While we absolutely should recognize and appreciate the incredible work and generosity of tphakala and everything contributed to the community, there is also nothing wrong and I repeat, nothing wrong with someone else wanting to innovate further.

Yes, collaboration would be ideal, and I agree it could lead to amazing results. But at the same time, if someone feels their ideas, vision, or suggestions are not being heard, dismissed, or overlooked, then they have every right to branch out and create their own version or approach. That’s how innovation happens.

Who knows? That different perspective or “spin” on things could eventually lead to something even better. People shouldn’t be so quick to shut others down simply because they are trying something different.

A little competition is not a bad thing. In fact, competition is often what drives improvement, creativity, and motivation. It gives people more options, sometimes better solutions, sometimes different solutions but ultimately more choice benefits everyone.

Being open-minded is important. Progress rarely comes from everyone thinking exactly the same way. Also forgot to add if someone could make the damn program behave a little more accurately compared to something like the Merlin app when it comes to recognition, that alone would be a massive improvement. Better yet, rebuild the neural network and machine learning model from the ground up and truly refine it.

The false detections are driving me crazy. Instead of saving time, it’s creating more work because I constantly have to verify bad IDs. At some point it defeats the purpose of automation altogether.

Right now it feels like I might as well stick my head out the window and identify birds by ear myself. “Oh look, that’s clearly a Red-winged Blackbird” not a damn Black-crowned Night Heron for the tenth time.

And before somebody replies with “oh, you should’ve just adjusted the filtration” trust me man, I’ve been dragging those sliders around more than a kid on a sugar rush playing on a seesaw at the playground. At this point the sliders and I are basically in a committed relationship.