(Submitted on 28 Apr 2011)

 Abstract: We provide a brief overview of the Galaxy Zoo and Zooniverse projects,
including a short discussion of the history of, and motivation for, these
projects as well as reviewing the science these innovative internet-based
citizen science projects have produced so far. We briefly describe the method
of applying en-masse human pattern recognition capabilities to complex data in
data-intensive research. We also provide a discussion of the lessons learned
from developing and running these community--based projects including thoughts
on future applications of this methodology. This review is intended to give the
reader a quick and simple introduction to the Zooniverse.