>From below: "eBird reviewers are being asked to invalidate lists that have
imprecise geographic locations, such as checklists that are only located to
the county, or are long traveling counts. "

I think this is just daft. I presume eBird is doing this to coerce people
into providing data more to their liking.

Maybe some people will change their ways and follow their guidelines.

But some people will simply not bother to put data into eBird.

And some people will continue to put data in, it will be invalidated by the
reviewer, and nobody will be able to see that data.

Any data is better than no data. eBird lists with imprecise geographic
locations should be marked as such in the underlying database. That way,
they can easily be excluded from any data analysis that requires better
locations. However, a list that is located only to a county still should
show up when querying for a county list. Even without precise locality,
that data provides information about the timing of bird occurrence.
Throwing away those lists throws away that valuable information.

I'll admit that it would be great if imprecise geographic data used a
different color flag on the map, so that one could know not to bother
zooming in to see where the bird was seen.

But to use up the server disk space keeping private lists for individuals,
but making that data invisible to others, EVEN THOUGH STILL USEFUL in a
limited way, is just nuts.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http://www.marymoor.org/birding.htm
== http://www.marymoor.org/BirdBlog.htm
== birdmarymoor at frontier.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Lisa Hardy
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2012 10:18 PM
To: INWB
Subject: [inland-NW-birders] a note for eBird reporters

A note for eBird reporters

eBird reviewers are being asked to invalidate lists that have imprecise
geographic locations, such as checklists that are only located to the
county, or are long traveling counts. If you wonder why some of your
observations do not show up in the public maps, it may be for this reason.
The data will always remain part of your personal My eBird records, but
eBird is only able to effectively use counts that are located within a
limited area, such as traveling counts generally 5 miles or less in length.

Information on how you can organize checklists to be of more value to the
eBird scientific process can be found at the following link:

http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about/how-to-make-your-checklists-more-meaningful

We hope that eBird participants will consider these suggestions. If you have
any questions, please feel free to contact me.


Lisa Hardy for the eBird state review team
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