A Quick Survey - We'd love your thoughts

Well that's mines filled in...They are genuine for all of yous who think they maybe fake.(who could blame you with soooooo much spam around)......get them filled in and try help make this a happy place to be again ;-)

I've just completed mine.

As a newcomer, I found the joining process too easy, no checks made and random looking at new members with some extremely questionable handles, shows they're looking for somewhere to offload their junk.

Which is a shame, it seems to be a friendly and informative place.

There has been a long established push to social media, particularly Facebook and Instagram. They are central and the most collective place to gain attention from a business and cost perspective.

I regularly pull company's up for their incessant invites to their Facebook and instagram pages, stating not everyone uses those platforms.

Unknown said:

If they migrated to facebook and co, then they can count me OUT.

They already do most of their stuff on Facebook and other Social Media platforms - very few reserves are properly featured on here anymore and so few regular posters - apart from the Ospreyphiles.

I detect a slightly negative bias, and all seems to be with very good reason.

I am new here, so please don’t shout me down, I stumbled across the forum after a search for something else, but I have noticed a very pleasant community atmosphere, along some very interesting and knowledgeable people.

While I am NOT a fan of social media, having had poor experiences of how the algorithms work, or perhaps I should say, are very biased.

I like a place where you can follow things in real time, not AI generated time, and this forum provides that.

It maybe I’m antiquated, I’ll take that criticism with pride.

Social media, particularly Facebook, Instagram, and what seems to be a very intense and accelerated growing social media platform Tik Tok, all have a centralised captive audiences, which makes for easy access to the global public at large.

That centralised captive audience, and with the accelerated use and progression of artificial intelligence coupled with the long standing, but ever fine-tuned algorithms, is an effective cost way of reaching wider audiences, global audiences in a cost effective way.

Unfortunately, my later work years were more about cost than electrics, that is the downside to being a manager, now gratefully retired.

I remember my old granny always saying" Never keep all your eggs in one basket.", but that seems not to be the way today.

I sincerely hope the forum doesn’t disappear, nor become neglected, though I share the fear there of a risk.

Social media, it is full of misinformation, with lots of influencers, and to those innocently seeking the right answers, it is too easy to become mislead.

I said  earlier, I am new here, there is a very pleasant friendly community atmosphere here, along many very interesting and knowledgeable people, so far I haven't seen, (ignoring the spam), misinformation.

Those friendly, interesting and knowledgeable people are effectively an extension to the RSPB's volunteers, offering their observations, knowledge, skills online and anything else to help people know, leanr and understand nature, and long may that remain.

Hopefully I've not spoken out of turn.