On Calendar Abuse

OK, so I'm simply going through and deleting events that are obviously in violation of the posting rules when I have the time (which is not much)...however there are so many and growing...that this is going to become and increasingly unwieldly task. The problem now is that people are using the events calendar because its free and the classifieds aren't. since we dont want to start charging people to post events, any ideas on what we could try to get rid of some of the clutter?

on the flip side, are people sorting by category ? we get a lot of complaints that the calendar is unreadable but it seems people are rarely using the categories. They work fine for me...
your feedback is appreciated.

It seems to me that a system of self policing could be implemented? Each event listed could have the option of being selected as "Event" or "Non-Event". If enough people voted something not an event, it could be deleted from the list. The "Event" option could serve as a counterweight against spurrious and vindictive people (like me), to keep legitimate events from being removed from the list.

How about it, Science?

Have you considered making better use of the existing volunteer base? Perhaps authorizing the Live Help team members to delete obviously bogus events could help offload the Liasons. All that would be necessary is a little oversight spot-checking to make sure the events being removed from the calendar are non-events.

It's pretty easy to identify postings that are not events - I'm confident anyone possessing the prerequisites for Live Help would be able to do that reliably.

If someone is abusing the events calendar, give the person a warning and after that warning, person loses posting privileges for a month. Abuse of the calendar should work like any other abuse.

I do not trust people not to abuse a voting system. Hear about what is going on with the star ratings in new products, Taco? Let's say Griefer Group A decides they hate Club X. All events from tringo to poetry night might become "non-events."

I'd say can posting privileges for people who are clearly abusing. I bet that amounts to 2% of the posting population.

lay out the calendar in 2D and make it scroll by catagory.

make sure all events are not shown as soon as they have ended.

   | General  |  Entertainment  |   Education   |  Discussion   |  
   +----------+-----------------+---------------+---------------+
   |          |                 |               |               |  
5pm|  Do this |   Tringtionary  | Learn to deal |  WTF!?        |
6pm|  Do that |   Tringtionary  | Learn to deal |  WTF!?        |
7pm| Do this  |   Tringtionary  | Learn to deal |  WTF!?        |
8pm| Do this  |   Tringtionary  | Learn to deal |  WTF!?        |
   +----------+-----------------+---------------+---------------+    

Hand out 3 day suspentions for people who reguarily abuse it, and warnings to people who do it once in a while.. More detailed catagories would be good too..

Club events
*ingo
Yard sales

Thats assuming they have to stay..

Great minds..

First of all, just filter the frigging calendar to NOT show events that have ended. That certainly will help a lot.

Second, just put a 'report bad event' button on it to get events flagged for review.

Third, take away posting privileges for abuse. 1 week, 1 month, permanently. 3 strikes and you're out.

I bet that would solve most of the problems.

Knock out duplicate redundancy too. Sorting by Name reveals so many...

Self-policing will not work, there's always gonna be at least one joker who has to ruin it for everyone. I think possibly employing aid from volunteers is a pretty good idea, but that can be abused also (volunteer does not like person who runs a place posting event, volunteer removes listing because it's a "non-event" when it is not.)

As for the events calendar itself... some things just aren't categorized in the right place. I think an abuse button on the calendar may be closer to a solution, but that puts more work on someone's desk... Definitely preventing abusers of the calendar from posting events is a good call. Since when is a camping chair an event? Yard sales - those belong in classifieds.

It really is not a difficult task to use the "search" function from time to time when you are looking for something. It weeds out all the stuff you are not looking for

whooboy where do i start? (and sorry for being a week late but this isn't *really* necro posting)

1. Filter out events that have ended

2. An option to not only whitelist, but to black list. So, for instance, lets say I want to look at all events except those with *.*ingo and yard and sale plus all commercial events. There's no way to do that type of advanced filtering right now. Or lets say I want to go yard sale hoping or I just want to go to *.*ingo events -- there's no way to just get those events. So the filtering available now is nice, but its insufficient.

3. There are some people who are clearly abusing the system. Its a no brainer. Punish them. Take away their posting rights. You don't even need to think about this. Just do it to the most extreme cases and it will make a huge impression.

4. Figure out a way to reward those who hold good events. Lets not forget that the more good events that are out there, the better your platform is going to look, the more subscribers you might get. Yeah we the residents should be figuring out ways to help ourselves and we are -- from the foundation for rich content to the things we are going to do with the spa that I can't talk about yet -- the residents who care are active on this front. But Linden needs to be too.

ok thats all for now but i'm sure i'll come up with more stuff

Why in the world can't we put in a list of people's names who could be either the host or the landowner and see only events made by them?

discourage non-event posting. First, posting in the event calendar should not be free. Wait! I'm not finished!
The post should then be reviewed or checked to confirm it event status. If it is a genuine event, then the posting fee is refunded. If it is a non-event that should have been posted in the classified, then LL keeps the fee.

Then use the fees from the abuser and give bonus to the real events that were posted, on top of their refunds....! How's that?

There ya are!

Yeah. What he (and she) said.
Cuff em!

This topic is just too deep for me. Why can't people just obey the rules? If they disobey just slap them with a ToS. I bet they will soon see the error of their ways.

not that i abuse the events but lets think this out
if you offer a free post a mouse click away from a non free one ... hmmm
remove the cost of classifieds !

maby then ppl wouldnt have fake events to promote their first land shop crammed inbetween the casino and the club, who get to promote their intrest for free.

An event version of 'hot or not'

I like it!

Yeah but...you know for sure that the clubs with loads of members will spam their members to vote on their events...or offer prizes or stickers or somesuch.

The same will go for any sort of system you set up. The big clubs and rich creators will always be able to twist the system in their favour. And love 'em or hate 'em, people must like the Tringo/Slingo Club activities, because there are such a lot of them....

I don't want to see genuine events taken out of the schedule...and sometimes some of the mos poorly attended events have been the best I have been to....I have been to build competitions where the host has gone to the trouble of setting up build platforms, free textures, great prizes, interesting challenge...and only 4 people have turned up to build. I have hosted show and tells where I have had to port in all my friends online in order to get more than one show and teller for the audience....

On the other hand I have been to Club events which looked interesting and didn't actually take place, or where they were postponed so long that I fell asleep or ported out again.

Whatever system I think up...like having host ratings, or whatever, can be hijacked and misused by any group with a big enough membership. Any negative system can be used to grief people with.
Cali

I agree with filtering out of events that have already passed however with a bit of addition: It should be overrideable via a check mark (something like one for mature content). And there should be a option to have a all day event which is not filtered in general, but can be by another check mark. This would give the user filtering ability, yet allow them to see everything if desired.

And I also agree that if someone is breaking the TOS, ban their rights to post events. Warn them first, and if they continue...they get baned. I can understand if someone messes up, but yes this is getting out of hand. Especially if the posts for the same thing several times.

-DB

every time I try to sort by category it says "None found." :/

Some categories are underserved because there is no REASON other than sheer altruism or artistic creativity, for someone to make that kind of event. Until event hosts can effectively charge for events, we will not see, for example, a whole ton of Arts and Culture events (though I do find a respectable number over the course of a week, on some weeks).

I have, however, REALLY enjoyed being able to sort out categories, particularly when looking for classes or arts events. Now we just need to see more people posting appropriately and perhaps a category for commercial events (if there isn't already one).

The reason this happens is very simple. Because Events, Popular Places, Classifieds, and so forth are all thrown into the same pot and displayed in number-ordered form, suddenly that space is seen as lucrative.


The downside? A lot of crap people just don't want to see.

I say take a leaf from Google and organize the list by search and time relevancy as the default option, then add a tab option to the side for people that would like to see all events listed in chronological order. I suspect you'd see improvements within one cycle (~1 week) of the system if you reformed it in this way.

Alter the search.

Add a button for "Include" and "Not include"

Let it support wildcards.

Let us 'Not include *ingo and camping' as a search.