[texbirds] Re: e-bird question- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
- From: Jim Sinclair <jim.sinclair@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: cooksey@xxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2013 14:19:03 -0600
Firstly, I want to state that I think EBird is a very useful tool for
birders of all skill levels. And I agree that the quality of work
performed by the reviewers is excellent. I much prefer the data to be
accurate rather than timely.
However, I quit using EBird for my own sightings because the location
options are too rigid, and do not meet my needs. And I do not have the
time nor the inclination to maintain two separate databases.
In EBird any child location can have only a single parent. Pintail Lakes
have Santa Ana NWR as their parent. Santa has Hildago County as its
parent. Hildago has Texas as its parent.
I have an oak motte on a private ranch. The ranch is the parent. But I
also have other oak mottes in other locations. And I have a 'parent' named
oak mottes. All of my oak mottes are a child of that single parent,
regardless of where the individual oak motte is located.
I do a lot of work on the King Ranch. There are four different divisions
spread across multiple counties. Although each division has a county as a
parent, I also have a parent called 'King Ranch'.
The two examples above are fairly simplistic. I have some other
relationships that are quite complex. But I actively use those
relationships. I may want to look at all of my King Ranch data. Or all of
my oak motte data. I may want to compare pond data with stream data.
And - I use that complex location data for multiple taxa: Mammals,
reptiles, amphibians, fishes, odonates, butterflies, orthopterans, etc.
And all of those data are fully integrated.
I currently cannot do any of those things with EBird.
--
Jim Sinclair (TX-ESA)
TOS Life Member
Kingsville, TX
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of
thinking we were at when we created them." - Albert Einstein
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