am on the email list, for the Zooniverse newsletter (and I do get them); but sadly I seem to have not received that one (I will try to find out why not; perhaps my spam filter was too aggressive?).

    So the discussion here in RGZ Talk started as a post in Chat/The Objects, is mentioned in the OP of the - non-stickied - Finding the Giants (NVSS) thread (in Science/General Science Topics), and now here.

    If we had a dedicated section (board) here in RGZ Talk - called "News", perhaps - it might contain things like a copy of that newsletter (no links possible), mention of your CSIRO blog interview (and a link), as well as convenient links to the GZ blog posts on RGZ, etc. Where there's really cool news - like Dolorous Edd's discovery - an RGZ Talk News item (post) could also include a link to the discovery post*

    What do you think?

    *actually, I know that won't work, because it's extremely hard to get the URL of individual v2 Talk posts; the best you could do would be to link to the discussion (thread), and give tedious directions to find the post, like "it's on page 14, about half-way down the page". In this case, we're lucky, because the 'discovery post' is the OP of the thread.

    Posted

  • 42jkb by 42jkb scientist, admin

    I think that a "News" section on Talk is a great idea and I'll start a new section once we have launched the new data or if something else comes up before hand.

    Posted

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

    "edited on" (or similar) text string, and timestamp, added when a post is edited

    In Galaxy Zoo, Hanny discovered the Voorwerp. Green Peas were also discovered there.

    Here in RGZ, there has been the discovery of ... well, something very exciting! 😄

    Serendipitous discoveries are not entirely serendipitous; the design of Zooniverse projects such as GZ and RGZ goes some way to making these easier for scientists to spot and follow-up on.

    One downside of the current version of Talk, however, is that you - the author of a post - can edit it at any time, without leaving a trace. Of course, in the GZ forum you can also edit your own posts, but at least you leave a visible trace, in the form of an annotation at the bottom of the post, provided by the system. Like this: "Last Edit: May 13, 2014, 08:02:14 pm by JeanTate"

    (if you squeeze your major discovery into just 140 characters or less, in a comment, you can't edit it; but who wants to do that? You'd write a post/start a discussion! 😃)

    Really cool serendipitous discoveries attract a lot of attention (yay!), and having an accurate historical record of those discoveries is very important, I feel. Can we get this mod made to Talk soon, in time for the next major serendipitous discovery? Please?

    Posted

  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to 42jkb's comment.

    In the interests of getting as wide an audience for these suggestions as possible (within active extra-galactic Zooniverse projects), I copy/posted your comment in the GZ forum and in the GZ Talk. Capella05 wrote this, over in GZ Talk:

    We have had that all along on SW Talk - never realised it wasn't across the board.

    It is an area exclusively for the Scientists - that does sound a bit odd, but let me explain. We found at the beginning of SW, the Scientists needed an area where they could post updates, that would not get swamped by all the other discussions. We renamed one the default boards,and we manually keep it clean of clutter (no, we do not delete just move the post to another board).

    Posted

  • JeanTate by JeanTate

    Not really a suggestion, just a note to say that there is a Talk Feedback Form which you can use to, well give feedback on Talk.

    Here's how it begins:

    Talk Feedback Form

    We hope to embark on a significant rebuild of our Talk discussion platform in 2014. If you have feedback on the features you like or dislike about Talk, or ideas for new features, then please fill out this form. We will use the data collected to inform our design and decision process. This will allow us to build a better Talk, that suits more volunteers' needs for freeform citizen science and socialisation within the Zooniverse.

    You are not required to give your Zooniverse Username.

    Posted