Have you been wondering whether anyone makes comments on your Birdstack pages? Do you feel sad because no one ever answers the comments you make on their pages? Well, friend, rejoice and wonder no more — comment notification is here!

This feature has been a long time in coming, and we’re excited to launch it today. As you have probably noticed, you can comment on each other’s observations, locations, trips, and Birdstack profiles, but it’s very difficult to keep track of or follow up on those comments. Many of you have stored several thousand pages of information in Birdstack, so how could you possibly notice a new comment somewhere on one of those pages? It’s the proverbial needle in a not-so-proverbial haystack.

But now — drumroll please! — you have two options for tracking and engaging with comments.

Option 1: You can receive emails every time somebody comments on one of your observations, trips, or locations; on your profile; or on a discussion that you begin in the forums. Really, that’s five options all rolled into one! All five choices are turned on by default. To change them, access your account settings page through your dashboard.

Option 2: Comment threads are now available as Atom feeds. Just look for the orange feed icon next to the “Comments” header on profiles, observations, locations, and trips. And you’ll also find feed icons on the forum discussion pages. You can subscribe to comments on your own pages, but you can also subscribe to anybody else’s (for example, to comments on your friend’s Birdstack profile) or to a discussion topic in the forum.

Comments are a hip, easy way to communitize with other Birdstackers — which we have heard you say over and over is important to you. So go on, comment away! I think I’ll go make a few more comments myself….

Yours, till full communitization is at last achieved,

David and the Birdstack team

You asked for it, and now you’ve got it! We’ve just launched a location merging feature to help you eliminate duplicate locations or collapse locations for other reasons. The feature is simple to use — just go to the edit page for the location you’d like to merge, scroll down, and select the target location. More info on the help page.

We hope this will be helpful!