Launch News: Community-Building Pages

At the Zooniverse, we strive to foster a vibrant community of software engineers, researchers, and everyday participants. Each week the Zooniverse volunteer community contributes over 1 million classifications across ~80 active projects. This collective effort has contributed to hundreds of publications. Many of you have experienced first-hand or heard about serendipitous discoveries through Talk or by reading a project’s results page. Your contributions make a real difference in advancing scientific research and discovery worldwide. 

To further encourage and support this sense of collective effort leading to discovery, we’re exploring additional pathways for people to connect. With newly implemented Group Engagement features, like-minded participants can connect, collaborate on projects, and work together toward shared goals.

We can’t wait to see the creative ways our community will make the most of this new Groups feature!

WHAT IS IT?

With the new Groups feature, you will be able to track collaborative achievements with friends and family, fellow science enthusiasts, educational groups, and more within the Zooniverse community. Track your stats and see which projects trend within your group.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Creating a Group

Once you’re logged in to Zooniverse, you can select ‘Create New Group’ from the ‘My Groups’ panel in the zooniverse.org homepage. By creating a new group you are the admin of the group. 

First, name your group. You can use any combination of characters including special characters and emojis. Next, select your group permissions. The private selection will only allow group members to access and view your group’s stats page. The public selection will make the group stats page viewable by anyone. Then, choose your members’ individual stats visibility. You can choose whether to never show each contributor’s stats, always show them, or only show them to members of the group. A group admin will always see these individual stats. Finally, click “Create New Group”. You will be brought to your new group stats page where you can then copy the join link and invite members. More on joining a Group below.

Using the Bar Chart

From the homepage click on any of your groups to view that group’s stats page. The bar chart will default to showing your stats for all contributors for all projects from the last 7 days.

To change the time range or projects use the dropdown menus above the chart. Note that if you change the dates, it will also change which projects are selectable based on your activity in that time period. The Hours tab shows a summary of the time spent across your group classifying subjects. 

Top Projects

These are your most classified projects for the selected time period. If you change the time frame, you can expect your top projects to update as well.

Top Contributors

Next is a list of top contributors (group members with the most classifications during the specified time period). You can see a more detailed view if you click ‘See all contributors and detailed stats’. This will bring you to a full list of contributors and their stats across all time. Clicking ‘Export all stats’ generates a .csv file. A future feature will be the ability to filter to specific time periods within this detailed stats page. 

Managing a Group

From the homepage click on any of your groups to view your group’s stats page. If you’re the admin for a group, you’ll have a ‘Manage Group’ option at the top of the group’s stats page. When you click on ‘Manage Group’, you will see the same settings as when you first created the group. You can change these admin settings at any time. You will also be able to manage the members of your group. Navigate to a member’s row and click on the 3-dot options menu. Here you can give admin access, remove admin access (if previously given), or remove a member. Note: as long as someone has a ‘Join Link’, they can always rejoin the group at any time. Press “Save changes” to return to your group. 

If you click ‘Deactivate Group’, this removes the group and its stats’ visibility (making the group unsearchable and unjoinable). Note: this does not delete the group from our internal Zooniverse database. 

Joining a Group

In order to join a group, the group admin or a group member will share the ‘Join Link’ for that group with you. The ‘Join Link’ is at the top of the group’s stats page. 

Once you have the link, simply click it to be added to the group. Note: you must be logged-in in order to join a group. Once you’ve joined, you’ll immediately be able to view your group’s stats page. 

At any time, you can view all of your groups by clicking ‘See all’ within the ‘My Groups’ panel in your zooniverse.org homepage. 

You may notice a few existing groups with alphanumeric names (e.g., 597C5881-3808-4DF7-B91A-D29E58E19FFC) in your groups list. These groups were created via our classroom.zooniverse.org portal for curricula such as Wildcam Labs or Galaxy Zoo 101. If you’re the group admin (indicated by the ‘admin’ label), you can click ‘Manage Group’ to give your group a more descriptive name. If you’re a group member, you can either click ‘Leave Group’ (if the class experience is complete) or ask your instructor (the admin) to rename the group. In future updates, we’ll enable naming groups directly within the classroom.zooniverse experiences.

Leaving a Group

From the homepage click on any of your groups. At the top of the group’s stats page, click ‘Leave group’. Note: you can rejoin a group at any time as long as you still have access to the unique Join Link.

Sharing a Group

If the admin of your group has set your group visibility settings to ‘public’, you’ll have the ‘Share Group’ option at the top of your group’s stats page. Clicking ‘Share group’ will copy a link to the public-facing view of your group’s stats page. This is different from a ‘Join Link’. Anyone with the ‘Share Group’ link will simply be able to view the group’s stats, but will not be added as a member of the group. 

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

We value your feedback! We’re keen to hear about your experiences with the new Groups feature. Please share in this Talk thread and mention @support if you are experiencing any issues.