Whatsapp roundup 7/4/2024

[andrewmccafferty]

#8570

Hi folks,
We’ve been feeling the website’s not getting enough action recently, partly because a lot of bird news gets reported on Whatsapp. We know there are a fair few people this excludes because either they don’t have a smartphone, or don’t use Whatsapp.

To try to remedy this, we’re going to experiment with putting the day’s messages from Whatsapp on here once a day (something which for me is fairly easy to do with a bit of copy and paste). If you find this useful, please reply to this message!

08:22 – Anon: Glossy ibis still in horse paddock at Middleton – wind too southerly for seabirds off Heysham

08:47 – Anon: Five pale bellied Brent just arrived at Red nab, tree pipit early am fluke hall, red throated diver past heysham

09:02 – Anon: Male ring ouzel private field heysham head

10:10 – Craig Bell 4 little gulls, at least 11 kittiwake drifting south, 2 R T Diver and 50+ C Scoter on a very rough sea off Far Arnside now.

10:10 – Andrew McCafferty: Male Common Scoter (seemingly on its own) gleaming in the sun off Broadway just now

11:12 – Anon: Also sub-ad gannet and distant flock of probable tern spp. Stone Jetty on dropping tide worth a look

11:24 – Anon: Pair of garganey still grisedale hide, the ad Shag on/around wooden jetty

12:09 – Anon: Great skua on sea off new barns bay for 15 mins from 1050 plus 40 small gulls prob kittiwake flying north west over winster valley area

13:47 – Anon: Gannet Cockersands

14:49 – Anon: First Arctic tern of the year headed south as seen from prom north side Heysham Head

• This topic was modified 3 weeks, 1 day ago by andrewmccafferty.
• This topic was modified 3 weeks, 1 day ago by andrewmccafferty.
• This topic was modified 3 weeks ago by andrewmccafferty.

[Tom Walkington]

#8580

Thanks Andrew,a good idea.

[eddybayton]

#8583

OK How do I join this Whatsapp Group? The Message Board is almost becoming redundant owing to the hassle with Captcha. I don’t do Facebook or Twitter and hardly email at all anymore … but I do have a couple of Whatsapp groups with family because my children told me I had to. Can somebody ‘join me’ if that a verb? I can post on that instead. My telephone number is Oh seven eight 1 seven 9 two 4 three 8 nine

[stuppla1]

#8584

I think this is a good idea. Even if you have the WhatsApp group it’s an easier way to view at the end of the day if you’ve been out and about doing something else.

[eddybayton]

#8585

Aside from that, complete respect for the time and effort you put into this Tech stuff Andrew. Thank you. Forty years ago I could write ZX81 programmes onto a cassette tape. These days I have lost the will to live with the rate of change of platforms. In a work based groundcare forum recently, some of the contributions coming from a score of the finest groundstaff in the country (Wimbledon, Wembley, Lord’s, St Andrews etc) … for free to their colleagues… was wiped out overnight. Tens of thousands of gems of help. The 25 year archive of advice and guidance on a web forum was deleted because those in control, a couple of webmasters in their mid twenties felt it was no longer that important. I could have wept. Published on paper it would have been in several volumes and the seminal paper on groundcare in the UK.

We have to be very careful about the recording, retention and publication of data to avoid this issue or we will enter into a dark age. The excellent publication “The Birds of Lancaster and District 202x” that drops on my doormat, compiled and edited by so many hard working and experienced experts is a vital cog in this system.

Just saying. Eddy

[andrewmccafferty]

#8587

Just to point out that this website is not at all my work now, it was rebuilt from the ground up by M6 Media, on WordPress, with assistance from the LDBWS committee, especially Rosie!

I would say as a punter that although the captcha is annoying, the alternative is either we would have to vet every new person who wanted to post here, or we leave ourselves open to unlimited amounts of Chinese spam, which people might not remember, is what happened before it was here. It’s a difficult problem to solve, and has only got worse since I started the site in 2004.

[andrewmccafferty]

#8590

Also, rest assured that records are meticulously curated from this forum (again, by Rosie), so bear in mind, Eddie, that we’re not just relying on data being stored on wherever this website is hosted. I also still have everything from the old site in a spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eo7WqWu6rcEbSTN60GoiolVBtX9JTQTsAmj9RZtxvEk/edit?usp=sharing

[eddybayton]

#8592

Andrew…and Rosie… My comments were not intended as criticism, merely an observation that postings seemed to be dropping off now that we have several different platforms to enjoy. I fully appreciate the hard work that goes into maintaining the website and am grateful. I have joined the Whatsapp group…thanks Pete.. so posting faster and more easily will be possible now. Transferring a Whatsapp roundup is an excellent idea. Delighted to hear all the old records are curated too. I did not know that.

Regards all
Eddy

[Neil H]

#8593

Thanks Andrew. As Tom said, a good idea and appreciated by me as a non Whats App user!

[Alasdair Taylor]

#8597

I also think this is a good idea, and echo the earlier post about how to join? Thanks.

[SLP]

#8620

Re: the Captcha on the forum:

I worked with a client recently in my day job who uses a ‘transparent’ Captcha tool called Cloudflare Turnstile – this uses some clever method to protect from spam but without the annoying click-on-all-the-traffic-lights popup.

If possible, it might be worth asking M6 Media if they can use this on these forum pages? It looks like M6 Media use this alternative Captcha tool on their own website.

Really appreciate all the hard work that goes into keeping the website and forum running!

[andrewmccafferty]

#8639

Hi SLP! I put that forward to M6 Media while asking if we could just have some kind of captcha for registration and login, and am pleased to say this is now implemented!

We’ll keep an eye out for spam though, but hopefully it shouldn’t now be too easy to do, and if you’re logged in, it should be easier to post because you won’t need to fill in a captcha.

[SLP]

#8641

Hi Andrew – super stuff! Good to know my day job is useful for something!

Cheers,
Simon.

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