I just want to give a giant +1 to what Bill just said. As someone who
routinely has to search for records, it is painful when something only
shows up on Facebook for all the reasons Bill mentioned. I'll mention one
more: Facebook has weird algorithms for what shows up in your newsfeed and
what doesn't. I have, on numerous occasions, gone into the TN Birding
Facebook page and found posts that would be of interest to me that never
showed up in my newsfeed.
There is a related point to this also. There are now several local
listservs for different parts of Tennessee. Occasionally there have been
sightings that would be of interest outside that area that were only posted
on those listservs and not on the statewide list. I strongly encourage
folks to crosspost to both in those instances. TN-Birds has a functional
(if not ideal) archive and search feature that is workable for researchers
but not if the information isn't in there.
Chris Sloan
Nashville, TN
http://www.chrissloanphotography.com
On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 1:35 PM, Bill Pulliam <littlezz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Facebook is being used increasingly as a platform for birders to connect
and share information. Per se this is a fine thing; more avenues of
communication can't be bad. However, I see a worrisome trend in that
information is being moved to Facebook at the detriment of other platforms.
As an example, do a Google search for "Ruff Ensley 2015 tn" and look at the
front page of results. You see a variety of hits, many from this very
mailing list. But you will not see anything from any Facebook page. This is
not because it has not been discussed there; it is because much Facebook
content does not appear in Google searches.
The problems I see with Facebook as a primary platform for sharing birding
info include:
-- It is not archival. Information is poorly organized and old
information is a challenge to find if you do not know exactly where to look.
-- It is poorly searchable. From the outside, much is essentially
unsearchable.
-- It is not globally accessible. Anyone anywhere can find and read TN
birds with nothing more than an internet connection and a search engine.
Anyone with a valid e-mail address can join the list and post. To have full
access to a Facebook group, you need to enter a relationship with a private
for-profit corporation that has a poor track record with regard to user
privacy. And it is of little or no use for visiting birders and new
birders who are looking for announcements of official and unofficial field
trips and other events.
I am not saying abandon Facebook. But I am saying, don't use it as the
ONLY place to share info that could be of interest to the larger birding
community. Which, let's face it, is pretty much ANYTHING about birds.
And for the record, because of its poor global accessibility, information
posted to Facebook is useless as documentation for an eBird report.
Bill Pulliam
Hohenwald TN
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