Radio Galaxy Zoo Talk

Hello, Galaxy Zoo Radio!

  • DZM by DZM Zooniverse Team

    Hello R.G.Z. Zooites! Some of you may have seen my introductory posts over at the regular old-school Galaxy Zoo), but for those who didn't... well, hello! 😃

    My name is Darren--DZM here on Talk--and I've just joined the Zooniverse team. I'm working on a few projects, first and foremost a makeover of this Talk system to incorporate some of the awesome feedback that you and other Zooites have been offering. I’ll also be around these boards as often as possible, looking for any other ways in which I can help out, so I’m always interested in hearing from you!

    I should mention that my background is in journalism and relations, not science or astronomy, so I am a complete neophyte at, say, galaxies. 😃 However, I’m really hoping to learn from all of you incredibly smart people! If possible, I’d like to participate in this project as an ordinary new citizen scientist alongside my role with the team. I already learned what a voorwerp is (sort of), so I’m on my way, right?

    If there’s anything that you think the new guy should know right off the bat, please share, and feel free to ask anything about me as well. Thanks to everyone for being so welcoming, and I’m looking forward to working together!

    For science!

    DZM

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

    Hi DZM, and welcome to RGZ! 😃

    Have you found the Suggestions on how to improve RGZ Talk ... thread here yet? If not, please check it out.

    Each project has its fave terms; here it's things like 'giant', 'hybrid', and SDRAGN*; if you'd like some help with these, you have only to ask!

    Even though you're new, perhaps you could explain what being an ADMIN (yes, in caps, dark reds ones no less) means? Oh, and if you don't mind, could you say a few words about how you came to a member of the Zooniverse team?

    Happy hunting, especially for SDRAGNs! 😄

    *OK, that's a fave of mine, and a few other zooites (lower case, please), perhaps not everyone here. They * may * be related to voorwerpjes ...

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  • DZM by DZM Zooniverse Team

    Hi Jean! Thanks for the link to that thread! I'll save it and be sure that all those suggestions are properly considered as we do our redesign!

    As far as I can tell, being an ADMIN (you have to imagine it's said through a loudspeaker, of course) gives me generally the same abilities as a moderator, perhaps one or two extra ones that I'll figure out down the line. I believe that all Zooniverse staff are ADMINs on these boards, so at least for now, that's mostly what it denotes. I'll let you know when I figure out if it offers me any other cool superpowers.

    As for how I joined the team, I have a background as a community journalist and a public-relations official, and the team here was looking for someone to run some of our community outreach/communications efforts. It's a new position with the team, so I'm excited to step into the role and work with you awesome volunteers to continue to build the Zooniverse community!

    SDRAGNs, you say, hm? I feel like that should also be bellowed through a loudspeaker... 😃

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

    Thanks DZM.

    As far as I know, the Zooniverse team has two 'homes', the Adler in Chicago (USA), and University of Oxford (UK), though I imagine in today's online world some members may spend much/most of their time working from the IRL homes. May I ask, which of these two is your home? Or perhaps it's a both/neither? For practical purposes, what time zone are you usually in?

    In your intro, you mentioned that you're working on a few projects, one of which is the redesign of Talk; may I ask, can you share with us some of the others?

    SDRAGN is a term coined by a member of the RGZ Science Team, Ray Norris*. DRAGNs are Double Radio (lobed) Active Galactic Nuclei, with the AGN part older than the DR part. Linguistically, the parents of AGN are QSO (quasi-stellar object) and quasar; QSOs and quasars are, in some senses, the most active of AGNs. AGN is a unifying concept; the basic model (a super-massive black hole with an accretion disk/disc, dusty torus, and 'narrow' and 'broad' ionization regions (think voorwerpjes, but confined to the very centers of galaxies), plus polar jets) successfully accounts for an enormous range of apparently unrelated astronomical phenomena and object classes. However, only a minority of AGNs appear to have a pair of radio lobes (the DR), more or less symmetrically placed with respect to the AGN. The "S" stand for 'spiral'; DRAGNs with host galaxies that are spirals (or, more generally, disk galaxies) are incredibly rare, so finding a new one is incredibly exciting (for your reading pleasure, check out the Hourglass sources associated with spiral galaxies thread; 'hourglass' sources are DRs, with the lobes quite close together, from our perspective).

    Happy hunting (especially for SDRAGNs)! 😃

    *at least, I think that's who first came up with it!

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  • DZM by DZM Zooniverse Team

    Hi Jean,

    I'm in Chicago at the Adler--so, US Central time.

    Talk is my major priority right now, along with getting to know everybody on these boards, but I'm also helping out with content on some of our site builds and redesigns. For instance, we're nearly finished with an overhaul of the Cyclone Center page. (Incidentally, everyone should go do some classifying on Cyclone Center! It's a great team with a great science goal. 😃 )

    So, if I understand correctly... AGNs are common, DRAGNS are fairly uncommon, and SDRAGNS are basically unicorns? 😃 (or dragons?)

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  • ivywong by ivywong scientist, admin

    Welcome Darren to RGZ! 😃

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  • DZM by DZM Zooniverse Team

    Thank you, @ivywong!

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

    Well, it seems you've already had an impact!

    Not only do we have darker links (easier to read)*, but you've managed to get new box colors ... you are dark cyan (instead of an off-putting red-brown color), and SCIENTISTs and MODERATORs are grey.

    Best of all, you're now ZOONIVERSE TEAM instead of ADMIN, a title which reflects what you actually do, yay!

    Why are you still all SHOUTING though? Or, if you're simply modest (using smaller font size), why can't we all have the ability to use different font sizes?

    and the team here was looking for someone to run some of our community outreach/communications efforts

    I thought that was Grant Miller (mrniaboc)?

    *except in PH, where the new links caused havoc with the light curves, so they had to undo the change.

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  • DZM by DZM Zooniverse Team

    Hi Jean, is my font coming in at an odd size? It looks identical to everyone else's text for me. (And I don't think I'm using CAPS LOCK?) Could you please screenshot that for me so I can see what you're seeing?

    I'll be working closely with Grant. He's still with the team, never fear. 😃

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

    is my font coming in at an odd size? It looks identical to everyone else's text for me. (And I don't think I'm using CAPS LOCK?) Could you please screenshot that for me so I can see what you're seeing?

    Sorry, I wasn't explicit enough: what's a different font size (and ALL CAPS) is the titles "ADMIN, ZOONIVERSE-TEAM" (back to dark magenta, and you have already discovered), "MODERATOR", "SCIENTIST", etc.

    I'll be working closely with Grant. He's still with the team, never fear.

    I kinda figured he was/is still likely around (Daily Zooniverse, for example); however, he was/is "Community Manager", but your description of your own role ("someone to run some of our community outreach/communications efforts") seems - to me anyway - to be exactly that of "Community Manager".

    As part of your quest to better align titles (etc) with roles (from the perspective of outsiders-looking-in), maybe you could clarify this?

    More generally, maybe a Zooniverse blog post or two might help? For example, in a recent Daily Zooniverse, there's a recycled group photo, taken in Chicago, but posted in conjunction with two job openings at the University of Oxford. Grant regularly writes about Zooniverse Team people - at which time we learn what they do - but there's nothing (that I know of anyway) which draws it all together neatly. And names to go with the people in the group photo would be nice.

    In the longer term, if the 'general Zooniverse forum' which zkChris promised (a great many) months' ago now* ever becomes reality, it might considerably reduce the need for you post ~20 copies of essentially the same thing, in 20+ Talks! 😛

    *I can give you a link to his promise, if you're interested

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  • DZM by DZM Zooniverse Team

    The general/unified Zooniverse forum/Talk is my #2 goal. #1 is making everyone as happy with Talk (and the Zooniverse) as possible! But, yes, it's a keystone of the new build we're working on.

    We're also working on a blog post that summarizes my general role. I'll link it once it's up! I There are also good descriptions of pretty much everyone's roles on this Zooniverse page; I'm not there yet, but I'll make sure I'm added once the blog post goes up.

    On the other topic... I actually rather like having those designations be all-caps and with a smaller font. It helps to distinguish them from folks' user names (even if mine already is all-caps). Hope that's okay! If it's generally disliked, it could be considered for a future update.

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

    Cool! 😄

    There are also good descriptions of pretty much everyone's roles on this Zooniverse page

    Sure, but try as I might, I cannot match all the faces in this Zooinverse team photo with the people on that page; help!

    On the other topic... I actually rather like having those designations be all-caps and with a smaller font. It helps to distinguish them from folks' user names (even if mine already is all-caps). Hope that's okay! If it's generally disliked, it could be considered for a future update.

    Well, I'm just one zooite among a million or so, but I got into very hot water - with some MODERATORs and some SCIENTISTs - because I used those titles/designations literally (i.e. exactly as written, in ALL CAPS). They all, apparently, misunderstood me, and thought I was SHOUTING at them (much like you misunderstood SDRAGN to be spoken with a bullhorn). True, I rarely hang out in places where ALL CAPS means SHOUTING, but I was quite surprised that no one (apparently) understood what I meant, from (what I thought) was the very clear context. Now if a long-time zooite, and native speaker of English, can make such a stupid mistake, imagine what someone from China might do (no Twitter, or Facebook, or even CAPS, there).

    Somewhat more related to your other project, so feel free to ignore this, but do you know why the Zooniverse project, Quench, is completely absent from the Zooniverse Science Projects webpage? Might explain why you haven't dropped by, in Quench Talk, to say Hi! ...

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

    We're also working on a blog post that summarizes my general role. I'll link it once it's up!

    It's up: Introducing Darren McRoy – Zooniverse Community Builder! 😃

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  • DZM by DZM Zooniverse Team

    Thanks for posting, Jean!

    Feel free to check out that post, everyone, and I'm happy to answer any additional questions that anyone might have! 😃

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  • DZM by DZM Zooniverse Team

    By the way, I caught up with Laura Trouille today. Quench has been on a slight hiatus, as Laura was out on maternity leave. She's just finished sorting through all of the work that was accumulated while she was away, and is preparing to return to the Quench project! 😃

    She added that the classification portion of the project is essentially done, and that they're about to start working on a paper. There may be some additional work for dedicated Quench zooites, and there should be something posted up on the Quench Talk and/or the Galaxy Zoo blog very soon. Stay tuned!

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

    Thanks; that's very good news indeed! 😄

    SpaceWarps is another orphan, like Quench; neither retired nor featured. I wonder how many more there are?

    Here's a topic for Zooniverse-wide discussion, once a forum is up and running: why are some projects more addictive than others? And do they just seem so to a handful/minority/majority of zooites who at least try out different projects? Myself, the Andromeda Project was by far the most addictive, though some apparently think Sunspotter is much more so. Of course, RGZ is much more interesting, scientifically.

    I've just spent a pleasant time perusing various other Talks, particularly those of projects I've never even joined (I at least try every astronomy project). Seems in most there are few, if any, non-MODERATORs who respond to your posts, but also that there are some - like RGZ - in which MODERATORs are absent. Interesting, eh?

    More worrying is the (apparent) near-universality of 'repeats'; threads in which super-zooites report getting the same Subject to classify/transcribe/etc. Per many a post by key ZOONIVERSE-TEAM members, in many places, the design of Zooiverse projects (the core Zooniverse engine) is supposed to make this impossible (or exceedingly unlikely)*. Yet it seems to be (or have been) happening in nearly every project! 😮 Which means it's likely not a bug, but a feature. I know this has been looked into, several times in RGZ alone, and every time it's been, like, "doesn't happen" or "exceedingly rare", or "we think we've fixed it". But it never is, it seems (fixed, that is).

    Here's what seems really odd to me: no one seems to have recognized that repeats happen to (nearly) all Zooniverse projects, so perhaps there's a deep, possibly subtle, flaw at the very heart of the Zooniverse engine?

    *Stardate M83 is an exception

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

    Jumping the gun a bit (it is, after all, not even noon in Chicago, on the first day back to work after a weekend!), but did you know that someone (a zooite - me) wrote a comment on the Zooniverse blog post entry (introducing you)?

    I suspect that far more people (not necessarily zooites) read Zooniverse blog posts than follow this or that thread in any Zooniverse project's Talk ... 😉

    Oh, and thanks again for the Talk posts (here and elsewhere) on Quench. Both mlpeck and I have started posting things pertinent to Stage 3 already (i.e. ahead of Laura returning), as has Ivy Wong.

    Now, how to get ChrisMolloy's attention ...? Jules'? Zutopian's?

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  • DZM by DZM Zooniverse Team

    Hi Jean, yes, I did see your comment on the blog post. 😃 Thank you for the welcome, again!

    I can tell you that the general goal down the line of allowing the community to vet and select new projects, as Chris outlined, will certainly be open for a lot of public comment. At this time, we realize that the current edition of Talk isn't ideal for that sort of broader Zooniverse community discussion, so our first priority is to build the improved, universal Talk that will allow us to move forward towards that goal.

    Long story short... we want the better Talk before we can start to tackle that longer-term ambition. 😃 That will give us the tools that we need to start to really grow the Zooniverse community and Zooniverse projects!

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  • Jellogum by Jellogum

    Hi, My name is Jeremy. I am working to meld games with open source projects and education. For example, I am developing some software called GISZoo and GISCell, which in time will dovetail some features of Zooniverse with my project. I am here to explore how to infuse various Zooniverse projects into my game. I am also trying to convince Star Citizen developers that aspects of their game should include Zooniverse projects to enhance in-game play while helping to promote the goals of Zooniverse projects.

    Can someone offer a contact that I can use to discuss if it is possible to meld software between my project and Zooniverse?

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

    Hello Jeremy.

    If your ideas could lead to more participation in Radio Galaxy Zoo, that'd be wonderful! 😃 Doubly so if it also led to more people getting interested in radio astronomy, active galactic nuclei, and so on; how do you see that happening (assuming your melding ideas were to be implemented)?

    For contacts, why not send a PM to the Zooniverse's Community Guy, DZM?

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  • paolo-pisolo by paolo-pisolo

    come scandagliare varie zone di Universe con radio telescope sempre stessa distanza 13,81 miliardi anni-luce per scoprire nuove singolarità?

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