Our Discussion Boards

Have you ever been on our discussion boards? They are located within the "Talk" tab, as shown in the picture above, and are accessible from every screen in the classification website. The discussion boards ultimately serve as a way for project researchers and volunteers to communicate. Clicking "Talk" will take you to our list of discussion boards, each of which serves as a platform for communication about a different topic.

Discussion boards galore!

The most populated discussion board is the Notes board. When you comment on a picture that shows up in your classification photostream, this is the default for where it goes. You can also navigate there directly to see what other folks are commenting on! This board is designed to be a place for general questions and comments about individual subjects you see while classifying. Volunteers share the images they had trouble classifying, questions about behavior they were seeing, and show us their favorites sequences. This board has also been where the photo contest entries have been shared.

A look at the Notes board - before Emma or Caitlin have gone through to respond to your recent comments ;)

Another discussion board is the Technical Support board. This is where users can share technical problems they are having with the website - ask here about glitches you see, issues you are having with the interface, etc. We want everything to run smoothly, so please do let us know on this board if you encounter any problems while classifying! Many of the technical details of the project are not under our project's control but are built-in parts of the Zooniverse platform, but we'll do what we can or at least provide an explanation!

Our Technical Support board

The Announcements discussion board is where Cedar Creek researchers post news updates. This has included information about the photo contest, the completion of image seasons, and heads ups about media appearances, events Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve is having, among others. Many of these items also are detailed in the Results section if you click on the "About" tab at the top of your classification screen. Although the project team primarily are the ones posting in the Announcements board, feel free to respond to our posts there if you would like!

Announcements! Announcements!

The Project Blog board is where we provide a link and a brief description of new blog posts. We are also happy to answer any comments or questions you may have about the content in the blog posts on this board. You can also suggest new blog topics here, if there is something you'd like us to highlight!

Can't find the most recent blog post? Look no further than the Project Blog board.

Another discussion board is the Questions for the Research Team board. On this board, we have been answering questions about the project as a whole: the number of cameras (and bears!) on site, which types of animals present on the reserve, why we designed things the way we did, etc. This is the best place to ask questions like these, although you can also tag #askaresearcher when classifying and we'll back to you as soon as possible.

The in-depth version of #askaresearcher

The Project Discussion board is a good place to share any especially interesting photos that you come across while classifying, ones that you want others to be able to easily find and appreciate (the images in the Notes board get buried QUICKLY!). This is where we highlight interesting trends (such as the doe and her newborn fawn) and it has also been a hot spot for sharing GIFs of interesting sequences.

Share your interesting findings with us!

Last but not least, we have just added some new discussion boards! The first is the Selfies board. We have noticed that volunteers enjoy seeing and tagging animal selfies, so we thought you'd like having them all in the same place. Animal selfies are definitely the best selfies! We pull from this board for #selfieSunday posts on social media, among other things.

Who DOESN'T love a good animal selfie??

We have also added an Animal Behaviors discussion board. There have been so many sequences with interesting animal behavior (such as the adorable coyote pups), as well as some awesome #funniestbehavior entries that we thought it'd be helpful to see them all in one place.

Behaviors, compiled.

Adding these new discussion boards will also help organize the Notes board, so we would appreciate you putting images that fit under these new categories in the corresponding boards. Simply click open a discussion board, then click the +New Discussion button and get typing! If you are in the classification photostream and find something you'd like to share to a board other than Notes, it's simple as well. Click 'Done and Talk', and then instead of just typing in the box, choose "Start a New Discussion". This will give the option to select a different board, add in a title, and write your comment or question. When you hit the "Create Discussion" button, the image and your new text will automatically move the board you selected!

There are a couple of ways that you can get involved with the discussion boards without just posting to them! The first is that you can just go browse them- you never know what you'll find! You could see the answer to a question you had but didn't want to ask, learn a new fun fact about animals, or be educated about a plant you had never seen before. Also, if there's a discussion board you're particularly interested in, you can subscribe to it.

When you're subscribed to the page, you will receive an email when there activity on the page. It's a great way to keep up with the board.

We hope that our discussion boards are just as helpful for you as they are for us. Your efforts highlighting images on the discussion boards allow us to pick up on image trends that you're seeing (such as when the prescribed burn images started appearing). They also allow us to learn about and fix any problems that may be arising. We also like to feature our favorite images from the discussion boards on our social media pages! So, if you want your images to be showcased, the discussion boards are a good place to start. We'll end this wall of text and screenshots with a favorite picture from our new Selfie board. Happy Friday!