Snapshot Serengeti Talk

what to do if not sure?

  • sardo by sardo

    There should be a button to click to move on to the next slide if the animal can't be identified

    Posted

  • alexjenner by alexjenner

    Agreed. What else do we do? Make a (probably incorrect) guess? Can't see how that would be useful.

    Posted

  • cyzaki by cyzaki

    The sciency types have said that they find it more useful to have incorrect guesses than nothing. They said that when they get a picture where there's lots of disagreement over what the animal is, they can have a closer look themselves. So I think we're supposed to just make our best guess in cases like this.

    Posted

  • aliburchard by aliburchard scientist, translator

    @cyzaki - you're exactly right! Margaret (Kosmala) is planning to put up a more detailed blog post about the "data reduction" process soon.

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  • sardo by sardo

    But it frustrates the user! This is probably a significant reason why people give up on classifying. And so much time is wasted trying desperately to guess what it might be!!

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  • craigpacker by craigpacker scientist

    I agree that it can be frustrating -- hopefully, you've found most photos easy to classify. When the classifications are finished, Margaret, Ali and I will wade through all the photos that people found confusing (based on inconsistent classifications) and maybe we'll have a eureka moment about how to improve the system next time around!

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  • dms246 by dms246 moderator

    Just some thoughts on this that you might (or might not!) find useful when reviewing things. 😃

    The kind of people who gravitate to this kind of project are often those who like to be reasonably accurate and precise - for someone like that, being asked to make, on occasion, outright guesses based on very little data can feel really really uncomfortable. However if there was a checkbox we could tick to indicate "This is a complete guess", that would help. I know I would feel a lot more comfortable if there was something like that, for those occasions when there's just a small patch of indistinct fur, or tip of an ear, etc, to go on. The percentage of those who select that checkbox for a particular image might be useful as another way of identifying images that need to be double checked, but even if it was a piece of data that was quietly discarded by the system and not used as part of the subsequent data analysis, it might help to encourage people to go ahead with an outright guess if they had some way of being able to differentiate between those instances and more informed identifications.

    Posted

  • aliburchard by aliburchard scientist, translator

    @dms246 -- we completely understand where you're coming from on this. We actually tried an "uncertain" button on the previous iteration of Snapshot ("Serengeti Live") and it was used in nearly 90% of ID's! So we decided it wasn't really worth it here. However, Margaret has posted a fantastic description of why this method actually works really well: http://blog.snapshotserengeti.org/

    Posted

  • tirralirra by tirralirra

    I like the suggestion that we still have to make a guess but we can click 'guess' as well. Even if the data isn't used, it would make people more comfortable about making ridiculuous guesses based on a patch of fur.

    Still, I'm getting used to making occasional wild guesses and I like the clean interface. Margaret's blog post is great!

    Posted