Who is doing what?

It is clear that several of the iSpot old hands now have roles in maintaining the site. I’d be interested to know who is doing behind the scenes work. Can we have a brief outline of people’s roles, please?

John

Pretty sure I count as an old hand but I have no role in running it (doubt I’d have the time).

If David is an older member, I may qualify as one of the Ancients. Welcoming new ispotters when they make their first posts, a role several of us do from time to time, is obviously up-front; I don’t do anything which is ‘behind the scenes’.

Interesting that no-one has actually answered this. Perhaps the Powers That Be don’t even look at the site any more?
Whilst DJM and HB have been doing sterling work “at the coal-face”, the rest of the site management remains a bit of a mystery to us ordinary users. This is not, to my mind, a situation likely to encourage those sadly-missed former users back to iSpot.
On the other hand (trying to lighten the mood), it could be further proof that this is a Remainer plot… :smiling_imp:

The only ‘behind the scenes’ work is done by me the curator (part time). However there are indeed lots of ispotters who help out in various ways e.g. with adding identifications and agreements, comments, creating projects and a variety of other interactions. Some of the users are very keen and are going back over older observations and trying to help further with these by using projects and other publicly available ways at gettng to observations that need attention.
It is also possible for me, as curator, to generate lists of observations or projects that need further attention.

Currently I am wondering if anyone could help with going through the projects and suggesting ones that could be removed so that it is easier to find projects that may be of use to more people. I don’t want to remove anything that is still being used so I will ask the creator of the project before removing anything and help them to fix it if it is just broken. I can generate a list of projects so that it is possible to start from the oldest ones rather than having to go backwards from the more recent ones.

Something that everyone can help with is encouraging existing users, encouraging new people to join and asking experts to look in and help with identifications. Indeed if you can suggest suitable experts where it is clear that this is missing on ispot then I could also ask them if they would like to help.

2 Likes

Mike - there are some ZA Projets that have been deliberately defaced - if that could be the term used. The project map has been redrawn to show a spot in the Atlantic Ocean.
Not sure what you would want to do about this - other than restore it if you think worthwhile. I suppose we could add a comment to link it to the latest version.
Any suggestions?

Hi Mike,
I was wondering if some iSpot ‘experts’ who would not mind being contacted, via iSpot, could be on a list. For example, a newcomer might post an U/I bird. I do my bit to welcome them, but can’t help with birds, especially global ones. It would be useful to be able to alert a “willing to help Birder” to look at the post.
At present we are making some requests in the Forum, but a list we could refer to and then directly ask an expert to help could be a useful feature.