Complexity complications
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Quia
Just thought I'd share a pair that made me stop and think for a bit. Which is more complex? Do two Beta regions close together outweigh the complexity of the Beta-gamma-delta mess? Would it be different if the pair of beta spots were stronger? It's hard to avoid a bias towards brighter, larger AR's being more complex, but should I even be trying to avoid that bias?
Trials of a sunspotter!
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Mjtbarrett
That gets right to the heart of the project! Check out page 4 of this: http://citsci.syr.edu/system/files/galaxyzoo.pdf to see that you are not alone 😃
I think that any classification, based on any method of personal choice, is equally valid. Each image will be seen and ranked (or whatever) several times over. Some form of smoothing will no doubt be applied, possibly excluding dissenting opinion in the form of outliers, and an appropriate arcane method of arriving at a meaningful result obtained. The important thing is to classify as you see fit. In a real sense each contributor is making an equally valid contribution to the whole - there is no right or wrong.In case you haven't already seen it, this may be of interest; it was a bit of an eye-opener for me 😃 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds
Things don't always run smoothly though! A couple of more lively debates have taken place on the forum of Galaxy Zoo (and others) that make for entertaining reading!! These are organised a bit weirdly; probably best to start at the bottom of the last page and work upwards :~\
Soft science http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=280166.0
Lively debate over fake images and the meaning of zooite life: http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=280150.90
Simple click and go classification isn't the whole story IMHO. The interaction between people on the Talk pages is the bit that I really like. It doesn't matter if a comment is intended to be faintly amusing, deliberately provocative or whatever. Sometimes an idea can be sparked off by a seemingly random comment by someone else that can lead to all kinds of surprising results.
I hope that the powers that be can promote this Sunspotter project well and attract lots of contributors to both the classifications and the talk pages. It's early days still and a relatively small number of people have made it as far as these Talk pages ( which is a shame) but hopefully numbers will increase...
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pahiggins
Thanks for posting those links, I am new to crowd sourcing, so it looks like I have some reading to do!
In this initial stage of the project we have only actively publicised in irish media, because of the small data set. Even with such a small group of people, we have managed a huge number of classifications!
It is my intention that the next stage of the project (work in progress!) be publicised much more widely, given the >10 fold increase in the size of the dataset.
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Mjtbarrett
Ok. Confession time.... I have to say that I've deliberately chosen the least complex SS on about four occasions because the less complex region looked more interesting. Gulp. I am pretty sure that my input won't significantly alter the results because of the number of views and clicks. Sometimes the choices are tough because there are two images that BOTH look interesting. It's a good job we can't choose both at once or you'd never get anywhere.... 😃
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Quia
But there's a conundrum! Complex things tend to be more visually interesting, so were you really wrong?
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Mjtbarrett
According to my wife I am always wrong... (sigh)
It would be great if we could be shown both images after classification in order to avoid the temptation to deliberately chose a (more interesting) less complex image (eg in order to add to a collection or something). It might also be nice to be able to annotate the images and perhaps publish a full size view...Posted
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parrish
admin
in response to Mjtbarrett's comment.
Both images show up in the recent list in your profile after you choose one of them.
We've had a lot of good feedback about wanting to favorite or talk about an image after classifying it. It is kind of annoying to have to go into your profile to do these things. The idea was to keep the classification page as simple as possible, so I'll revisit some of our designs for that.
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Mjtbarrett
@parrish thank you very much for that! Just a thought - the selection of one image triggers an immediate jump to the next pair. The addition of a couple of radio buttons, one for "next image" and one for "any comments?" might be helpful. I realise that this would slow the process down a bit but it would allow for a couple of nanoseconds worth of extra viewing time and may be helpful in avoiding accidental selection of one of the next pair by ham-fisted iPad users like me 😃
If the "any comments?" option were chosen it could lead to a sub-menu of options to link to comment on the less complex image, go to Solarmonitor (pre-populated with the correct date if possible!) annotate images, link to the Talk pages and so on?? These options may be a bit ambitious but could be extremely useful and might help to increase participation in discussions and further analysis. It's nice to have something to do other than the very simple classification and wouldn't affect the ranking or classification in any way except slowing it down marginally...
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