The Bioacoustics Stack Exchange has reached the Beta stage and is LIVE! It is also in a critical stage, and we need your help to keep it alive. 

We have only 2 weeks to prove we have the community to support the site! Please help as you can! If you want more information on how to help or get started with Stack Exchange, please see the attached info sheets or check out this helpful Youtube tutorial made by Selene Fregosi.

How can you help?

• JOIN: https://bioacoustics.stackexchange.com/
• VISIT: Make it a habit to check in on the site regularly. We need >>500 visits per day!
• VOTE: We need to show participation! Vote on all good Q/A
• ASK: Have a new bioacoustics-related question? What about your older questions? You can even ask/answer your own question! These questions will be archived for future use, so ALL good questions are welcome! We need >> 10 questions per day!
• ANSWER: Have an answer to one of the questions, or additional information? Share your expertise where you can! Is there a question you are often asked? You can pair up with someone to ask/answer it again to be archived! If someone asks you a question-- tell them you will answer it on the Stack Exchange! We need ~2.5 answers per question.
   
• INVITE & SHARE: Invite others to join! Share on social media, with your collaborators, etc.!
• DISCUSS the proposed site at the Meta page to suggest features and get help

DO NOT DELAY! Participate today and every day that you can. We know our community can support a site, but it takes time to create this habit. Unfortunately, this proposal has a deadline and we need ALL the help we can get, as often as possible!

Hold on, back up, what’s a Stack Exchange?

If you are unfamiliar with Stack Exchange, it is a searchable forum where users ask technical questions about a specific subject. There are many different sites ranging from coding questions (StackOverflow) to hiking and camping (The Great Outdoors). The great thing about these forums is that debate and opinions are not allowed - they are simply a resource for answering questions about specific topics, searchable by anyone with access to the internet. 

Why do we need one in Bioacoustics?

Because it is one of the fastest growing fields in both marine and terrestrial science. It gives us a unique opportunity to observe animal behavior and track populations’ distribution non-invasively.  Additionally, if done correctly, it can be easier and cheaper to collect data than traditional survey techniques. Most bioacoustic equipment is several thousand dollars/euros, sure, but that equipment can be left unattended, collecting data, ranging from weeks to months. This makes it more accessible to a larger group of researchers, and smaller companies are cropping up to make the startup costs even cheaper. However, analyzing that data can be a headache. You can find yourself with terabytes of acoustic data, and not know what to do with it.
 

Enter stage left: The Bioacoustics Stack Exchange. A free resource for anyone, including people who are working/studying without the support of an experienced team (think remote communities, developing countries, nascent labs). Anyone can all benefit from our collective knowledge, which is a win for science.

But I’m not an expert, so this doesn’t sound like it’s for me.

We need folks from ALL walks of life! We need experts, yes, but we also need enthusiastics, students, related professionals, and folks that are just curious.  We need folks asking questions that those of us conducting research wouldn’t think to ask in addition to the folks that can answer those questions.

So please, check it out, and join us! And if you have questions, you can reach out to [email protected] or [email protected].