birding-aus

Birding-aus a forum?

To: Dave Torr <>
Subject: Birding-aus a forum?
From: David Stowe <>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:12:17 +1100
Yes Birding Oz is not at all supposed to be the same as or in competition with Birding-aus. It does offer some useful abilities like being able to post an image for people who need help with IDs etc. The most popular part of the forum is the Australian Bird Image section where people can share their favourite bird photos and get ideas on how to perhaps improve them etc. However the aim is not to be a totally photography focussed forum so that birders and photographers can hopefully come together - you don't need to be a brilliant photographer to share your images, and there is plenty of birder chatter about life lists and locations etc.
I love both and for different reasons.
So i certainly agree that Birding-aus is great just the way it is. I also agree that it would be great if people did post responses to RFIs etc so that everyone could benefit although i am as guilty of that as any i suppose :) Hopefully by posting detailed trip reports after the fact this largely rectifies this?

Cheers
Dave


On 27/01/2010, at 2:07 PM, Dave Torr wrote:

I agree as well. The other forum seems to be very much a photographic one though? And as such allows for photo attachments so serves a very different
need to Birding-Aus.

2010/1/27 Chris Sanderson <>

I agree with Peter about keeping the list the way it is. Also, the New Zealand equivalent of birding-aus has just tried this and (in my opinion)
it
hasn't worked out too well. It seems to have just fragmented the list into
people who use the forum and people who use the mailing list.

BTW Peter I think the forum you are thinking of is birding-oz
http://www.birdingoz.com.au/cms/

Regards,
Chris

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Peter Shute <> wrote:

Firstly, I'd like to say that in its current form this list works ok.
Not
perfect, but ok.

I don't know what you mean by "information ... being in one long, hard to read string in each email". Are you referring to daily digest emails?
If
so, can't you switch to individual emails?

In my opinion, digest mode is the cause of several problems we have.
Firstly, digest mode readers have difficulty replying, and often end up
not
quoting any of the material they're discussing, which can make it hard to follow the conversation, and sometimes put in a different subject line to
the original email.

Those are the more visible problems. A less visible problem is that if
you
don't reply to an individual email, the internal message-id of the email
is
different, so the archives thread it wrongly, or not at all. It's quite
common to search the archives, and find that not all the replies have
been
associated with the thread. If you reply to an individual email, it gets
threaded correctly even if you change the subject line.

Another problem is that digest readers have to scroll through every email to see which ones are worth reading. It suspect this makes them grouchy
whenever an uninteresting thread goes on too long.

I have used birding forums like birdforum.net.  While the grouping of
threads into subforums is neat, sometimes it means that not many people
read
your messages, because there are simply too many subforums for everyone
to
read. That site has so many readers that this splitting is necessary,
but
this isn't true with birding-aus, the number of contributors is small
enough
for it all to be together, and we benefit from everyone reading
everything.
There are times, of course, when the waffling can get a bit much, but
they
quickly pass.

In short, I'd say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I think digest mode
is broke, and we'd benefit from getting rid of it, but I'm sure the
people
who use it have their reasons.  There is actually an alternative
Australian
birding forum, I forget the URL, but after it started, it seems most
people
preferred to stay with this list.

Peter Shute

Clair Wenborn wrote on Wednesday, 27 January 2010 12:26 PM:

Hi All,

I am wondering if it has ever been suggested that birding-aus change
its format and become a forum? Readers of the digest could still
receive posts as emails if they wished and the archives would be more
searcher friendly.
Information would be categorised together and easy to refer back to
instead of being in one long, hard to read string in each email.
Users can then read the categories and threads that they are
interested in and save time instead of reading each subject heading.
Security need not be an issue as the forum could be private and
moderators would be able to see who is logging on. Or certain
sections of the forum like locations and sightings could only be
accessed by approved users. Of course it would be up to the list
owner and the majority of users. Just a suggestion...what does
everyone think?
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