Subject: [Tweeters] County Year Lists-- do we really need this stuff?
Date: Jan 3 10:03:26 2007
From: Wayne C. Weber - contopus at telus.net


Tweeters,

I am dismayed to note that someone is attempting to recruit
"county year list" coordinators, with the intention of posting
numerous updates to TWEETERS on the year list for County X
or County Y.

If some of you would like to see what this practice looks like
in its full-fledged from, have a look at the archives of IBLE
(Idaho Birders Linked Electronically) over the last couple of
years. A large percentage of messages on this E-group
consists of lists of 5 or 10 species that have been added to the year
list for this or that county-- often with no indication of who saw
the species, or where in the county it was seen. In my opinion,
IBLE has gone a long way downhill since I first subscribed to it
several years ago.

I don't know about most of you, but I find this stuff to be dead
boring. I would much rather read reports of rare birds, trip reports
(especially detailed ones like those posted by Patrick
Sullivan, Gina Sheridan, or Charlie Wright), accounts of unusual
bird behavior, conservation-related messages, and other types
of messages that are already posted on TWEETERS.

If we end up having year-list coordinators for all 39 Washington
counties-- and if updates for each county are posted only
4 times a month-- that would mean an extra 1872 messages per
year posted to TWEETERS, on top of the 7000 or so messages
(about 20 per day) that are already posted. How many of us
really want to read all this stuff?

There is plenty of evidence (e.g. a couple of messages posted within
the last 24 hours) that some of us already can barely deal with
the number of messages being sent to TWEETERS. A flood
of messages dealing with county year lists might be the final
straw causing quite a few subscribers to drop TWEETERS
completely, which would be a shame.

If some of you are really keen on keeping county year lists, and
on posting frequent updates to them, I would strongly
encourage you to start your own E-group and/or website devoted
specifically to that purpose, rather than inflicting this stuff on
those of us who find it unnecessary and boring.

Sincerely,

Wayne C. Weber
Delta, BC
contopus at telus.net