Planet Hunters Talk

when can I start classifying for real?

  • I_wish_I_can_study_at_Starfleet_Academy by I_wish_I_can_study_at_Starfleet_Academy

    I've clicked through over 100 simulations. Is there a test I must pass? Or a number of simulation I must go through? When can I start classifying for real?

    Posted

  • Yade by Yade

    If ther's a test to pass is obviously classified information here, just like the techniks and the tips may not be shared, everybody has to figure it out for themselv.
    Keep asking to earn yourselv a blacklisting, but no doubt we can start classifying for real verry soon - it wil happen the day with two sunsets in the week with two mondays in the year with summerholliday for everyboddy all year long 😄

    Posted

  • Yade by Yade

    I have a better hunch now.
    Seems they don't give a dam about your findings, they'r just suposed to go into a pile with data from other users, and a program will then calculate what chanses are for an exoplanet in the diagram evaluated by multiple users.
    For that purpose the Frankensteiner Freaks running this site need good spotters, so they use their crappy simulations to pick the best spotters.
    That means - when you'r good at their simulations, (that have nothing to do with reality), you will get real data, but they'l keep sending you simulations now and then to evaluate if you stay on top, and as usual you will never know what it is until you have finished the diagram.
    That makes us sheep among sheep and when you get real data, you will probably never find out weather your evaluation was right or wrong.
    That means - you can only get better in spotting simulations, but you can never get better in spotting real planets.

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  • I_wish_I_can_study_at_Starfleet_Academy by I_wish_I_can_study_at_Starfleet_Academy

    Well it would be great if the "How things work here" is communicated by the Planet Hunters lead team instead of leaving people to guess it out themselves. I don't get the point in not telling to people if they need to qualify, or keeping them in the dark about how many simulations they need to pass etc.

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  • Yade by Yade in response to I_wish_I_can_study_at_Starfleet_Academy's comment.

    I have to join you on that one. The consept they'v chosen isn't verry motivating for humans, but trying to keep it a secret is much worse.
    People will just get so pissed off when they after a lot of serious work discover how they'r pissed on.
    I'v tried to say it here and there, and not in a verry nice way. It seems nobody listens, if they did, I would have been kicked out by now.

    Posted

  • VitaSums by VitaSums

    I am so glad I found this thread, I was beginning to wonder if I was mad. Telling people the simulations are deliberately difficult and that you have to pass a lot of them will not make it easier for people to mess with their results, but it will stop people feeling like they've been taken advantage of.

    You come here wanting to offer your help, for free, for a cause, but apparently that's not good enough for them. What a joke.

    Posted

  • JRSchmitt by JRSchmitt

    There is some major error in whatever algorithm is bringing up light curves. This is not something that the science team can fix, unfortunately. We're waiting on the dev guys to fix this one.

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  • Yade by Yade

    Yeah and no reason to inform the users while waiting. Just keep throwing simulations in their face until they'r all gone.

    B.t.w. guys - it was a single line from JRSchmitt that gave me the clue to my second post here. That he don't comment further can't be used to much, since he aparently only type single lines and refused to respond to what he called a "wall of text" in my reply to his revelation. His tight lips don't make me believe i'm wrong, but judge for yourselv in: Help Board / General Interface Help and Bug Reports / A few suggestions.

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  • Yade by Yade in response to VitaSums's comment.

    Yes - being honest would maybe scare a few away, byt they would keep the best and could easily compensate by activating the users. Unfortunatly they chose to tread us like monkeys in a lab.

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  • ianjones7001 by ianjones7001

    Totally agree.
    Like I_wish_I_can_study_at_Starfleet_Academy I've clicked my way through well over a hundred sims and have absolutely no feedback on what I've accomplished, if anything.
    Am getting a bit hacked off now because I don't get a lot of free time and really want to contribute

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  • craigkomal by craigkomal in response to ianjones7001's comment.

    I agree 😃 Are there any other problems that you think could be fixed?

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  • sph87inx by sph87inx

    Same. I've gotten probably 20-30 sims in a row. What I find that helps is closing out the window and reloading the webpage. It seems to decrease the frequency of the sims (at least temporarily).

    Also, the increased frequency of the sims can have an overall negative effect on the accuracy of why you included the sims in the first place - think Pavlov. Over time, when I start to run into multiple sims in a row, I'm expecting that the following next light curve will include a sim, thus conditioning me to look or mark perceived sims which aren't there. Alternatively - as I've already heard other users state - one could purposely not mark these perceived sims, when in fact they are actual transits, and not sims at all. By not truly randomizing the sims, your overall dataset on how accurate the public is at finding sim vs. true transits is going to be flawed.

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  • Narod by Narod

    It seems to me that the algorithm that is bringing out sims is somewhat broken and needs to be fixed. I think it is supposed to show a couple of sims every dozen light curves or so, but in fact it somehow gets stuck in a loop after a while and keeps showing sims over and over again.

    As sph87inx noticed you just need to refresh the page to have it back to normal. Basically (from what I could observe) if you get more than 3 sims in a row you can refresh the page as only other sims will show up after that if you don't.

    I hope it can get fixed soon, because I think sims are very useful (especially for detecting small planet transits) to remind us of what we are looking for and also to check our level of concentration, but right now it's having the opposite effect, as sph87inx mentioned.

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  • JRSchmitt by JRSchmitt

    I'll send another email to the dev team. Not sure why it's taking so long.

    Posted

  • Hildifons by Hildifons

    Curious thing here. For a couple of weeks now I've been classifying without one single sim appearing. I mean, none of the light curves I've classified these last two or three weeks were marked as simulations. The only thing (for me) that doesn't work properly is that "Discussions about this star" appears without any comment, and if I write, say, #transit @ 21, it keeps appearing in the next light curves, even though they belong to different stars.

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  • sph87inx by sph87inx

    Thanks JRSchmitt. Would be interested to know when the dev team plans on having things back to normal/ an estimated time for the fix. Hildifons - interesting, haven't had any issues like that yet.

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  • Narod by Narod in response to Hildifons's comment.

    Yup, I'm still new to this site (started 2-3 weeks ago maybe) but I've been having the same problem with the discussions.

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  • Narod by Narod

    Well, seems like everything's now working fine!

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  • sph87inx by sph87inx

    Same here - looks good now. JRSchmitt - send our thanks to the dev team!

    Posted

  • JRSchmitt by JRSchmitt

    So, I'm told by the dev team that they think that the problem wasn't that everything was sims, it was just SAYING that they were sims when it was, in fact, normal data. Did people notice this when classifying? The actual sims won't always be visible, but was there a higher rate of impossible-to-find sims in the last few weeks than normal? (Because those impossible-to-find sims maybe weren't actually sims.)

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  • sph87inx by sph87inx in response to JRSchmitt's comment.

    JRSchmitt - I did notice this, but figured that I might just have a bad eye for it. I missed many of these supposed sims that deviated very slightly from the normal light curve - AKA, impossible to find. Most of these supposed sims that I missed had a very short orbit and were between 1-2 Earth radii.

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  • I_wish_I_can_study_at_Starfleet_Academy by I_wish_I_can_study_at_Starfleet_Academy

    Well, It seems like some of you got to do the real thing... I'm stil not presented with anything else than simulations. I feel totally meaningless to click through 150 simulation and not do anything else. I hereby leave this behind and use my time for something where I can actually do something for real.

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  • mcmahonj by mcmahonj

    I'm finding,now I have been spotting for several months, that I'm checking the same subjects over and over.

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  • Pjber by Pjber

    Who identifies the sims. Are they real transits or it is someone just like us identifying them as a transit.

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  • ZenMasterOnMars by ZenMasterOnMars

    Is it possible to classify stars that no one else has looked at previously? It seems every star I classify has been previously looked at by dozens of others. I realize that you need multiple data checks to make the data is valuable to you. I would just like to occasionally be able to look at something no one else has seen before. I also see that I am reclassifying stars that I have previously classified.

    Have all the stars in this survey already been looked through?

    Thank you

    Posted

  • Trioxin by Trioxin

    This thing is terrible at training the user and now I don't think I'm getting anything real. It keeps saying "Here's a simulated one you missed" which is always like 2 or 3 plots among a large group that don't look like they mean anything. If I could watch a sim of someone who is good at this do it I could get good at it too but I'm not even going to bother with this if A: The user training sucks and B: I'm constantly flagging sims.

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  • fr667 by fr667 in response to ZenMasterOnMars's comment.

    i dont know if it been random, but yes i often be the first to classify

    Posted