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 3 days ago 

Yep, in fact I started saving screenshots of its results sarting in July, and I might incorporate some of those into next month's posts.

I'm sure it's not 100% right, but it "hears" many more varieties of birds than the ones that I see out in the open.

Wonder if there is a Merlin Bird Call Spotter Community anywhere on the web?

Maybe Steem could host one if not...

 3 days ago (edited)

People can post their Merlin recordings on iNaturalist, and I think Cornell hosts something on eBird, too, though I haven't signed up for that one. But, I definitely think a Steem community can and should piggy-back on these services.

That's why I've been doing the wildlife blogging so heavily since March (and tagging the inaturalist and steemit twitter accounts with these posts on twitter). IMO, it's a natural fit, especially for partnering with free market environmentalists. With the right support, I think it has the potential to be a "killer app" for Steem.

What Steem gets:

  • Ready-made abuse prevention by requiring some percentage of photos/recordings to be validated on iNaturalist and/or eBird before receiving a curator vote.
  • Potential access to an already existing large global online community
  • investment potential from environmental philanthropists who might want to support a rewards model for wildlife bloggers.
  • The possibility for free image and audio hosting from the AWS Open Data Sponsorship Program (in the future, if the community grows enough and uses the requisite media licensing.)

What the environmental community gets:

  • Natural incentives for wildlife protection in local communities (If it pays, it stays).
  • A new aggregation layer for the existing identification platforms.
  • A way to invest in wildlife protection, instead of donating to wildlife protection.

IMO, the main challenge is this: Existing wildlife identification sites are high velocity. Steem is not (or at least, it probably shouldn't be). With the current rewards model, Steem really only makes sense as long-form blogging. So, I think the way to integrate Steem into the ecosystem is not to operate at the ID level, but rather as an aggregator for a person's activity on those other sites.

Unfortunately, running a successful Steem community requires time, multiple moderators, and financial backing from curators. I have plenty of ideas, and I think there's huge potential there, but my personal blog is about as far as I can take it on my own right now.

Happy to back it with sc01/02 votes if you manage to find time to get something up and running.

 2 days ago 

Thank you! I know @primevaldad already expressed interest in working towards something of the sort. Perhaps we can find some others and figure out a workable strategy. I'll give it some thought.

Maybe you could socialize the concept within Tron, too? By rewarding people for verified wildlife observations, Steem might make wildlife protection more pofitable than poaching in some parts of the developing world. Then, Steem as a first of it's kind environmental protection tool could generate really good press for the Tron ecosystem.

Maybe Tron has some partners who would be interested in helping to build such a thing?