Citizen Science, AI, am I too old for this? The answer is emphatically no, but I had until recently been a bit disturbed by some of the "progress" in the birding world. But, speaking to the ebird people at the Birdfair, I realised why most of my issues were irrelevant. There are many reasons why information on websites such as irecord and ebird are not always accurate, but the truth is it doesn't matter, it's the overall picture that's important. My main issues with ebird were that the "checking systems" were based on computer algorithms. and many records were probably erroneous. There are humans involved, but not all parts of the world are covered, and many adjudicators live nowhere near the area they cover. The reality is that a record will always be accepted (unless it is obviously an error) and most are never seen by a human. But, anything important, such as rare breeders or endangered species, and vagrants, will be assessed, that is actually a qui...
