hotspots

[Paolo Matteucci]

For ebird hotspots, I do know that polygons might be adopted in the future (within this calendar year seems to me very optimistic, from what I heard) but it seems to me that in terms of ebird hotspots there is some room for progress right now. This has also been discussed elsewhere, in general terms, but for NS and for what it's worth here's my opinion.I am not criticizing, just putting my 2 cents in.

-Not all spots are hotspots: I believe some cleaning would be in order, also here in NS. For example in Serbia they removed all spots that were neither  known hotspots nor used. So they did *not remove a good hotspot with no visits, but they did remove poor locations with few visits. I did the same for some parts of Italy and I do not regret. Opposite example: Maine (US) where vistually any corner is a hotspot. I find it confusing if not miselading, and also annoying when entering my checklists.

In HRM: do we really need places such as 

Spryfield--Jollimore Village

 to be hotspot? in birding terms it is not hot (apart from perhaps a few fox sparrows in april), and nobody uses it.

-This is marginal and would take a lot of time but... Nomenclature is inconsistent. Much of these inconstintencies were already  there before you guys (thankfully) took up the editing, but the conventional usage recommended by ebird has never been adopted so NS is different from many parts of the world. The double dash -- applies only to major real hotspots with their subdivision. Eg. Yosemite--Visitor center, and then Yosemite--Whatever trail. Halifax Peninsula is not a hotspot, Point pleasant is, so the name should simply be Point Pleasant Park. or St Mary's Boat Club. Same for Spryfield. As per ebird central instructions 2014.

-Vague/unnecessarily confusing hotspots, whereas finer scale would be appropriate.This is the case of names/locations such as 

Aspotogan Peninsula--White Point (+ Northwest Cove) 

which is not consitent with the common denomination (Aspotogan peninsula is unnecessary) and also idiosyncratic, in the (+ Northwest Cove) part

-General areas

In Southern California they removed all of them (eg. St Elijo Lagoon) and they put precise markers instead. The data remain in a big aggregator (now personal locations)  but sublocations grew up really quick and finer scale is so much more convenient both when doing research and when entering checklists, also because of shorter distances, etc. etc. I did the same for Italy (apart from Venice, Roma, Florence) where I maintained  these general areas for the (lazy) tourists and I do not regret. As soon as more specific locations are added, these general and generic and approximate locations (incidentally, mostly used by generic and approximative individuals) are gonna go. Think 

Bedford Basin

or

Halifax Peninsula--Northwest Arm

or

St. Margaret's Bay

Are these intended to be general areas? or where the marker is put? in both cases people enter checklists that should be given exact location (esp. for bedford basin, where this perhaps means the Long Cove area, but also the Arm, where it collects anything from Dingle tower to Manulife building) and these locators are actually misleading because they work in the opposite direction, that is they aggregate data on a vague and not plotted location.

-Stakeouts

again, ideas taken from elsewhere, but I find it very interesting: rare bird appears in place that is not hot, such as a random parking lot near a mall- On ebird, hotspot with stakeout in the name appears so that all can put data in this stakehout hotspot marker when they see the rarity. The bird goes away, some months elapse, and the hotspot is reverted to personal location. All data are aggregated and stay in the system, but when entering checklists in the area in 2017 we do not have to slalom through hotspot markers for stale stakeouts from 10 years before. So convenient!

curious to think what you think

paolo

[Dominic Cormier]

Good points Paolo.

The last three hotspots you mentioned are indeed "garbage" in that it is not clear what they represent. I was going to get rid of them, but saw that at least the Northwest Arm has a lot of checklists associated with it. Same goes for the dingle hotspots which includes that plus Frog Pond. Now that I've added hotspots where people bird to access the Arm, I think it is safe to remove it. Same goes for the Bedford Basin. However, for a place like the Dingle, I don't have separate personal locations to suggest as hotspots, so if I get rid of that hotspot, it leaves if with none. If someone can suggest those locations separately then I think that would be good. A lot of these hotspots were grandfathered in from Blake, and were created before lots of users, so they were never tested for their practicality or popularity.  

Cheers,

Dominic

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[Paolo Matteucci]

I was referring to Jollimore Village

(not the Dingle tower, currently with Sir Fleming Park and this one should stay as is I suppose)

[Keith Lowe]

Yes Blake was not into granular hotspots. I asked him to make a few for NW Arm but he felt one would do it and felt they all should go under Halifax Peninsula-Northwest Arm. He made the case that Lunenburg (the town) only needed one hotspot! It is much better having all all these specifics spot throughout the province. I rarely use general area hotshots but coincidentally Northwest Arm is the only one I use sometimes, mainly because I really don't know what spot I should use for an observation like seeing the PEFA on the Manulife Tower from my unit on Walter Havill Dr and sometimes seeing some other birds between me an the tower. Northwest Arm seems appropriate for cases like that but I'm open to suggestions.

Even though I rarely use general area hotpots myself, Northwest Arm being the exception, I do think they serve a great purpose in that they allow specific hotspots to have data that is only relative to them. For instance I wish no one used spots like Dartmouth General area, Case Sable Island and Brier Island as this data would be more useful if the checklists had been split into the specific hotpots for those areas. But for those who just want to make one checklist for the day, it is much better if they put them under the general area hotspots. I've written Dom, or the people directly if I know them, to ask they wouldn't mind moving their all day checklist to the general area hotspot so the specific hotspot has better data integrity. I think Northwest Arm should be left as is for those who might do a loop of the spots around the Arm but only make one checklist.

I mentioned Jollimore Village to Blake as well, it could definitely go. The one person that was using it no longer eBirds.

[Paolo Matteucci]

to say nothing of the 

Halifax Citadel NHS

hotspot, which i find misleading and wholly unnecessary