On 2/19/2015 7:46 PM, Mike Patterson wrote:
It must be February... I heard a thing on NPR the other day that people who complain a lot live longer. Something about stress reduction. As a long time eBird complainer, I suspect I've added years to my life. We all want ebird to do what WE want it to do, but I think we forget that it is, more or less, a free service provided to us; that the goals of the Cornell Lab for Ornithology are not necessarily "provide a free place for folks to track, in near real time, the occurrence rarities to chase and keep track of personal life-lists". These are byproducts of eBird not its goals. And perhaps more importantly, the vetting process is done by volunteers. The definition of volunteer is: donating timeand energy to do a thing free of charge out of the goodness of your heart.
Amen.
If you have ever worked with volunteers (and I have), you know that volunteers bring the skills they have, not the skills you or I may think they are supposed to have. They donate the time they have not the time you or I might think they should spend. I turned down the opportunity (more than once) to be an eBird editor. I don't have the time to do it right or the patience to deal with all the folks who get upset about being questioned or corrected (you know who you are).
Amen. I did the same.
The only reason I can think of for why we NEED to have near real time confirmation of rare or unusual species are egocentric. In biogeographical terms rare and unusual species have little or no meaning as individuals. The only folks who need that kind of turn around are folks who like to chase stuff. If we are reaching an era when we have to depend on eBird to announce and track rarities, then we all need to get used to disappointment. It's not the right tool for the job and was never intended to be so. Near real time reporting is why God created phone trees and twitter.
THAT'S what OBOL is FOR!!!!!
When you hear me complain about eBird (and don't think I won't continue to do so) it will seldom be about the editors or speediness of the confirmation process. If you have issues with the turn around on record vetting, volunteer to be an editor yourself. See if you can do better.
Cheers Dave Lauten OBOL archives: www.freelists.org/archive/obol Manage your account or unsubscribe: //www.freelists.org/list/obol Contact moderators: obol-moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx