CSF's quarterly report (July – September 2025)

Team Milestones

The director did not jump out of the window, which is already an achievement.

Completed

The Scientific Unit eceived back reviews for two previously submitted articles to professional journals. Both articles were accepted but required significant revisions, which the department worked on throughout the third quarter, with one article already submitted and the second to be submitted shortly. Star Hunters 3 and 4 were successfully carried out, and Star Hunters 5, the latest iteration of the project, was launched. After the fifth Star Hunters, all of the department's efforts would be focused on preparing for future AstroLab projects and publishing existing results. In addition, five short methodological guides were written for Star Hunters participants.

The Wikipedia Unit has traditionally maintained a consistently high pace of work: during the third quarter, eight articles received Good status, and three more list articles received Featured list status. A new method of writing Featured lists was scaled up, which made it possible to complete a series on open star clusters in a short period of time.

The Unit of Communications successfully held an offline event in Odesa, although the number of visitors among our subscribers was lower than expected. New CSF stickers were created and presented. Preparations for Astroclass are ongoing. The unit also began developing scripts for a video about the team.

The Wikipedia Strategic Growth Unit  completed approximately half of its research on ‘Why Wikipedians stop editing Wikipedia.’ Detailed statistics on more than 100,000 editors were collected, behaviour patterns were identified, and several general long-term trends were noted.

The IT Unit developed a convenient website for participants in scientific and educational projects, through which students can take lectures and receive certificates.

The HR Unit published five additional questionnaires for various positions and held three interactive events for the team. Eleven new team members were recruited.

Not completed

The Educational Unit underwent significant changes during this quarter. As of June, it became clear that the unit had effectively lost its ability to function, resulting in a change of leadership. Unfortunately, no significant positive changes occurred over the next two months, so another replacement was made. This time it worked, and numerous systemic issues were corrected throughout the month. However, lost time cannot be regained, so in three months the unit managed to record only two short videos. The writing of manuals also came to a complete standstill, so this task was transferred to the Scientific Unit.

The Archival Unit suspended its activities due to a critical shortage of participants (only one person remained in the unit).

The Analytical Unit did not have any particular successes during the third quarter. A great deal of effort was spent on reworking previously (incorrectly) completed work.

Problems were identified in the programme used to determine whether the stars used by Star Hunters could be pulsating. Because of this, the classification of stars in articles that had already been submitted for publication had to be significantly reworked. Fortunately, this was noticed before the articles were published.

Conclusions

During the third quarter, the team demonstrated steady development and progress on key projects, strengthened its expertise in scientific, educational, and communication activities, and continued to scale up its initiatives. At the same time, some processes were challenged by resource constraints, staffing changes, and technical issues, which impacted the pace of delivery on certain tasks.