Cameras that rarely or never capture animals
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by
escholzia
Following up on comments on "arthur" the plant that triggers numerous empty images: I made a collection of cameras that rarely or never capture animals. I don't know how many images I've classified, since the lab projects don't feed into Zooinverse counts, but I'm sure it's in the thousands. And aside from a rare squirrel or bird, I have never seen an animal in these pics. So as to maximize volunteer usefulness (our labor may be free, but it ain't cheap 😃 ), would it be possible to either reposition those cameras or reduce the sensitivity to motion?
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by
ForestPreserve
moderator
@escholzia, I like this idea. There's one badly tilted cam that seems to show only cars, but at least it's more interesting than Arthur.
Now, I need to figure out how to find collections. Site navigation could be a little better.
Speaking of navigation, you can estimate how many you've classifed. From the classify page, click "Profile" on the banner. (I use right-click and "Open Link in New Tab".) This should take you to your "Recents". Mine shows 12 recent images plus 692 pages to click on. So something like 12 * 692 = 8,304 images so far. The main page says there 97,928 images, so I'm at almost 8.5%.
Of course there are about 15,000 images of #arthur.
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escholzia
See if this link works for you: http://talk.chicagowildlifewatch.org/#/collections/CCHS00003d. I think collections may be limited to one person, though.
I wondered whether I was classifying images multiple times, so I logged 200 pic IDs for one unproductive camera (example here: http://talk.chicagowildlifewatch.org/#/subjects/ACH0000v2t). Only the pics taken in the daytime. In those 200 pics, I never had a repeat, which was good to know. And, I should say, only 2 squirrels and 1 bird!
Ouch - 1600 * 12 = 19K pics classified. I think I'll go get a life now.....
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mason_UWI
scientist
Hi all!
We do try to do our best with camera placement and we hope in the future to be able to remove some of those empties before they get up on CWW, but a number of mishaps do occur throughout a season, whether it is a malfunctioning camera, "arthur", or a park visitor "adjusting" our cameras. I will bring this up with my coworkers to see if there is anything we can do about this. We are setting up cameras again come January so I will stress camera placement to them.
Thanks for entering so many photos!
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DZM
admin
I vote #arthur for official CWW mascot! 😄
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ForestPreserve
moderator
@escholzia, the link to your collection works for me.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a collections page, and searching doesn't seem to find collections by name. If you include a tag like #productive on each image, a search on "productive" would probably find at least one image, and then show the collection on its discussion page.
Right now, when I search for "productive" it doesn't return your collection, but it does give one of the #arthur images where you mention the collection and a discussion thread where you use the word "productive" (well before I went on this Arthur kick). But neither of these references gets you the collection.
Likewise, when I search for "arthur", it doesn't find my "50 Shades of Arthur" collection, but it does find two images and two discussions. Not sure why there are only two images, I've tagged nearly two dozen: http://talk.chicagowildlifewatch.org/#/collections/CCHS000043
My Arthur collection does show up on the discussion pages of the two images that the "arthur" search returns.
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DZM
admin
Oh, our search is a nightmare, and I sincerely apologize for it. It does not interface well with hashtags and collections.
It's a huge, huge priority to fix in the next generation of Talk, I promise!!
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ForestPreserve
moderator
OK, so where do hashtags go? I'd assumed they could be used to categorize and find images...is there some interface I'm not seeing? (For example, are our comments being tweeted?)
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DZM
admin
No, nothing is being tweeted! 😃
The idea is definitely that hashtags let you categorize and find images... for instance, clicking the "coyote" hashtag should let you find all of the objects that have been tagged #coyote. It just doesn't work as well as it really should, which is why it's high on the list of things to get fixed as we develop the next Talk!
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ForestPreserve
moderator
Thanks DZM! I see the "popular hashtags" pane in certain spots, like on this thread. It does show some results, but clicking "arthur" doesn't show most of the 50-odd images I tagged with #arthur.
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DZM
admin
Yeah, exactly. I don't know why it barely works. As I understand it, this platform was a little bit rushed.
The #arthur thing gives me a good example of just how broken it is, though. It may provide an illustration of why we can't use hashtags as we're intending for an upcoming project. It gives me some proof of concept to show the developers. 😃 So, thank you!!
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escholzia
Hashtags seemed to work well in Seafloor Explorer. I could search comments on individual images going back several years.
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DZM
admin
Seafloor Explorer used the last generation of Talk, no? I think hashtags worked better on that generation? I wasn't around at the time...
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ForestPreserve
moderator
Thanks, DZM. I've seen your Arthur test collection in a few spots. There do seem to be huge swaths of Arthur, but at least there are more squirrels than I originally thought. Or at least Arthur and one squirrel. Plus some strange things happen to Arthur from time to time: http://talk.chicagowildlifewatch.org/#/subjects/ACH0000ehr
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DZM
admin
I've been testing using "tag groups," an ill-advertised feature that actually helps me find all of the images tagged "#arthur" in the way that the search fails to do.
Tag groups actually work! 😃
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