Some thoughts on posting senstive records from Ebird

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chrish
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Some thoughts on posting senstive records from Ebird

Post by chrish »

Hey all,

I know we have discussed the differences between ebird and our database and where they share similarities as well. Thought it might be worthwhile to look at a recent post there about reporting sensitive species.

Obviously, there are significant differences in the consequence of reporting sensitive species between our two databases as well as differences in the amount of data we release to the public at large (ebird releases exact coordinates, for example), but it might be a good read to give us some perspective on how another (much larger) database thinks about these issues.

http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/sensitive_species

I don't mean to drag up the issue of sensitive records, whether to enter them or their release. I just thought some external perspective might be useful.

Chris
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chris_mcmartin
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Re: Some thoughts on posting senstive records from Ebird

Post by chris_mcmartin »

chrish wrote:I just thought some external perspective might be useful.
Indeed. I'm a big fan of inter-"disciplinary" information sharing.

The only difference I picked up on is that while we can wait until after the monsoons to upload AZ finds, for example, the dates of the finds will still be available for future reference, and given that herps are relatively sedentary compared to birds, all a viewer would have to do is go to the same area the following year, provided conditions are right.

Perhaps that's not too big a deal, considering it will likely only narrow down a potential window of opportunity to find a particular species from months to weeks or, in some cases, days--not a guarantee of finding the target species but would definitely aid in planning vacation time.
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