I was thinking it might be fun to have an Owl of the Year vote sometime soon.
Anyone interested in something like that?
I could do a bracket style elimination tournament, or I could also pick some of the more popular species from posts and do more of a poll type thing.
Or does anyone have any other ideas?
Upvotes this if you like the bracket idea where every day or 2 we have one round of voting.
Bracket could be fun and I think would get more community involvement if there’s 1 “matchup” a day.
Not sure how the seeding would be setup, or if just randomly applying would be fine.
This was my original thought, that it could give something extra to look forward to, especially for those that want to contribute but don’t know what they have to offer.
I was thinking about reaching out to the mods for the banner/thumbnail to go to the winner like you mention in the other comment.
The seeding I was thinking would be to break down the owls into:
Common owls - the ones we are most familiar with, Barn, Barred, Great Horned, Eagle, Screech, etc
Less common - ones you might be familiar with from coming here every day or if you live outside US or EU, the Australian owls, some if the more popular owls from posts like the Oriental Bay Owl and the Fish Owls
Exotic - some rare ones that people would never encounter by accident, but are very interesting looking. May be very limited to one island in the world or jungle owls in places hard to get to, or just may not have been featured on here yet.
I think this would give a chance to some of the less common owls to get a victory.
My only concern is some days, Tues and Wed, seen to be less active than the others and the weekends have the most activity so that makes scoring a little uneven. Even so, it’s just for fun anyway.
Nahhh, every owl is perfect, no need to praise one above another
What if it was to determine the community’s banner or profile icon?
This was my thought for the prize. I know one of the mods has popped in every now and then, so I should be able to get in touch with them to do this.
I do agree with this of course. I just thought it may be fun and give a way for people to participate in this group even if they don’t feel like they have anything to contribute.
I also hoped it could highlight a few less popular or common owls to everyone and get them some more attention. There are definitely time I find a new owl to share our even a common owl that doesn’t get much buzz, but when I post it, it falls flat compared to some other things that I don’t find as exciting. So it also can let me gauge what you all are interested in or want to know more about.
Even coming up with the list of potential contestants was tough. There’s almost 250 species, and I’m not going to make myself or you guys go through that much, so I narrowed it down to 40ish that represent a diverse and mostly all inclusive representation of all owls.
If this was done every year, I also feel it would be interesting to see how the collective group’s preference changes over time as you learn more about them and get exposed to ones you never knew about.
That’s why I feel this is an overall positive idea. Some people may be a little disappointed if their favorite loses, I know I’m a little let down when I think I posted something good that nobody ends up caring about, but in the end it’s just for fun and doesn’t really mean anything. We’re all here because we like owls, and however it works out, an owlb of some sort would be the winner.
The most beautiful owl is the one reading this.
Upvote this if you’d prefer a poll over the course of a few days where you just have to participate once, pretty much in the style of this thread.
Upvote this if you think it’s a waste of time and I shouldn’t bother 😉
If you’ve got another suggestion or thought, leave it here.
