Jenny, I hope you and others do return to making contributions to BA. I'd
love to hear about your 2-day road trip to Culburra, for instance.
For me, the value of BA is the ability of contributors to share their
knowledge about birds and bird-watching. Sometimes there are great in-depth
discussions on a broad range of topics which you wouldn't find elsewhere
because other forums don't provide that opportunity (word limits or
formats). As a community, we have a broad range of expertise that is not
just limited to birds and birding, which some of us are willing to share
with others. Of course, there is also the invaluable archival value of this
information that others have commented on. I hope all that continues. I
have belonged to a number of online discussion groups (not just limited to
birds) and I have to say that BA is the most successful of them all in terms
of sharing information and promoting further discussion.
Of course, BA is not perfect and is open to abuse. I have no time for
sledging, "birdy politics" and grandstanding, and it is unfortunate that
these behaviours sometimes exist on BA and others are deterred from
contributing to BA because of them. I think that the BA moderators have
been extremely good at minimising this behaviour over the years but, of
course, some occasionally slip through and moderators have no control over
abusive emails being sent directly to individual subscribers.
I think it would be a very sad day if and when BA closed down.
Kind regards,
Stephen
Stephen Ambrose
Ryde, NSW
-----Original Message-----
From: Birding-Aus On Behalf Of
Jenny Spry
Sent: Tuesday, January 5, 2016 10:07 AM
To: birding-aus
Subject: The Decline of BA
Hi all,
I agree totally that Facebook is useless for archive searching and much good
information is going to be lost. Birding-Aus has been an invaluable resource
for me over the years and I hope I have sometimes provided help to others.
And yes, it is sad to see the demise of the road trip reports.
Having said all that I don't submit to Birding Aus any more because of all
the "trolls" that used to contact me complaining that:
I had spelt a word wrong
That I actually didn't know what I was talking about That going on a twitch
was a waste of the worlds limited resources That keeping a year list/life
list was not in the spirit of birding Etc etc etc Sadly the above comments
were usually couched in words meant to demean or cause discomfort.
So, on Fb I can screen out people who make these types of comment or make
tasteless attempts at humour and my enjoyment of communicating with fellow
birders has increased because I no longer fear I am going to be attacked.
If Birding-Aus had a strong commitment to banning abusive mail, and had a
place I could forward abusive mail that had been sent to me privately that
would see the sender banned, I would love to come back. I could even submit
a report of my latest 2 day 1600 km road dash to see the Paradise Shelduck
that would have included the contact details for accommodation at Culburra
and where the best food in town was.
cheers
Jenny
http://jenniferspryausbirding.blogspot.com.au/
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