* * * NEW USERS START HERE: FAQs * * *
-
by
ChimpMods
Chimp and See interface questions
Why do we not have an “unknown” or “I can’t tell” button?
It is customary for most Zooniverse projects about identifying animals to not have any sort of “unknown” button. The reason for this is that it is more helpful to the project for users to guess when they are not sure—no matter how wild the guess! Since many people view each image, the sum total of classifications is taken into consideration. When guesses correlate, they tend to be correct! When they don’t, the types of guesses that are made can still tell us something about the video. This blog post on Snapshot Serengeti may be helpful in understanding how this works.
How can I go back and watch a video I annotated and keep it available?
If you navigate to your profile, you should be able to see videos you've classified. Scroll down for older ones. You can also collect videos as favorites or in specialized collections that you can set up as manual collections with the “Collect” button in the video frame on Talk or as a tag group collection using “Create a tag group”.
How can I discuss a video with others?
After clicking the “Finish” button of the classification interface, you can see a summary of your annotation, a map of the region of the research site, and – depending on whether you classified a chimp or another animal – several buttons that bring you to Talk – our discussion forum for all videos and all sites. The “Discuss on Talk” button brings you to this video’s talk page. You can add a comment, question, or hashtag. You can start discussions about that video in the Science, Help, and Chat sections. In this moment, the video will link automatically to your comment, but in discussions about several videos at once, you need to add the video ID (e.g. ACP00XXXXX) to your post for others to know what you are talking about.
The main Talk page shows all recent video comments in the upper part and the different on-going discussions of all sections below. The left sidebar contains important links to some guides, the open research sites, and the keyword collection.
What should I do if there are multiple animals in the video?
If they are all the same species doing the same thing, you can use the quantity selector to select the number of animals. If they are different species, or multiple individuals of the same species doing different things, you should add multiple annotations to the video. For example, you might mark "2 red river hogs on the ground, traveling", and "2 red river hogs on the ground, feeding" in the same video.
Why is there no quantity selection when marking chimpanzees?
We want volunteers to annotate each chimpanzee separately, because we ask more questions (like sex and age category) about chimps than other animals.
I am not sure about age and sex in chimpanzees. What are the basic rules?
Juvenile or Adult? Infants (until age 4) and juveniles (until age 14) are both classified as “youth”. Infants are mostly carried by their mother and usually very close to her. Chimps are born with light-colored faces that darken with age, so the face color is a good indicator too. A special mark of juveniles is the white anal tuft. If it’s there, it’s a juvenile. But without a direct size comparison to an adult, it is often not easy to tell the juveniles, so please take your best guess. See also here.
Female or male? Usually, if a chimp is carrying an infant that means it is a female. Female chimps have a (cyclically changing) sexual swelling that is – swollen or not – visible as a pinkish skin folding at their backsides. If a female is swollen, she is definitely an adult. Also, one can often see the breast nipples in females.
Male chimps have a more robust body build than females. At least from behind, the testicles are clearly seen. Sometimes one can see the penis too.
If you cannot decide about the sex, there is the “unidentifiable” option available. See also here.I made an error marking. Can I change it? What should I do?
Please don’t worry about it! Just keep classifying. Many people will classify each video, and we do not expect everyone to get it “right” every single time. The data reduction process takes this into account. Even your best guess is extremely helpful!
Why isn’t there a category for monkeys?
Please mark all monkeys (including baboons) and nocturnal primates like galagos and pottos as “other primate.” If you know the exact species of the primate, please add it in a comment after clicking “Discuss on Talk” on the summary page after your classification.
What does the “site name” mean?
The site name identifies at which location in Africa the videos were taken. The name is a combination of two random words, plus a number. The number signifies the order in which each site’s videos were uploaded onto the project. More information about site names here.
Why isn't the search function working for me?
Sorry, there are some known bugs with the search function. You can circumvent the problem by using a regular google search with the specification site:talk.chimpandsee.org and your search term(s). This ensures that google searches only on our project site and returns the relevant results.
When should I hashtag a video?
Hashtagging is always optional, but it's used by the science team to get more specific answers that aren't possible from the chimpandsee annotation system. If you want to help the chimp&see science team (thank you!), here is the official list of hashtags and below are some rules of thumb for hashtagging. Because of the way tag collections work (see below), if you're not sure whether to tag, you can always comment on the video without tagging it.
Tag if
- it's a chimp
- it's a species that doesn't have its own category in classification (e.g. monkeys and primates, all the species that fall into other (non-primate), birds, etc.) and you can ID the correct species
- it has multiple species or other interesting features (particularly any of the official hashtag items)
- the video is an especially good/clear example of a species, or if the species is rare
- you can't ID the animal (then add #need_ID)
- you've identified the animal, but the ID was especially hard, and/or you had to look at the neighboring videos in order to figure it out
If you add a tag, it's also useful to the science team for you to hashtag the site name (eg: #DryLake). You can also add your own hashtags if you find an interesting behaviour that you want to collect or that you think the science team might find useful and that isn't already on the list! And if you aren't sure feel free to start a discussion in Talk about the new hashtag you want to use.
Where can I find a list of videos that contain chimps?
Where can I find _______ on the website?
What should I do if the video contains a fire, but no animals?
How should I mark domestic animals like sheep, goats, and dogs?
How do I mark an infant being carried?
When should I select "on the ground"?
When should I select "nothing there"?
How do I post video screen captures?
How can I jazz up my forum posts?
Animal Identification questions
Where can I find sample videos of each species?
I've found a chimpanzee, now what do I do?
What are distinguishing characteristics of individual chimpanzees?
Why are you trying to individually identify each chimp?
Where can I find more links to help with animal identification?
ANIMAL IDENTIFICATION GUIDES
What kind of ruminant (hoofed animal) is it?What kind of monkey (other primate) is it?
The Research behind Chimp&See
What is done with all of the non-chimp animal information collected?
What is the purpose of the study?
Who makes up the science team?
Posted
- it's a chimp