Dear Birding-Ausers,
Like Richard Nowotny, I too usually resist the urge to comment publicly on the
quality of some contributions to Birding-Aus. My local social group, however,
often bemoans the significant negative side of being subscribed to this group.
In fact, several of my friends have given up and unsubscribed. They found the
volume of irrelevant and rude e-mails too much, along with quite a number of
other people who have posted farewells outlining the list's shortcomings.
I continue to think the good things about Birding-Aus outweigh the bad. For
example, the postings on unusual sightings and the articles on people's birding
travels are very interesting to me. I also think the RFI process is really
useful as the ability to contact people with local knowledge invariably makes a
birding trip to a strange or remote destination much more enjoyable.
However, the negative side of Birding-Aus continues to irritate me
significantly. There are two major aspects to this.
One is the large volume of irrelevant material. This, after all, is a BIRDING
network. I would have thought the vast majority of postings, therefore, should
have a birding topic. Too many of us consider this forum to be a personal
chatline, where any topic of personal interest is valid. I think this is
assumption, in the best light I can consider it, is indulgent and inconsiderate.
People should go off-line to engage in personal conversation and should find
another forum to be whimsical about non-bird-related topics.
The second is the occasional level of extreme (and often petty) rudeness and
intolerance shown by some contributors. While disagreement with another
contributor is perfectly OK, being publicly rude to them is not acceptable. Any
correspondence of this type should be undertaken PRIVATELY.
Like Richard, I apologise for my diatribe. If anyone has any problems with
this, please feel free to take it up with me privately. If anyone wonders
whether I am referring to them and their contributions, I will be happy to
discuss it off-line.
In the meantime, if we concentrate, in the main, on birding topics and we try to
be polite to each other, I'm sure we could remain more relevant to more people
who subscribe to the birding network and keep a greater percentage of our
members subscribed and happy.
Thanks for your indulgence.
Chris
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
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