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Travellingbirder....?? (1 Viewer)

Jos Stratford said:
Regarding linking or uploading reports, I assume the success of the TB is that it largely linked to most reports, thereby got into no difficulities in copyright or needed to seek permission, thereby relying on people actually replying and say the report can be downloaded. Would this be right?
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I think that's right, Jos. Although, like other sites, Travellingbirder offered a trip report hosting facility, its particular strength was to provide a comprehensive and well-organised directory linking to thousands(?) of reports (in many European languages) hosted on numerous other websites in the public domain - so no copyright issues, and the closest thing to a one-stop shop for trip reports.
 
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Jos Stratford said:
Regarding linking or uploading reports, I assume the success of the TB is that it largely linked to most reports, thereby got into no difficulities in copyright or needed to seek permission, thereby relying on people actually replying and say the report can be downloaded. Would this be right?
Click to expand...

As far as I recall, there were options for each report, one of which was usually a pdf file. This suggests to me that reports were usually sent direct to the site, rather than accessed via links. I know next to booger all about the workings of t'internet, but common sense suggests that files held are "safer" than links to sites that can be changed, moved or deleted.

If Steve's happy to host this, it might be an idea for appeals to be posted for trip reports to be submitted, with a thread devoted to this, and when enough have been received they can be organised into whatever setup works best. If anyone finds potentially useful reports on the web, they could email the author (most reports have a contact link) to confirm they're happy with reposting here - can't imagine many objections.

Just my thoughts, let me know if it's a non-runner....
 
dantheman said:
Don't know if the setting up of tables was quite what was being suggested. Not necessary anyway imo.
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Sorry Dan, but personally I think the monthly tables was the most helpful aspect of dropping into TB. If I was going to Uganda in July, then I don't want to know what birds are around in December as they'll be different.....and by seeing which month had the most trip reports it dictated which month was the most popular (and usually therefore the best bird-wise) to visit your destination....
 
This all sounds excellent, hope someone here can sort this out - it would certainly be great to have Vacational Trip Reports sorted out in regional splits rather than fishing via search panel, we already have such a regional structure split lower on the main menu for regional requests for information, presumably Trip Reports on here could be split in a similar way.

There is surely a huge wealth of info on this site, I alone have submitted around a dozen trip reports. I have always found what I wanted here, though Birdtours reports were often good too. Can't believe I have never come across Travelling birders site!
 
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The situation with Travellingbirder appears serious, perhaps fatal. No replies to my emails, either.

I have uploaded 16 of my most recent reports at www.club300.se/Travel/Default.aspx. They are mostly less reported Pacific destinations, with one from Brazil and one from Madagascar.

Club300 is the Swedish twitcher's organization - birders who have seen over 300 species in Sweden. The main page is www.club300.se, with a link to trip reports (Reserapporter).

The pages are mostly in Swedish, which is no problem for us here in the North, but the majority of the reports are in English. There currently are over 620 reports in the archive.

The service is run by Markus Lagervist. Thank you Markus!
 
birdboybowley said:
Sorry Dan, but personally I think the monthly tables was the most helpful aspect of dropping into TB. If I was going to Uganda in July, then I don't want to know what birds are around in December as they'll be different.....and by seeing which month had the most trip reports it dictated which month was the most popular (and usually therefore the best bird-wise) to visit your destination....
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Admittedly all my use of the site has been in the WP, and I've mostly known what time of year I was going to visit already ...

Although presumably any information on which month is best could be found elsewhere ... based on climate etc.

One way in which the monthly aspect could be presented would be by having sticky month threads under the subforum of eg my example Norway above. eg the first thread is 'January', then 'February' etc etc ... (I don't know, but presumably the wording could even be changes to read eg 'Number of Reports' rather than 'Replies'?)

The number of replies to the right would indicate the number of trip reports in that thread/subforum - immediately telling you the most popular month.

I think my point is that IF a trip report hosting service were set up here it could work. It wouldn't be 'Travelling Birder' as we knew it, but unless someone sets up a similar website, you're not going to get it. BF is free, widely used by birders, and the opportunity is there. As long as it was kept clean looking and professional (ie the threads were maintained so that the reports were not bogged down with accompanying discussion - but kept separate), then I don't see why the forum approach couldn't be made to work.
 
Whoever takes on the running of a new Travellingbirder site should not underestimate how much time this would take up. People stopped using the DIY uploader mainly because it would mess up text spacing and fonts. In the last few months just about all uploads were going on 'by hand' as PDFs, thanks to Christian. He said it would take a lot of coding to make this DIY and he didn't have the time to write it. I think that what seemed to be a great project some years back may have become a millstone. Then there were at least two spam attacks where the site was hijacked.
I send Christian best wishes, whatever he is doing now. He must surely know how important the site was to birders worldwide. I am surprised he didn't make an announcement if the site was in trouble or closing. I am surprised too that we still cannot find a reason for the closure. The fact he did not post a closing statement seems a little sinister considering the enormous amount of work he put into the site; he gave his time freely and never asked for money.
I would be delighted if the site popped up again some day soon.
 
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* sorting by month is very usefull to choose tripdates AND find tripreports in de month your travelling once you have chosen your tripdates.
* regarding to uploading: i think PDF's are preferred, lots of recent word processors, but also services like google docs can export pdf's easily. So i think with basic instruction most can do this themselves.
* if any help is required for converting tripreports (either for resurrecting travellingbirder, or hosting the database on birdforum) or assist in adminning the tripreport threads on BirdForum i am more than happy to help out.

(the only thing missing in travellingbirder is the distinction between 'tour/organised trip' reports and 'independent' reports).

I really hope someone can reach Christian and tries to find out whether assistance (with report administration) or financial support for the site can get it back up!
 
Some of the structure and summary pages of travellingbirder can still be accessed through the web archive, see: http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://travellingbirder.com. However, it doed not seem to be possible to access the individual reports this way.

Edit: I've been playing with the archive a bit more and in some cases it is possible to retrieve the original trip reports, at least those that weren't hosted on travellingbirder. It can be a bit hit and miss though.
 
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Any suggestions for a site that would help me with planning a trip to Denmark next June? I agree with everyone about the loss of Travelling Birder - it's a huge gap.
 
I have no problem whatsoever accessing Travelling Birder on my computer! I have just been reading some trip reports on Kenya....
 
Now that it appears to be back, given all of the energy here, we should see what there is we can all do support the webpage owners and hopefully assure that it stays that way.
 
I've not heard anything back from the WebOwners as to the reason the site was unavailable however it does look like it was a hosting issue.

Hopefully this valuable resource will continue to be long lived.
 
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