2017

Before 2017 slips out of mind, here is a list of all the things that happened in our first year as it has whizzed by

March. BashTheBug is sent to the Zooniverse beta-testers to check it is easy to use. Over 600 experienced volunteers do 30,262 classifications, most of them in less than a day. BashTheBug also turns up at the Science Museum in London.

April. BashTheBug is launched! At the end of the first day, new volunteers have done 7,724 classifications. There is a press release, lots of tweeting and some mentions on websites. Towards the end of the month, we have our first example of a volunteer spotting something that all the laboratory scientists missed.

May. We begin to notice that a few of the volunteers are doing a LOT of classifications between them. In fact, it turns out BashTheBug is nearly exactly following the Pareto Principle.

June. The volunteers reach quarter of a million classifications and BashTheBug does its first interview: Carolyn Day.

July. Some of the workflows of the initial dataset start to be finished. BashTheBug is shortlisted for the Online Community award of the NIHR Let’s Get Digital competition.

September. BashTheBug wins the Online Community award of the NIHR Let’s Get Digital competition! As a result, BashTheBug is interviewed on BBC Radio Oxford and featured in a mini-podcast. We finally work out to upload the pesky ethambutol images.

October. BashTheBug is six months old and goes to the Natural History Museum in London.

November. Half a million classifications.

December. Google visit and a mention in a poem.

Overall, 8,670 people contributed a total of 580,161 classifications to BashTheBug in 2017! Thank you everyone.