A few issues:
I see OBOL as serving two purposes. One is general bird discussion and the
other is alerting people to rare birds in the state. The e-bird alert for the
state includes a lot of local rarities. I would suggest that the rare bird
function move to WhatsApp. That is what we have been doing in Lane County and
it seems to work, although some people don’t understand the rules and post
birds on WhatsApp that are just FOS, not true rarities or they just get
sidetracked into discussion. I read OBOL through ABA or the Freelists Archive.
Many times I am just checking for rarities and then get sucked in (my fault) to
reading a bunch of negative posts that are mixed in with rarity reports.
Since most OBOL members are not OBA members, I would suggest that OBA
communicate with their members directly by e-mail concerning policy statements
and the like. Maybe they could have their own blog or group for this. I don’t
fault them for posting their statement this time since they sponsor OBOL.
I think that too many people like OBOL to abolish it, though that was my
first impulse when this latest issue happened. Moving this discussion to BOO
was a good idea. I don’t think that racism and sexism in birding should be
discussed on OBOL.
Linda Gilbert
Eugene
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