This Saturday, members of the ICG hosted a “Zoocon” event for dedicated Zooniverse volunteers (or “Zooites”). The theme of the day was a “wiki-a-thon” to learn about editing wikipedia and discuss the coverage of citizen science and citizen science projects in the online encyclopaedia. We were grateful to have on hand Mike Peel (Manchester), an astronomer and expert wikipedian, to teach us all about how to edit wikipedia. Mike wiki page (of course) of the day is here.

In addition to the working event, the Zooites were treated to a talk on “What’s New in the Zoo”, by Zooniverse community manager, Grant Miller (from Oxford University), followed by Q&A with Grant, Zooniverse PI Chris Lintott (Oxford) and Galaxy Zoo Project Science Karen Masters (Portsmouth). This part of the day was live streamed and can be watched at the below link. Chris also treated us to an impromptu talk on links between inflation, comets and galaxies to close the day, after plans to inflate the Portsmouth astrodome for a live planetarium show fell through.

The day ended with a social trip to a local pub, and a beautiful Portsmouth sunset.