Global inputs
It's been thrilling to see so much interest in Eyes on the Wild! In the first five weeks of the project, nearly 3000 users have made accounts and classified photos. Countless others have contributed identifications without registering or logging in on Zooniverse. Therein lies one of the strengths of a project like this: you don't need to be physically located in the same town as the researchers, the same state, or even (as it turns out!) the same country!
A few days after the project launch back in December, I started wondering where our users were logging in from. Our project had been covered in the local Minnesota news, and I'd sent emails about our work to a few friends and family in other states. However, it seemed from the questions being asked on the Talk boards like we might have some citizen scientists who had limited experience with common North American wildlife like deer and raccoons. Where were these folks from, and how did they find out about the project?
Of course, that thought crossed my mind in the midst of winter break, and once a quick search of the general Zooniverse Talk boards told me that I couldn't personally set up analytics on our project, I forgot about it and moved on with other things. It wasn't until a few days ago that I remembered my initial question. I reached out to Grant Miller, communications lead and question answerer extraordinaire at the Zooniverse, to ask whether he could pull some basic geographic data for us and within an hour I had a CSV showing where in the world our users had logged in from!
The maps below show number of unique pageviews since the project's inception, broken down first by country and then by US state for our domestic users. Pageviews are not quite the same as users, so if these numbers seem wildly out of sync with the number of volunteers shown on the front page of the project website, don't panic. Unique pageviews are more equivalent to classification sessions - the number of times someone went to the classification part of the website and did some work. If you logged in and out several times a day or returned on several different days (as many of you do), you contributed more than one pageview from your location. Clear as mud?
Unsurprisingly, the United States has an order of magnitude more sessions than any other country: 16,357 unique pageviews compared to the UK (in second place with 1145 unique pageviews) and the Netherlands (in third place with 1097 unique pageviews). Similarly, Minnesota has many more sessions than any other state. The color scale used in these maps lumps all countries or states with more than 1000 unique pageviews together so that you can see more of the individual variation amongst the other locations.
These two tables outline numerically the data that went into creating the maps, in case you want to dig deeper into a particular state or country's sessions on the project. I removed the handful of locations where the average time spent per session was 00:00.
When we started discussions about the Zooniverse aspect of this project, we were concerned about engaging and retaining users. After all, compared to projects like Snapshot Serengeti or WildCam Gorongosa, our Central Minnesotan wildlife is a bit ho-hum. Yes, the deer can be goofy and our foxes are always a joy to find, but would we have the broad appeal and excitement of a project with lions, elephants, leopards and dikdiks? We are an ecological research station with roads running through it and grass blowing in front of the cameras, not a pristine national park or game reserve in the midst of the Great Migration. Would more than a few people stick around when they realized that it's mostly deer, raccoons and songbirds? The diversity of users and the speed at which we are zooming through images suggests that the answer is YES!! We are deeply appreciative of the effort you all have put in, and the continued contributions from our international citizen scientists. Thank you for all you do!
If you are logging in from somewhere surprising, domestic or abroad, and would like to share your stories from volunteering on the project, please email Caitlin (caitlin@umn.edu) or Emma (bubli018@umn.edu) to be featured in a blog post! We'd love to hear from you!
A few days after the project launch back in December, I started wondering where our users were logging in from. Our project had been covered in the local Minnesota news, and I'd sent emails about our work to a few friends and family in other states. However, it seemed from the questions being asked on the Talk boards like we might have some citizen scientists who had limited experience with common North American wildlife like deer and raccoons. Where were these folks from, and how did they find out about the project?
Of course, that thought crossed my mind in the midst of winter break, and once a quick search of the general Zooniverse Talk boards told me that I couldn't personally set up analytics on our project, I forgot about it and moved on with other things. It wasn't until a few days ago that I remembered my initial question. I reached out to Grant Miller, communications lead and question answerer extraordinaire at the Zooniverse, to ask whether he could pull some basic geographic data for us and within an hour I had a CSV showing where in the world our users had logged in from!
The maps below show number of unique pageviews since the project's inception, broken down first by country and then by US state for our domestic users. Pageviews are not quite the same as users, so if these numbers seem wildly out of sync with the number of volunteers shown on the front page of the project website, don't panic. Unique pageviews are more equivalent to classification sessions - the number of times someone went to the classification part of the website and did some work. If you logged in and out several times a day or returned on several different days (as many of you do), you contributed more than one pageview from your location. Clear as mud?
Unsurprisingly, the United States has an order of magnitude more sessions than any other country: 16,357 unique pageviews compared to the UK (in second place with 1145 unique pageviews) and the Netherlands (in third place with 1097 unique pageviews). Similarly, Minnesota has many more sessions than any other state. The color scale used in these maps lumps all countries or states with more than 1000 unique pageviews together so that you can see more of the individual variation amongst the other locations.
Check it out! Citizen scientists have contributed from all continents except Antartica. Do you know anyone heading that far south who wants to help round out our user pool? :) It's inspiring to see folks logging in from places as far-flung as New Zealand, Nigeria, Japan, Ecuador and Sweden. We truly have global representation and assistance in going through these hundreds of thousands of photos.
Closer to home, it was exciting to find 47 of the 50 states represented! Although we had more sessions logged from here in Minnesota than anywhere else (as expected), we also had significant contributions from Illinois, North Carolina, Oregon and California. Since my family and friends are mostly in CA, I feel like I personally can take a little credit for one of those states, but not the other three! Notably missing were Arkansas, Mississippi and Hawaii: if you've got friends in any of those states, now's the time to introduce them to the joy of Eyes on the Wild! Next time I ask Grant to run these demographics, it would be neat to see every state in the USA light up!
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This red fox and his breakfast are an exciting find no matter where you're logging in from!
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When we started discussions about the Zooniverse aspect of this project, we were concerned about engaging and retaining users. After all, compared to projects like Snapshot Serengeti or WildCam Gorongosa, our Central Minnesotan wildlife is a bit ho-hum. Yes, the deer can be goofy and our foxes are always a joy to find, but would we have the broad appeal and excitement of a project with lions, elephants, leopards and dikdiks? We are an ecological research station with roads running through it and grass blowing in front of the cameras, not a pristine national park or game reserve in the midst of the Great Migration. Would more than a few people stick around when they realized that it's mostly deer, raccoons and songbirds? The diversity of users and the speed at which we are zooming through images suggests that the answer is YES!! We are deeply appreciative of the effort you all have put in, and the continued contributions from our international citizen scientists. Thank you for all you do!
If you are logging in from somewhere surprising, domestic or abroad, and would like to share your stories from volunteering on the project, please email Caitlin (caitlin@umn.edu) or Emma (bubli018@umn.edu) to be featured in a blog post! We'd love to hear from you!
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