Hi Peter, and others,
John is right, the majority of the discussion has happened on facebook.
Increasingly I think, there is a shift away from birding-aus for several
reasons. An email list is a relatively slow way of disseminating
information (much faster than past methods, but much slower than something
like facebook). Most significantly, b-a suffers from not being able to
handle image files. Almost all of the discussion on the dowitcher's ID has
come from people being able to post photos, add pointers to them, and talk
very quickly, in much more of a conversational style than b-a allows. A
video or two has also been posted.
In terms of how easy it is to retrieve information on facebook: there is a
search function that acts like a find tool in a Microsoft Word document (or
similar), so it looks for any post containing that word, and then displays
the entire thread. In essence, it is no different to searching the archives
of birding-aus, although without any issues of having the subject line
change halfway through a thread, which can make topics hard to follow here.
Obviously, the shift to facebook further fragments the grapevine that the
birding community relies on. However, increasing numbers of people, of all
ages, have facebook and it really is very convenient. Birdline remains the
premier rare bird telegraph page, while this page remains the best for in
depth discussions. One of the great criticisms of facebook by social
commentators is that it feed the instantaneous me-me-me! attitude of the
yoof; ironically, this is exactly what's needed for rare, twitchable birds,
and that makes modern-day social media the best spot for twitchers.
Cheers,
Ashwin Rudder
On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 8:37 AM, John Tongue <> wrote:
> Hi Peter, et al,
> There has been a fair bit of discussion on the "Australian Twitchers" FB
> page. While people keep adding comments to a particular thread, that keeps
> it live and active. I'm not sure what happens to that info some time after
> people stop commenting, and how easy it will prove to be to retrieve.
>
> Cheers,
> John Tongue
>
>
> On 13/11/2014, at 7:16 AM, Peter Shute <> wrote:
>
> > Interesting comment below from Ashwin about where the discussion of
> Victoria's Lake Tutchewop Dowitcher is taking place. I assume "historic
> channels" means the birding-aus list?
> >
> > Where else is discussion taking place? I've seen plenty of discussion in
> the Victorian Birders Facebook group. Is there anywhere else?
> >
> > Facebook has the advantage that photos can be posted, but I'm wondering
> if there is any kind of archive being kept. I often can't find a Facebook
> discussion just days after I last looked at it, let alone months or years.
> Is there a way to find them, or is this stuff just getting lost? And does
> it matter?
> >
> > Peter Shute
> >
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> >> On 13 Nov 2014, at 5:03 am, Ashwin Rudder <> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> I haven't seen anything really up to date posted to b-a; most discussion
> >> seems to have happened away from the historic channels. In summary:
> >>
> >
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