Thanks, Allison. Well said. I would respectfully add a bit to your comment that Facebook is not used by many Birders. For example, the Colorado Field Ornithologists, offers both COBIRDS and a Facebook page: the COBIRDS Google Group has 1,686 members while the CFO Facebook page has 2,947 members. I suspect there are many birders who follow both of these valuable (but different) sources of information. My impression is that this same pattern is true in many states/provinces as well as national birding organizations.
Lest anyone think I'm saying this is evidence of one medium being somehow better than another, I don't believe that at all. I do think that more total people are reached by having multiple avenues for communication and this is overall a good thing for the birding community. I also think that every communication medium offers different advantages (e.g. print journal vs. electronic, Google Groups vs. the old phone trees, texting vs. email, texting vs. phone calls, Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Instagram, and so on. This is why multiple communication methods can and will continue to successfully co-exist. Here are some additional Colorado-related Facebook pages and their memberships (in Facebook, it's not really a membership but these are the numbers of those who have formally "like" or elected to "follow" a particular page): Birding Colorado - 2,007 Colorado Bird Photography - 4,205 Adventures in Colorado birding for Amateurs - 91 Birds of Colorado - 373 Big Year Birding in Colorado - 110 Denver Field Ornithologists - 773 Audubon Society of Greater Denver - 2,077 Colorado Rare Bird Alert - 255 Each of these pages has a somewhat different purpose and, again, I suspect there is a lot of overlap in these numbers. Carl Bendorf Longmont On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 8:52:53 AM UTC-7, ahilf wrote: > > Ira, thank you for pointing this out. Yesterday the bird was posted to > Cobirds and then someone shared it to Facebook. Steve Mlodinow and the > majority of Birders who seek out rare birds are very good about > communicating through Cobirds. Cobirds is the traditional method of > communication and has served this community very effectively. > > This FB idea was begun under the misinformation that Cobirds was ending. > That was never an issue; the issue was whether the RBA would be able to > continue without Joyce. Even if the RBA was discontinued (which is not the > case, as for now we have a group volunteers) all rare bird sightings would > still have been posted on Cobirds as usual. > > FB has its role and is perfectly fine if people don’t want to participate > in Cobirds or if they prefer to use both groups; but FB is not used by many > Birders. If people want to post rare birds to both groups that should be > encouraged; however I think Cobirds should be the first line of > communication for a rare bird. Cobirds seems to still be where things are > accurately reported firsthand, but for by a handful of people who prefer FB. > > I hope people who use both FB and Cobirds will share a post with both > groups simultaneously. If you can post to one group, you can copy and > paste a rare bird sighting to the other group. > > Allison Hilf > > > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Dec 12, 2018, at 8:09 AM, Ira Sanders <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > > And that is where I see the problem between Facebook and Cobirds. the > goose was posted to Facebook and not Cobirds and someone else had to post > it to Cobirds. Just because Facebook is newer doesn't make it better. > Ira Sanders > Golden > > On Wed, 12 Dec 2018, 7:59 am Carl Bendorf <[email protected] > <javascript:> wrote: > >> Per an update at 7:48 a.m. on the Colorado Rare Bird Alert Facebook page, >> bird "Just spotted from 1 mile south of 119 on CR 7!" >> >> Carl Bendorf >> Longmont >> >> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 7:57:58 AM UTC-7, Mike Hensley wrote: >>> >>> Can you update if it reappears? I’m at home with my toddler, but I can >>> be there in 20 minutes if someone sends out a timely heads up. 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