One other thing that I'd like to add is that all of the MD reviewers are first and foremost birders. We all like to spend time in the field and time in the field means time away from your computer hence review species pile up. This is often worst during migration when the bulk of flagged species arrive in the queue. I'm not sure if people can fully comprehend turning on your computer and seeing 400+ flagged species! Thankfully the inexpensive digital camera has made documentation much easier. Ah, birding in the digital age.
�
Tyler Bell
<jtylerbell...>
California, Maryland
________________________________
From: Bill Hubick <bill_hubick...>
To: Jim Wilkinson <lakekoshare...>; "<mdbirding...>" <mdbirding...>
Cc: Marshall Iliff <miliff...>
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2012 4:21 PM
Subject: Re: [MDBirding] e-bird and other records--delays in mapping
Hi Jim,
I'd like to take a moment to address the concerns you described here. Let's all please try to keep this thread positive and productive.
I think there are several different concerns in your message, Jim, and I'll do my best to address each of them. I think you'll find there are good reasons and good volunteers trying their best.
Let's start with timeliness. I think we can all agree that electronic bird reporting is comically, insanely faster than ever before. The various eBird alerts are nearly immediate and alert users regardless of review status. There is no middleman. So, whether you want ABA needs, ABA rare birds, state needs, state rare birds, state year needs, county needs, or even county year needs, you can subscribe to these and receive them hourly. You can also view them almost immediately on alert
pages such as the Google gadget, and here on the MDBirding site (http://www.mdbirding.com/ebird.html). These appear very quickly and without vetting by a reviewer. Of course, species that are not "flagged" show up in all output immediately.
As for specific flagged reports being validated and shown on all output (e.g., the maps), there are a number of variables. The first is sheer volume. Maryland is regularly cited as a model state for eBird buy-in and for nearly complete embracing by the state birding community. This is awesome!� The effect is, predictably, that there is a TON of data to review. We have a number of awesome volunteers on the review team now, and we all spend many hours per week reviewing sightings, adjusting filters, discussing things like how to handle the reporting of crossbill types, adding hot spots, writing personal messages, reviewing photos, sending messages to the list-serve, and much more. There are just literally
HUNDREDS of flagged reports each week, and it takes time to ensure the data quality meets the standards eBird ask of us.
And that is really what takes time - ensuring data quality and consistency in our reviews. I assure you that the thousand shades of gray in handling review properly is nothing shy of intimidating. It's a lot of work, and without it, the eBird data we all work so hard to collect would be worthless. We calibrate very regularly with Marshall, Brian, Chris, and other reviewers to discuss standards and what should and should not be confirmed. Review time is shorter when there is more evidence supplied. The more unusual the sighting, the more evidence is required to confirm it for posterity. The best way to ensure things are quickly "confirmed" is to supply photos, audio, video, and/or detailed notes. When a sighting is rare, expected in small numbers each year at a date/place, but has no notes or weak notes, this often results in
it sitting in the queue for longer. This is because asking for details takes more time than just confirming, and sometimes we have to discuss internally where our line is for acceptance. This is ever-changing as something like this winter finch irruption continues. In this case, the invasion is unprecedented in modern times and provides a unique opportunity to learn about these species, especially Red Crossbills. Delays in acceptances factor in all of the following: 1) very busy volunteers trying hard to keep up, 2) internal discussions to ensure data quality is properly emphasized (and applied consistently), and 3) the amount of documentation provided. Again, this last part is one way to ensure sightings are quickly reviewed. When I log into admin, the first thing I do is accept all records with correctly ID'd photos. The more open-and-shut the case, the quicker the turnaround. I assure you that working in the huge gray zone of what should be accepted
and what requires more documentation is very hard (and time-consuming) work!
I have posted a number of times that I hope our culture is changing to celebrate high standards on our data. It is, after all, more than ever, all of our data. More and more I'm seeing people say things like, "I feel good about counting this, but it's probably not appropriate to confirm in eBird, so go ahead and not confirm it." When we challenge other reviewers on the team on a sighting, the response is generally, "Oh, OK, let's not accept it then... No big thing... " The records that are not confirmed always stay on your list and are always available to scientists in the future. The valid/invalid flag is just one piece of metadata about a record in the database. There is also a reviewer comments area where we enter comments such as "This sighting is almost certainly good, but by this date we felt that more documentation should be required." I hope more people will
embrace this attitude of no sighting being worth more than the data set. As a community I think we're getting better because of it!
Finally, you mentioned not hearing back about a report that you later realized was not accepted. I apologize for that - it was even me who did not accept the record (but could have been anyone). Discussions about not accepted reports are WITHOUT QUESTION the most stressful, demoralizing, time-consuming part of this job. A surprising minority (but thankfully growing number) of birders roll with that news with a positive attitude. Instead, the response is generally very defensive, listing reasons why it "had to be" what was reported, how many years of experience they have, citation of other sightings in the region that week, and often some sharp barbs for good measure. I have had these discussions take hours (and 20+ emails) over the course of a week for one sighting. I've had people attack me personally and even
attempt to damage my reputation in private e-mails over a single sighting. Many people are very threatened by hearing something is not accepted, even when as a concept they embrace high standards. Each reviewer uses their judgment with when to write and when to not, and often we discuss internally how best to handle situations (which of course adds time to the review! :)). I'm not saying you would do any of those things, of course, and I wish I wrote everyone about every sighting not accepted, but it's just not feasible with this data volume. I hope you understand. One of our best investments we've made was to invite Ron Gutberlet to join the Maryland eBird team especially for focused outreach. In addition to awesome posts to the list-serve on various eBird topics, we often connect Ron with newer eBird users or eBird users with incomplete understanding of protocols and so on. This makes for happier Maryland eBird users, a bigger and better community of
eBird users, and of course faster review by the rest of us because of his focused efforts. We're always trying to get better.
So, in summary, please let us know how we can improve, but please also understand that data quality must come first. Without it, we do an injustice to everyone participating by watering down their incredible efforts. Long-term I hope we are all positive and excited about high standards - it just means we're doing a better job documenting the birds we love and helping ensure we know how to best protect them.
Thanks, and good eBirding!
Bill
�
Bill Hubick
Pasadena, Maryland
<bill_hubick...>
http://www.billhubick.com
http://www.marylandbiodiversity.com
>________________________________
> From: Jim Wilkinson <lakekoshare...>
>To: <mdbirding...>
>Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2012 2:24 PM
>Subject: [MDBirding] e-bird and other records--delays in mapping
>
>With the ongoing winter finch invasion as an example it appears that the Maryland ebird reviewers are following a similar disturbing pattern to the breeding atlas by not communicating before delaying or rejecting a sighting record.
>
>I find neighboring states to be more responsive.� The most recent example is of crossbills and ravens I saw in PA from the last 2 days are mapped but the Maryland crossbills along with other sightings from mid-November are still missing.� On a 2010 record that was questionable as to species I never heard anything from the local ebird personnel--I did receive a note from Marshall Iliff after I sent a recent inquiry (2012) to the ebird main site.
>
>I can understand records needing to be reviewed, but not communicating anything to the observer before rejecting or delaying is not helpful. This is especially true when there is an ongoing major finch irruption and it would be very helpful to see the latest
sightings.
>
>Jim Wilkinson
>Columbia, MD
>
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