New York is a large and geographically diverse state and I suspect one of the problems undermining the usefulness of this STATEWIDE list as well as contributing to the impression that it is principally focused on downstate, is the careless use of location information.
Too often posts simply assume locations will be familiar to people living hundreds of miles away and make no effort to accommodate the wider readership. I suspect cross-posting to more localized lists (where this is less of a problem) is a contributing factor but in truth vague subject lines and location information has been a problem for years. Why should a birder in northern NY or far western NY be expected to know the name of some pond or beach on Long Island? Taking a few extra clicks to include the county or general region in the subject line makes a HUGE difference to the usefulness of the list as a news sharing tool. 'Me too' posts also contribute to the chatter but can be useful especially with noteworthy rarities. It would be nice to seem more information sharing from every corner of NYS to know what's happening in the broader sense. I suspect most folks don't have the bandwidth to subscribe to all the regional lists. Angus Wilson New York City -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
