Good evening, This message is for those of you who may be new to the NYSbirds-L eList or who may be unaware of eList etiquette, especially for an eList with a substantial subscriber base and broad online readership.
NYSbirds-L is comprised of over 1,250 subscribed email addresses, whose email addresses receive messages posted to NYSbirds-L. There are countless hundreds to thousands of additional persons interested in sightings posted to NYSbirds-L who read postings to NYSbirds-L by using other forms of online archives for this eList (without being a subscriber). When you post a message to NYSbirds-L, please make sure your intent is for the thousands of people to receive and read your message. If this is not the intent, please do not post to the entire eList. Instead, consider directing the message only to the person for which the message is intended. Sometimes this happens by accident and it can understandably be quite embarrassing – that’s okay, it has happened to the best of us. That being said, if an inappropriate message is posted to the entire eList with intent, don’t do it again. You will likely be placed into moderated status, often delaying, if not preventing future postings from you. As to the misunderstanding about eBird. Many birders throughout the World now use eBird as a tool to record their bird sightings for both personal use and for the greater good of better understanding bird populations and movements; whether simply birding in your backyard, visiting your local community birding spot, or while visiting a place completely new to you, eBird can be a great way to record what you see while also getting the sighting into a database without being connected to any one specific birding social media (eList, Facebook, RBA texting community, etc.). As a result of the use of eBird as a data reporting tool, it may seem rather exclusive, but it is not! After subscribing to eBird and establishing your account, you can set up personalized eBird alerts to be sent to your email address with a county-by-county configuration. New sightings that are deemed noteworthy or unusual (by eBird) are automatically sent to those configured eBird account email addresses. This is how the recent sighting of a Townsend’s Solitaire was reported to NYSbirds-L. An individual unable to post their sighting to NYSbirds-L had posted their sighting (with pictures) directly into eBird. The eBird alert went out to several people and a fellow NYSbirds-L eList subscriber took it upon themselves to alert the rest of the NYSbirds-L eList community of the rarity. This is how good word is spread. Please don’t disrespect or lambast people for how the word of a sighting gets distributed. Ask yourself this: would you rather hear about a sighting late, or not at all? Without everyone stepping in for the greater good, very few of us would hear about great sightings such as this Townsend’s Solitaire. Thanks and good birding to those who have time to get out there! Sincerely, Chris T-H PS – Don’t forget to visit the following site for basic information about NYSbirds-L, including the eList rules: http://www.NortheastBirding.com<http://www.northeastbirding.com> -- Chris Tessaglia-Hymes Listowner, NYSbirds-L Ithaca, New York c...@cornell.edu<mailto:c...@cornell.edu> NYSbirds-L – Archives<http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html> NYSbirds-L – Welcome and Basics<http://www.northeastbirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm> NYSbirds-L – Rules and Information<http://www.northeastbirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm> NYSbirds-L – Subscribe, Configuration and Leave<http://www.northeastbirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm> -- 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/ --
