At 6:06 PM -0800 01/16/1998, Eugene Hunn wrote:

>I'm willing to take some heat for my recent comments about the importance of
>knowing WHO reported a particular mega-rarity. First of all, let me defend
>myself: though I have served on rare bird committees, I am not an elitist,
>arrogantly dismissing the observations of the beginner. [SNIP]
>If I see something extraordinary, I don't assume that I will be believed
>on the >face of it, no matter what my reputation, but go out of my way to
>provide the >details necessary to allow the reader of the report to make
>their own judgment >of its likely validity.

Bravo Gene! In my opinion your position is the very opposite of elitist,
and the best possible one for all to adopt. It so happens, however, that
the long-established institution of the mediated hotline, whose compiler
has to make some tough decisions about which birds to put on the outgoing
tape and how much (or how little) to say about them, *is* an elitist
institution, however benevolent, and however much we all benefit from it.
The compiler is in the middle, and has to take into account the presumed
interests of both the observer who reports a sighting and a public eager to
learn about it, as well as his (the compiler's) interest in staying in
business. Result: some compromises get made in the name of keeping
everybody happy, and as in any mediated transaction, the middleman takes a
cut (of the information flow in this case).

One of the very good features of unmediated voice mailbox systems like the
BirdBoxes in California and ours here in Washington is that individual
callers take responsibility for the IDs they report, just as Gene believe
we all should be doing. And their names and phone numbers are right there,
upfront. This does mean that those who call in to listen to messages need
to exercise judgment about the credibility of the reporter, because there's
no omniscient editor to screen out the dubious reports. I find it very
revealing that when a bird like the Great Knot gets onto an RBA tape, and
even though callers must assume that the compiler thinks it's probably a
valid report based on the reputation of the observer, people *still* want
to know that person's identity. It *is* important. Enter BirdBox.

There is a downside to the Birdbox, though, in the ratio of essential
information to what, for some, may seem to be trivialities. The condensed
reports compiled for an RBA update are much more efficient in that sense.
But they are less timely, obviously, and also they do leave out some
crucial information, as Gene and others point out.

Of course, once everybody is on-line and can exchange the latest info on
palmtop computers via satellite uplinks, who'll need any of these
voice-based systems anyway?

Hal Opperman