I spent some time this evening reviewing both statewide media and WA County
checklists given it is the GBBC weekend. I have found some misID photos and
flagged them for the editors. So far it hasn’t been too many.
For our county I have emailing new users with lots of info. Given there are
lots of newbies if there was a species that needed to be removed I have asked
them delete the # next to the species being removed and NOT enter zero. But
even with those instructions sometimes there is still a zero.
Figure it is more of a learning experience for them and do it gently so they
hopefully aren’t scared off from using eBird.
Shawneen
On Feb 13, 2021, at 3:34 PM, Adrian Hinkle <adrian.hinkle@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Some people do put 0 on purpose to note that an expected bird was missing, or
they saw a dead bird, or they had a "possible" sighting. But yes, a good
reminder of a common error! Thank you Alex. I plan to go through all recent
checklists for my counties once the gbbc is over. Certainly there are a
frustrating number of mis-IDs and other wonky errors, but it's exciting to
see so many people excited about birds. Even for obvious mis-IDs that would
be easier to just invalidate and move on, I try to email the observer with a
kind note about the sighting and to point them towards additional resources
such as the birding oregon facebook page.
Cheers,
Adrian
On Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 2:28 PM Alex Lamoreaux <aslamoreaux@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:aslamoreaux@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Day 2 of the GBBC.... I'm seeing a (very minor!) number of the expected ID
mix-ups from new users, but the number one error I've been noting is how many
people try to delete a species but end up changing the number to 0 instead.
This seems to be an issue outside the GBBC, and something I've noticed a lot
over the past 2-3 years even from seasoned eBird users. Clearly there is a
user pitfall here that needs to be addressed in the eBird app. It's
surprising to me that eBird even allows an entry of 0....
-Alex Lamoreaux
--
Alex Lamoreaux
717-943-7086
Senior Leader/North America Specialist for Wildside Nature Tours
https://wildsidenaturetours.com/team-member/alex-lamoreaux/ ;
<https://wildsidenaturetours.com/team-member/alex-lamoreaux/>
