Tuesday, February 23, 2021

WhatsApp new group ...for Calderdale Birders

 After the massive success of the text message grapevine over the last 10 years it is now so popular that its taking Dave and Bri more and more time to keep up to date with it all.......They have both done an excellent job over the years....Whats app groups are used by many other bird groups and are a fast and effective way of getting news out straight away without having to wait for it to be re sent..!! Any comments welcome......

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9 comments:

Geoff.Smith. said...

suggested it last year.got a lot of birders interested.held in abeyance.got my support Andy

3:35 pm
heavy birder said...

We don't all have smart phones so I would be against unless there's some way of doing it.

3:50 pm
Brian Sumner . said...

Problem now is there are 58 grapevine members and by the time Dave or myself get the message and resend it out around 10 minutes has gone. You can only send a limited number of contacts at a time so members have to be put into banks of 3 or 4 which takes time ,especially if we are in an area with poor signal. This is not a problem if the bird is static but, for example, a skein of Pinks going over the area will be in Lancashire before everyone gets the message which means several members will miss out.
With Whatsapp there is only the 1 message involved from the reporter of the bird so it is more or less instant.
Checking my contact list only 8 out of the 58 members don,t have Whatsapp which is only a matter of a free download and I believe it can be downloaded to the early type push button phones which I had when I first started using Whatsapp.
Another plus is a photo can be sent F.O.C. if anyone needs id help.

4:49 pm
darrell j prest said...

I suggested Twitter over a decade ago, and you cannot choose which system to use ie WhatsApp just because some very few people don’t have access
Calderdale was one of the birthplaces of the industrial revolution

let’s move forwards not backwards, a texting system is outdated

5:13 pm
Matt Crowther said...

100% support this as it will streamline the process as in effect it’s the spotter sending the message directly to all members. Of course the other big plus being images & video can be shared with no additional costs.

I would suggest perhaps thinking about more than one group as with ~60 members the volume of messages and more importantly ’alerts’ will get high - especially as WhatsApp can be much more of a back & forth platform. With multiple groups you can have alerts turned on for the ‘sightings’ group but muted for say the ‘ID Questions’’, “Meet Up” or ‘General’ groups to avoid being inundated with alerts but can still access those groups when time allows.

From experience of WhatsApp Groups it inevitably happens that a couple members of a group descend into an off topic message conversation causing a slew of ‘new message alerts’ for the whole group...so you mute the alerts...then miss the “White Tailed Eagle flying over” message alert...so separate channels / groups / threads are worthwhile!

I’ve had a look to see if there’s a way to auto-forward WhatsApp messages to a text message for those without a suitable phone and sadly it doesn’t seem possible.

All the best,

Matt

8:15 pm
AndyC said...

Yes Matt agree
.with the off topic chat you can eadily delete or put it on mute
..

10:01 pm
Geoff.Smith. said...

further to the whatsapp group.other birder clubs have a different set up for general chat/queries, so leaving the main 'page'free for sightings

11:06 am
AndyC said...

Nice one Geoff..Bird News Only..

1:49 pm
Courtney said...

I’d love to be added to this WhatsApp group if that would be ok?

10:11 pm

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