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The "Balkanization" of rarity reporting (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Mysticete
- Start date
opisska
rabid twitcher
After having travelled a bit around Europe, I think I would be willing to pay money for a unified service aggregating the incredibly fractured local information, if it were real-time, reliable to include everything and configurable - optimally I would be able to just enter a list of birds I already have and thus not care about and to select an area of interest. The best would be something like several areas for different levels of rarities (I'd go further for something more rare) - key thing would be the ability to change this quickly when travelling. Because at the moment, there are so many sources to check, a lot of them only in obscure languages (such as French 
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Farnboro John
Well-known member
I don't think that's ever going to be possible (see Brexit etc.....)After having travelled a bit around Europe, I think I would be willing to pay money for a unified service aggregating the incredibly fractured local information, if it were real-time, reliable to include everything and configurable - optimally I would be able to just enter a list of birds I already have and thus not care about and to select an area of interest. The best would be something like several areas for different levels of rarities (I'd go further for something more rare) - key thing would be the ability to change this quickly when travelling. Because at the moment, there are so many sources to check, a lot of them only in obscure languages (such as French
As someone living close to the three counties boundary (Hampshire, Surrey, Berkshire) who therefore prefers birds five miles away in Surrey to those 60 miles or so away in Southampton (but still in my home county of Hampshire) I understand how living close to a European national border could create a similar issue but surely it's never going to be about more than two or three close countries including your own?
For European listing you'll just have to deal with one country at a time, make use of Google translate and commit to your own and maybe one other rarity alert system permanently.
Mind you, excluding our rump collection of suppressors, Britain's reporting is pretty good, so I can afford to think like that.
John
Xenospiza
Distracted
It would be possible if "everyone" would use reporting websites, but this is another fractured landscape.After having travelled a bit around Europe, I think I would be willing to pay money for a unified service aggregating the incredibly fractured local information, if it were real-time, reliable to include everything and configurable - optimally I would be able to just enter a list of birds I already have and thus not care about and to select an area of interest. The best would be something like several areas for different levels of rarities (I'd go further for something more rare) - key thing would be the ability to change this quickly when travelling. Because at the moment, there are so many sources to check, a lot of them only in obscure languages (such as French
Years ago I got someone really upset by saying that the UK should use observation.org as its platform ("we are working on something ourselves", etc) but I don't think anything has improved in the UK at all.
The easily accessible waarneming.nl and waarnemingen.be feeding into Dutch and Belgian Bird Alerts (the same system for both countries) have delivered some stunning rarities over the years found by "unknown" birders or even non-birders. Yellow-browed Bunting is just the latest example. I bet you could get a robot to go through the Scandinavian and ornitho-sites as well.
opisska
rabid twitcher
Yeah, things could generally be easy if people cooperated, that is a very general truth In the absence of that, I'd happily pay someone to go through the fractured sources for me. I am generally quite the money hoarder and don't like paying for stuff I don't need, but this would be real work making my life more pleasant. But there are probably too few people to make this economical, the vast majority of people I know who list do just their country and so don't care about what's elsewhere.
In the absence of that, I'd happily pay someone to go through the fractured sources for me. I am generally quite the money hoarder and don't like paying for stuff I don't need, but this would be real work making my life more pleasant. But there are probably too few people to make this economical, the vast majority of people I know who list do just their country and so don't care about what's elsewhere.
Mysticete
Well-known member
I imagine the extra complication here might also be if each of the three regions you are near not only have different reporting services, but services that use completely different media. It's not too hard to subscribe to multiple listserves and have them email you reports. It gets more difficult when one region is listserve, another reason uses facebook, and yet another area uses discord or something.
jurek
Well-known member
Actually, making one unified rarity reporting system would be possible, if all services agreed to very simple thing (because reporting IS simple; it needs a species name from a list, geographic coordinates, and a text or text and photo details) - use one basic format and pass messages to a net. It would work like servers with hacked movies work.
Helsinki Birder
Stealth Birder
Well why not start an organization or club with this aim in mind?Yeah, things could generally be easy if people cooperated, that is a very general truth
After deriding our Band group, Jan, you joined presumably because you had planned a visit to Ireland.
Start a Euro/Western pal version.
Generate a group list like we have, which defines which species are rarities for the entire region, and therefore report worthy. Recruit representatives from each country which will cycle news of those species into the group when they occur, including the GPS function for precise location information.
Create profiles on various other social media platforms that direct interested parties to your band group, and put the work into getting the word out there. The bodies will come.
Owen
opisska
rabid twitcher
I think that at this scale, this is a full time job, maybe several of those. I simply don't have anywhere near the energy to do this. That's why i am saying that I'd pay for it.
Yes I joined your group, since it seems to have most of the rarity information - or should the fact that I am not happy with the appearance of more and more different platform stop from joining them when it's useful? At least it's in English
Yes I joined your group, since it seems to have most of the rarity information - or should the fact that I am not happy with the appearance of more and more different platform stop from joining them when it's useful? At least it's in English
Helsinki Birder
Stealth Birder
Not at all. Glad to have you, more than welcome, hope you do pull a visit off some day.I think that at this scale, this is a full time job, maybe several of those. I simply don't have anywhere near the energy to do this. That's why i am saying that I'd pay for it.
Yes I joined your group, since it seems to have most of the rarity information - or should the fact that I am not happy with the appearance of more and more different platform stop from joining them when it's useful? At least it's in English
It doesn't have to be a full time job at all. There's obviously people who enjoy twitching around Europe, build a team, get reps from each country, get the news flowing.
Because you're talking continent level rarities, you're actually not talking about a huge volume of information.
Like we have done, you can add filters. So you could add a filter for each country making the group more functional.
Give it a try. Build your own group in the app. Keep it private whilst you're at development stage, share it with a few contacts at first to see if it's of value.
Create a thread in the rare birds forum, with a poll asking if such a group would interest people?
Owen
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opisska
rabid twitcher
I was in Ireland only once so far, in 2016 for a conference - during which I twitched the Glacuous-winged Gull, which was my first signifciant WP twitch and yet it remains very likely the rarest bird on my WP list. So one can say that Ireland is even somewhat responsible for me becoming the rabid twitcher I am I was considering coming recently but we had limited time due to various medical appointments and there were no flights on the correct days ....
I mean in sounds easy, I am just not very good for this job. I am, ironically, a project manager at work nowadays, and everyone involved could atest that it us not going that well
I was considering coming recently but we had limited time due to various medical appointments and there were no flights on the correct days .... I mean in sounds easy, I am just not very good for this job. I am, ironically, a project manager at work nowadays, and everyone involved could atest that it us not going that well
Helsinki Birder
Stealth Birder
Well the difference would be that you don't need to meet outputs/deadlines, you simply need to demonstrate that it's existence is useful and functional.I was in Ireland only once so far, in 2016 for a conference - during which I twitched the Glacuous-winged Gull, which was my first signifciant WP twitch and yet it remains very likely the rarest bird on my WP list. So one can say that Ireland is even somewhat responsible for me becoming the rabid twitcher I am
I mean in sounds easy, I am just not very good for this job. I am, ironically, a project manager at work nowadays, and everyone involved could atest that it us not going that well
We started out just a year ago at zero. Built it from the ground up. A year later we are the largest news network Ireland has, and are sponsored by major birding companies. 🤷😀
If you ever want advice on setting up etc don't hesitate to drop me a message.
Owen
What is the situation regarding the "ownership" of rare bird information? If a paid-for news information service posts details, who owns those details? The original reporter, the service, no one. Often a person making a report will tell all the information services, put it on the local website, local WhatsApp, they might even put it on BirdForum!
Who has the right to pass on that information? Posting a link to a website is one thing but taking the contents are reposting it is entirely different.
Who has the right to pass on that information? Posting a link to a website is one thing but taking the contents are reposting it is entirely different.
opisska
rabid twitcher
I don't know about UK, but in most if Europe I am pretty sure you can't own facts. You can claim IP rights to things you created, but you can't do so with the truth, ironically. In case of news, you can still own IP over article wording etc., but definitely not over the information itself.
Helsinki Birder
Stealth Birder
Indeed, Jan is correct. Think about how many mainstream tv and newspaper news networks report news from other services around the world, even taking screenshots of people's feeds etc (notable for the dodgier politicians etc who often delete stuff that's embarrassing).
News is news with many countries giving it special legal protections.
Owen
If I recall ten years ago or so there was a free Twitter based UK bird news service. It was basically someone who was subscribed to one or both of the paid-for UK services and was posting the information in their alerts. While this maybe legal, it is hardly playing with a straight bat. The Twitter feed didn't last long, whether it was pressure from the news services or that the poster just got bored who knows.
Any Europe-wide bird news aggregation service that sourced its data from the paid-for services might be legal on paper but I can't imagine the news services taking it for long.
Any Europe-wide bird news aggregation service that sourced its data from the paid-for services might be legal on paper but I can't imagine the news services taking it for long.
Helsinki Birder
Stealth Birder
You understand, of course, that paid services take news A. From each other...all the time, and B. From every single public source they can find, including Twitter, Facebook and eBird.
In the Irish Rare And Scarce Bird News Group we have specifically requested that each of the UK services place their operatives in the group, so they can avail of news, and we ask that UK (and other birders from around the world) share their sightings directly with Irish birders in the group.
It's working very well. We keep news flowing for all, it's a good level of co-operation, and (we hope) a good sense of community.
No need to create negative barriers/feeling where it's just not necessary.
Owen
Helsinki Birder
Stealth Birder
Actually...I find this really strange. Birdforum's own rare bird news sub forum posts each major rarity in the UK or Ireland and invariably someone responds with the details in moments, more often than not someone posts a link to a tweet, showing that info was public domain to begin with.
Owen
Tiraya
San Diego CA
This was most apparent to me when I visited Texas during peak butterfly vagrancy. Butterfly reports are not quite akin to birds especially because there is no regular platform like eBird or Rare Bird Alerts, but nonetheless stuff was shared and we all appreciate it. Some people posted their rarities on Facebook, some only on Instagram, but many had their personal group chats where they only told people they trusted or respected. But this was a complex issue. For instance, many long-time observers here will refuse to share anything with "younger" generations. Other big observers do not get along with other big observers, which is how I missed a good rarity due to one observer incorrectly suspecting I was trying to make friends with his rival. Others are more lenient but still require you to provide photo proof that you've found several of your own rarities (which could take 3, 4 or 5 years to accrue) before they'd trust you and let you into their "club". There was a remarkable US first kept quiet for over a year unless you were in "the club" (that being 1 of 14 different "the clubs").
I, innocently and mistakenly, thought it was smart to post all of my own sightings (and those of people standing beside me at the garden) in a single post on Facebook. Apparently I crossed several lines by doing so, and I am not only banned from a reserve owned by one of the observers but I had to deal with (aka ignore) hostile phone calls and facebook messages for nearly two weeks following.
My bias against "secret clubs" aside, it doesn't seem to escalate quite that far in birding luckily. But aside from the ease of accessible platforms these days, I assume in part (even if a small part), this helps to fuel the division towards where sightings are spoken for.
I, innocently and mistakenly, thought it was smart to post all of my own sightings (and those of people standing beside me at the garden) in a single post on Facebook. Apparently I crossed several lines by doing so, and I am not only banned from a reserve owned by one of the observers but I had to deal with (aka ignore) hostile phone calls and facebook messages for nearly two weeks following.
My bias against "secret clubs" aside, it doesn't seem to escalate quite that far in birding luckily. But aside from the ease of accessible platforms these days, I assume in part (even if a small part), this helps to fuel the division towards where sightings are spoken for.
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