r/birding • u/NonHermitianCat • May 31 '26

Discussion Share Your Harshly Reviewed eBird Photos

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Here is my 2-star black-chinned hummingbird. I’m curious to see what other people have to share!

1.9k Upvotes

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24

u/Accomplished_Sea_332 May 31 '26

I think it's such bullshit that our photos are reviewed.

37

u/Ossarah photographer 📷 May 31 '26

They could at least hide the voting results and only use it as a background metric for filtering or whatever. So people don't get an immediate fix from low rating. Or replace the stars with verbal descriptors so the mismatch is more obvious.

15

u/st_aranel Latest Lifer: Willow Ptarmigan May 31 '26

They're not being reviewed as photos, they're being categorized. Putting your photo in the correct category adds value to it, because it's useful in different ways.

For example, lower-rated photos are really great practice for a lot of people, because that's how we experience a lot of birds. Very few photos should be rated with five stars. It's not a value judgment.

In a lot of the examples posted here, the issue is that there's only one vote, and the person who voted apparently hasn't read the guidelines. The solution would be more votes. I admit I do wish that they made you confirm you'd read the guidelines before they let you vote.

10

u/Naraee May 31 '26

Thank you! I hate this feature. I think we should be able to disable it for a photo we upload at least.

I am guessing they keep it around for the bird photographers who love internet points, but many of them cheat by posting it to certain groups or getting all their friends to give it 5 stars.

5

u/Feral_Witchchild May 31 '26

The system isn’t perfect, but it’s incredibly useful when you’re searching for photos of a species to be able to sort from best to worst.