Progress!

Thanks to the tireless work of our hard-working volunteers (you all!), we are ~39% of the way through this season! I hear you saying "Wait, what? The front page at eyesonwild.com only says 1% completion!! DON'T LIE TO US, CAITLIN." That number is the ratio of retired subject sets (2,257) to the total number of subject sets (223,900). It's a bit misleading in a way that discounts your very hard work!!

In our previous seasons, it's taken an average of 10x as many classifications as total subjects to finish a season: and this season, with all its 'nothing there' pictures, should require fewer than that because of our retirement rules. By that metric, we are actually already ~39% of the way done with this season: 869,238 classification submitted out of 223,900x10 classifications probably needed! That's AWESOME!! So please don't get discouraged, and please DO keep classifying. We know the grass gets very tiresome but we hope you'll pop in every now and again (like this downy woodpecker, found on Friday by LForrester and ID'd by the always-reliable MTerrell) to help us reach our goal of 100% completion!

One place you can go to see a version of the progress-as-measured-by-classification-count is the 2nd level stats page. Click the hyperlink where it says 'CEDAR CREEK: EYES ON THE WILD STATISTICS' which will take you to another page where you can look at classifications per day, per hour, etc. I've just this evening figured out how to change the graphic displayed at the top of that section to illustrate the project's progress as measured by classification count instead of retirement count. As far as I can tell, it can only do the 'naive' estimate of 15 classifications needed per subject, so it's at 26% rather than the more accurate ~39%. At this moment, there is no way to make that metric show on the progress bar, unfortunately. I have put in a request to Team Zooniverse for it to happen so hopefully it will be available sometime down the road. It was thanks in part to several of you requesting it that we now have the 'invert colors' button available in the Talk boards, so changes as a result of suggestions do happen!