[Tweeters] Does E-bird have a top-100 problem?

[Ed Newbold]

Hi all,
Does E-bird have a top-100 problem?
This is not a criticism of anyone because it is most certainly not clear to me what is going on, who is involved or what even is happening.
But there has to be vast skepticism that anyone could be at #1 in WA if they didn't get their first Pacific Loon until September.
(I should say now that it's possible there could be something that explains this and the other apparent contradictions of this listing that might be revealed to us all in the future. The world is strange.)
But assuming there is a prankster, we have friends who may have figured out how this is being done and therefore possibly how it could be fixed.
In my own personal view it is fairly important for E-bird to deal with this ASAP. Top-100 may feel superficial to some, and others may feel it encourages unseemly competitiveness and others that it has the unintended consequence of appearing to the uninitiated as a ranking of birding-skill when it is most certainly not. For my part, I see all these points but I land squarely in the opposite court and I feel that the integrity of Top-100 must be maintained. I see Top-100 as the Holy Grail--perhaps even the only hope--for birds and birding as it taps into whatever it is in the human spirit that allows or causes--for example-- billions to live and die over the minutia of which young person kicks a ball between two posts during various specified time-periods. 
If birding ever caught on big time we can absolutely be certain there would be downsides. But I feel it would be a vast improvement over the current state of the culture where in I could say to a person "I saw a Vireo," and they wouldn't know what I was talking about (I have done this).
Thanks all,
Ed Newbold
.The migration trickles on at Butyl Creek where today Delia and I have had three visits by Orange-crowned Warblers and one by a Hermit Thrush.
Beacon Hill Seattle ednewbold1 at yahoo.com




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20230923/2631c8a0/attachment.html>