Condor Watch Talk

hints and tips...

  • stonepenny by stonepenny

    Do we have a 'hints and tips' area, where people can go for suggestions, like changing: angle of the laptop screen/brightness/zoom, don't need to report every black/white picture? Might also include an update, like don't worry about tiny birds in flight in the distance (I've been told this before, yet someone is reporting 'unknown bird in flight' over and over again - time taker). I tag all condors where ever I can, but I'm not chasing after some tiny bird flying in the distance - one of the scientists told me not to try to ID birds in flight, only those on the ground. Just suggestions, leave with you.

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  • wreness by wreness moderator

    Good questions 😃

    I can chime in with what I have said, and he scientists can add what they'd like, too.

    If you are using Chrome there is an extension called "Sheen" that lets you adjust the contrast, brightness and coloring of the screen. It's a bit helpful but I never had a ton of success with it as it only goes so far. But you might find it useful!

    You don't have to hash tag or report black photos, white photos, photos where the camera is pointed at the sky, the ground, the gate or which have no animals are are in some way "ruined". Just hit "all animals marked" and pass on it.

    There is no need to mark birds flying in the distance (specks and ones that really aren't in the feeding loop, "right" there). If they are flying off the carcass or clearly seen then that's fine.
    No need to mark birds way out in the grass or lurking so far in the distance that you're not even sure if it is a bird or a rock or a lump. If they're that far out of the Main Action it isn't important to the data. Save your eyes.

    Unknown Animals do not need to be hash tagged. They can be marked as "other animal". If you want to discuss something you sure can in the comment photo or on the boards in a post but hash tagging all the stuff isn't necessary

    Again, if you're on Chrome you can Zoom your screen by holding down the CTRL key and scrolling the wheel on your mouse.

    You don't have to mark bird shadows (ugh). It is helpful to mark all the little pieces of carcass if they're all over the place but don't worry about every teeny bit. If there are several pieces or you see an animals munching on something and figure it's eating, then mark it as 'carcass', too.

    If you get a picture that's all ravens, I find muttering at the screen as you're marking them helps a lot for stress levels 😃

    The important thing is to look at the photos with usable data, and mark the data. And as always, thanks for all your hard work and patience!

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  • daishizukagmail.com by daishizukagmail.com scientist

    Great tips! I haven't had great luck myself with zooming in--I find that if I can't see it clearly in the normal size, it rarely helps to try to zoom in. But sometimes you can get lucky and pick out a little detail that gives you a clue about the number.

    And yeah, you can ignore birds flying in the background. We're interested in what's going on at the feeding site.

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  • stonepenny by stonepenny

    just a suggestion... I've noted a 'bad image set' button on Asteroid Zoo - could we have a 'bad image' button here on Condor Watch, please?

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  • wreness by wreness moderator

    Things did change a bit on CW recently as far as the number of times a photo has to be viewed and classified as "bad" before it's retired for good (and you've been away from CW a bit..the ravens tattled on you. They did)

    Because of this, a lot of the bad images were put back into the system so we could see them right away and get rid of them right away, so it probably seems like you're seeing a lot more of them (you kind of are, but it's helping)

    A "bad" photo is one that's classified by marking it as simply "all animals marked" (and so just passing on it, if it's all white, all black, a blinding sun spot, a tipped camera showing grass, fence, some animal's wing), just carcasses, sky, a site with a scale but nothing else, a field, etc. These are recorded as "bad" photos as they contain no data. This is still "data" however and so still helpful. Each single photo also contains encoded information which has the site location, date, time and weather data even if we're not looking at anything interesting. A "bad" photo gets 2 views before it's retired.

    Asteroid Zoo presents an animated photo to classify which is really a series of 4 photos taken by 4 different satellites. If 1,2 or even if 3 of those photos are ruined, people can still possibly find asteroids and can also use the filters to stabilize the animation. If that doesn't work, you cant at least mark the artifacts. If it's really vomit-inducing and hopelessly ruined because the satellite data corrupted (it's staggering to think that it ever does here in one piece!) they see that as 4 views out of 4 didn't work and out it goes.

    Call us Old Fashioned - every photo has some data in it so we have to use Earth-based technology - eyeballs and one image at a time 😃

    As always, thank you for all your work! Carrion!

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