I think that the one thing that hasn't been mentioned is why record at all?
If you solely want to keep a personal record of what you see and that is it, then it doesn't matter where you put the information.
If you want to share this information and it to assist in the understanding of species trends and dynamics then it has to go somewhere that the information is available. This is making your data part of a citizen science project that helps other birders, conservation and scientists.
The key thing then is the moderation of the records, the security of the data, and your accessibility to the data set.
I have tried Birdtrack, igoterra and others in my time, before settling on eBird.
Yes it is birds only, yes it has moderation and yes it is 'probably' the largest citizen science project in the world. It gives lots of graphics, the mobile app works - so far anywhere I have been (10 countries in 2 continents) and gives easy access to others birding in the same area.
The adoption by others around the world is amazing, over 700k checklists submitted in August, and 27 countries more than doubling their submissions over last year.
I agree it is patchy in terms of pick up, but some countries eg Israel have adopted it as the platform for all their bird recording.
As it has subspecies I can live with the difference with IOC, although this appears to be diminishing with every update.
With the records held by Cornell University - they are not going to disappear and the data is open source If I was paranoid, I would download it to keep my records.
However as someone has said. It is only a good as the inputted records. The moderators do a good job, but there are always things that slip through. It is easy to question these. Peer review, however is only possible for anything in the public domain.
If you solely want to keep a personal record of what you see and that is it, then it doesn't matter where you put the information.
If you want to share this information and it to assist in the understanding of species trends and dynamics then it has to go somewhere that the information is available. This is making your data part of a citizen science project that helps other birders, conservation and scientists.
The key thing then is the moderation of the records, the security of the data, and your accessibility to the data set.
I have tried Birdtrack, igoterra and others in my time, before settling on eBird.
Yes it is birds only, yes it has moderation and yes it is 'probably' the largest citizen science project in the world. It gives lots of graphics, the mobile app works - so far anywhere I have been (10 countries in 2 continents) and gives easy access to others birding in the same area.
The adoption by others around the world is amazing, over 700k checklists submitted in August, and 27 countries more than doubling their submissions over last year.
I agree it is patchy in terms of pick up, but some countries eg Israel have adopted it as the platform for all their bird recording.
As it has subspecies I can live with the difference with IOC, although this appears to be diminishing with every update.
With the records held by Cornell University - they are not going to disappear and the data is open source If I was paranoid, I would download it to keep my records.
However as someone has said. It is only a good as the inputted records. The moderators do a good job, but there are always things that slip through. It is easy to question these. Peer review, however is only possible for anything in the public domain.