The ebird update - How do you like it?.. (4 Viewers)

[Shumi]

Hi All, just wanted to ask people to share their opinions on the recent ebird update.

From my side - really good to see people trying new things, but some matters do appear a bit odd to me:

1. Monthly records are prioritized over all-time records (it seems to me you cannot even select all-time from the starting page menu?);
2. No less bizarre - the number of submitted checklists seems to be placed above the number of species observed (or at least that is my impression).

I fully get the point that ebird wants to encourage more submissions and active participation from all - but not sure whether the above is the right way to go?...

 

[kb57]

I really like the new font and web page layout - it gives a really spacious, classy feel to the website. For me, the My Stats page defaults to the country I'm in (although auto-detection can be turned off), and gives all-time rather than monthly species statistics. This also gives localised news reports as well as eBird news, which is a nice touch - in this case a report on little bustard decline which was the lead article in Pardela (the SPEA magazine).

The 'My eBird' page again headlines with all time stats, in my case as before for World, although this is also user-selectable, and species by year are placed above species by month. It's when you go to Explore Regions that I agree things start to get a little strange, when the default is the current month and you have 'community targets' (slightly bizarre selection including tufted duck, which you really should've been looking for here before April...). There's also a list of newly added species, which is great for twitching I guess, but if your priority is to understand what are regularly occurring species in a region you may be visiting, this is less good.

I also like the fact that you can access other people's Trip Reports (provided their settings are public), which are organised on a regional basis. I always wondered what the point of these was, other than sharing internally with a group, as you could only ever see your own.

 

[01101001]

when the default is the current month and you have 'community targets' (slightly bizarre selection including tufted duck, which you really should've been looking for here before April...).

I think it's possible to choose the year (though you have to do it again for every new region).

There's also a list of newly added species, which is great for twitching I guess, but if your priority is to understand what are regularly occurring species in a region you may be visiting, this is less good.

Or for spring migration. The bar charts are still there, maybe not so prominently, though.

I like the new sleek design, too.

 

[Mysticete]

I like the new look...it will take a bit to get adjusted to the new placement of things, but don't see the doom and gloom people are preaching about the update.

 

[raymie]

Not a fan of it but I just don't like change. I'll get used to it.

 

[Jeff Hopkins]

I don't like it for the same reason as raymie. If you could modify the selections to configure the page as you like it, I'd be happy, but until then...

 

[Paul Chapman]

It is interesting. I was rather taken aback. It takes a lot to get used to a system and entrust an organisation with so much data and information which is core to your life. A change of this nature casts a shadow that maybe over-reliance in any organisation is a poor idea.... It is certainly causing me to reflect. For my browser as well, it is causing issues on speed and it has crashed a couple of times.

All the best

Paul

 

[raymie]

It is interesting. I was rather taken aback. It takes a lot to get used to a system and entrust an organisation with so much data and information which is core to your life. A change of this nature casts a shadow that maybe over-reliance in any organisation is a poor idea.... It is certainly causing me to reflect. For my browser as well, it is causing issues on speed and it has crashed a couple of times.

All the best

Paul

It's not that different. Although I admit I have had no technical issues besides the site being a little slower.

 

[Paul Chapman]

It's not that different. Although I admit I have had no technical issues besides the site being a little slower.

It is the capability to be subjected to amendment at a whim rather than the extent of this amendment that was the basis of my comment. It was probably the shock of logging in and seeing far fewer species photographed - because it was showing national rather than world stats - and fearing a massive data loss - before realising the nature of the change - that sparked that.

As a matter of principle, I have been in that position before on moth records.

All the best

Paul

 

[raymie]

It is the capability to be subjected to amendment at a whim rather than the extent of this amendment that was the basis of my comment. It was probably the shock of logging in and seeing far fewer species photographed - because it was showing national rather than world stats - and fearing a massive data loss - before realising the nature of the change - that sparked that.

As a matter of principle, I have been in that position before on moth records.

All the best

Paul

Oh I see. Even before the update I changed around my default region a lot so I wasn't super surprised.

 

[Georgebirds]

The font is kind of huge on a laptop screen, I assume this means the site's been designed to look better on a phone, like many are these days. Just zoomed it out to 80% and it's much less in-your-face now, giant fonts always make me feel the web design is shouting at me, hah

The main thing I find disappointing is how it adds more clicking to get to the info I actually want to see when checking out a hotspot - the whole list of birds seen at that location, most recent first. That used to be right there taking up the majority of each hotspot's page, but now you have to click Bird List on the left menu just to view that info - yeah it's still there, but it's tucked away, while the main page is singling out only new species seen this month (which feels like that should be the alternate setting, not the default), and links to other people's individual checklists.
I liked being able to easily read through a totalled-up, newest-first list of what had been seen somewhere - both for knowing what's going on at loved locations in my local patch, and also looking up possible new sites to visit, comparing them, selecting the most active at a glance. A full list of sightings was so handy for that, and yes that info is still there, but it's been shuffled off the main page for some reason I just can't fathom! Surely I wasn't the only person who used the hotspots that way? Now every single hotspot I open, I'm going to have to click Bird List as well, just to get to what we used to see by default, and this feels like a very counter-intuitive way to have the site run. Just...weird.

 

[Shumi]

The font is kind of huge on a laptop screen, I assume this means the site's been designed to look better on a phone, like many are these days. Just zoomed it out to 80% and it's much less in-your-face now, giant fonts always make me feel the web design is shouting at me, hah

The main thing I find disappointing is how it adds more clicking to get to the info I actually want to see when checking out a hotspot - the whole list of birds seen at that location, most recent first. That used to be right there taking up the majority of each hotspot's page, but now you have to click Bird List on the left menu just to view that info - yeah it's still there, but it's tucked away, while the main page is singling out only new species seen this month (which feels like that should be the alternate setting, not the default), and links to other people's individual checklists.
I liked being able to easily read through a totalled-up, newest-first list of what had been seen somewhere - both for knowing what's going on at loved locations in my local patch, and also looking up possible new sites to visit, comparing them, selecting the most active at a glance. A full list of sightings was so handy for that, and yes that info is still there, but it's been shuffled off the main page for some reason I just can't fathom! Surely I wasn't the only person who used the hotspots that way? Now every single hotspot I open, I'm going to have to click Bird List as well, just to get to what we used to see by default, and this feels like a very counter-intuitive way to have the site run. Just...weird.

Yep, exactly, so strange and frustrating

Anybody knows whether there is an option to address this to ebird management? Perhaps this is something they could listen to?

 

[earlytorise]

I don't know if this has ever been addressed, but I would like to be able to do a search of all publicly available checklists from any given time period.

Right now (as before), either you look at the page with only the most recent checklists, or somehow you click on a checklist if it is linked on a photo or a species map.

The benefits of this would be great, both for scientific research as well as for vacation planning.

 

[01101001]

I think you can go to the species map, set the month and start clicking on the location points (that's the only way of doing it that I can think of now).

 

[Bewick]

No massive issues with it, though kind of looks cheap with the font change.

 

[pbjosh]

I dislike the fact that hotspots pages now are focused on monthly birding and not most recent sightings or all time statistics.

Essentially what was useful before is now one click further away.

I personally don't care about monthly stats or community targets. Seems a kind of cheap way to try to gamify things and/or drive more birding all the time. In reality, I am already not bothering to look at the hotspot pages and just jump to the info I want so for me, it's had the opposite effect, it has driven less engagement.

 

[Brad Hacker]

The only substantive effect, IMO, is to the hotspot pages, in which the new layout seems more suited to attracting beginners than to facilitating use by experienced users.
The bigger, san serif font and more white space means lower information density and more scrolling.
The focus on the most recent month is arbitrary--arguably useless for many hotspots--and adds more time to getting to the data I want to see.

 

[Paul Chapman]

The weird thing of course is that months are actually a rather odd snapshot in any event. Commercially business works to such cycles with a random selection of days which is even odder especially as annual cycles, random bank holidays and weekends further skew such judgements. At least lunar cycles and tides effect birds and months loosely represent a lunar cycle but for hotspots around the world, what is present in the first few days of April will bear little resemblance to the last few days of April and for many even well-watched sites, a current month approach will make them look abandoned for sometimes substantial periods.

It is a poor decision and I suspect one that as set out above has negative consequences. (But then again the proliferation of hotspots is having more of an effect in many places.)

All the best

Paul

 

[raymie]

One thing I found that bugs me is that you can only view Trip Reports from within the last month. What was the point of making them public, then?

 

[Brad Hacker]

One thing I found that bugs me is that you can only view Trip Reports from within the last month. What was the point of making them public, then?

I haven't noticed this. Can you provide an example?