cgeoff

I have a suggestion regarding the arrangement of photos of bird species on the Forum, which it would be good to get feedback on from photographers, users of the board and from Forrest regarding its feasibility.

The Forum (and the old BBS) is not only a great way for photographers to share photos and for board users to appreciate the beauty of the photos and the abilities of the photographers. It also provides an excellent resource that enables people to learn about bird identification and even allows those researching this topic to make advances in understanding which species or subspecies of birds occur in HK. The Records Committee has benefitted from this recently (more on that in another thread later!).

However, one of the problems with the old BBS was that there were hundreds of pages of photos, with, in some cases, many different threads for individual species, which at times made searching and looking at photos of different birds of the same species problematic. I was wondering whether, instead of having numerous threads for, say, Richard Pipit photos, it would be better to have only one. This would mean that all Richard's Pipit photos would be concentrated in one place, thereby making it easier to look back at previous photos and make comparisons etc. It would also make it easier for those who are unsure of the identification of birds in their own shots to check previous postings of similar species and correctly identify their own photos.

I would also suggest that for photos that are put up specifically to be identified, that once this is done these photos are then moved into the appropriate species thread, in order to concentrate photos of the same species

One problem is that misidentified photos would need to be renamed and moved. Any that remain unidentified could be put in special threads (e.g. Phylloscopus sp.).

One further advantage is that records of rare species, for which photos are an important part of the identification process could then be compiled more easily than was the case on the old BBS. From a Records Committee point of view, this would be very helpful.

What do you all think about this suggestion?

Geoff Carey