4 replies to this topic

[goofy166]

We find that some people do not understand how to best use the search engine so we wrote some tutorials.

How to Search

How to Use the Search Attributes

[hiker_jon]

Hi,
I am surprised to see there are no replies to this topic. Sorry if this is not the appropriate place for this post.
I am a beginner in using the search features and have a question:
Sometimes when I search I feel that my bird should have been included in an attribute, but it is often hard to check this. Is there any way to choose a bird then see what attributes it has? Kind of a reverse search.

For instance the osprey is not included in the habitat oceans or coasts, but is included in lakes,rivers and ponds. It would be nice once I identified the osprey (despite it not being listed under the attributes I first chose) to be able to see what attributes I should have chosen.

Jon

[Bigfoot]

Jon, interesting suggestion.

I will forward this to the group in charge.

Bigfoot

[Wren]

I have thought the same thing. sure would be a great addition. If nothing else, people would be able to "check" the info.

However, I am sure there will be more than one debate over what the correct attributes should be! Maybe that's why it isn't available!

[goofy166]

Hi,
I am surprised to see there are no replies to this topic. Sorry if this is not the appropriate place for this post.
I am a beginner in using the search features and have a question:
Sometimes when I search I feel that my bird should have been included in an attribute, but it is often hard to check this. Is there any way to choose a bird then see what attributes it has? Kind of a reverse search.

For instance the osprey is not included in the habitat oceans or coasts, but is included in lakes,rivers and ponds. It would be nice once I identified the osprey (despite it not being listed under the attributes I first chose) to be able to see what attributes I should have chosen.

Jon

Jon this is a good idea. However there is indeed a reason we don't have this feature and I'm afraid as a customer you won't like it. What you are describing is essentially a way to see what assignments we made for every species. You'd like to see a page that listed all the locations for the Osprey, all the Color assigned to it, the unique habitats, head patterns etc. The problem is that data, those assignments, represent a tremendous amount of research and considerable cost on our part. They make up the intellectual property of our app's content. If we were to offer this information we would essential be handing it to our competitors and to anyone who wanted to build a competing app. It's kind of like if Apple was to publish the source code for the iPhone. That may not be a perfect analogy but it fits into the same category. Hope this helps.

And FYI we are constantly tweaking the assignments because birds move around so much.