Take Back the Event Calendar

Would an organized group effort of abuse reporting event listing advertisements help curb this epidemic in the short term?

I realize in the long term we need better tools (categories, filtering, etc.) in order for the event listings to continue to be viable, especially with the recent surge in population.

However, for the time being we are stuck with the tools we have. Due to limited Linden resources we have apparently seen a decline in the moderation/administration of the event calendar. I understand this completely and want to help.

As residents our only recourse in general is the Abuse Report. An organized effort to AR event listings which are blatantly breaking the guidelines could achieve several goals:

1. Blatant offenders receive dozens of abuse reports daily
   
2. More proactive moderation by the Lindens to curb the daily influx of abuse reports
   
3. Escalation in development of better event listing tools
   

Is this something worth pursuing?

I don't think Linden Labs wants to police the events calendar.

What we really need is a separate calendar for continuous events--such as 24/h a day tringo, movies, camping chairs, etc. I like having these sorts of things going on, but they really should be separate from the 1/2 hour to 3-hour events.

It's also pretty easy to skip the glut of look alike non events by using the category search. Only the commercial, nightlife, and misc categories appear to be glutted to me.

Then you agree with me totally! Of course they don't want to police the event calendar, and with no impetus to fix it they don't have to.

Yeah I know that some don't like redundant event postings, but th efolks that spend their hard-earned Lindens to create content, buy and rent land to open stores and clubs and create SL jobs for others need to be given a break. Instead of initiating a campaign to harass them out of business we all should think of ways to create the tools they need so that they can get the traffoc levels that are necessary for them to stay in business and continue to provide resources for our community.

I didn't think so either or, maybe its selective as to who they violate for event postings. We run movies 24/7 in my sim and posted an event each time the movie was to change. (many times a day) We were e-mailed and told to stop. However once it was pointed out that many others did this aswell we expected to see them stop also. Well, true to term noone else has stopped. We were told that we were the "First victum in a crackdown". Funny I have always thought of myself as a long term good paying "Customer" not "Victum" poor choice of words maybe. Well, Here it is a week later and no "crack down" is evident. But, I do honestly beleive that LL intends on doing something to get this under control. I was assured that soon a email or something would be going out to all violators with a stern warning as to what can and cant be posted. I look forward to reading this. My mistake was I posted not reading the TOS but, using others event posting as an example.

I've never mentioned redundant posting or harassing people out of business. I'm strictly talking about event listings that break the rules as defined here: /120/ba/29929/1.html

If your business model relies on the Lindens not enforcing their rules then you have two choices: change your business strategy or lobby/petition/engage the Lindens in some way to convince them to change the event listing guidelines.

As I stated above, I too believe better tools are the ultimate goal. I simply have chosen to use this method in lieu of lobbying / petitioning / requesting audience with the Lindens. You should feel free to try any of these methods yourself in attempt to advance your own special interests.

As for me and my special interests, you can see the details of Project Event List here: /108/7b/72530/1.html

If your business model relies on the Lindens not enforcing their rules then you have two choices: change your business strategy or lobby/petition/engage the Lindens in some way to convince them to change the event listing guidelines.

As I stated above, I too believe better tools are the ultimate goal. I simply have chosen to use this method in lieu of lobbying / petitioning / requesting audience with the Lindens. You should feel free to try any of these methods yourself in attempt to advance your own special interests.

As for me and my special interests, you can see the details of Project Event List here: /108/7b/72530/1.html[/QUOTE]


Using the forums to gather up a lynch mob may be effective - but it is as distasteful as the activity you are so concerned about. Perhaps a more positive, community-minded approach would be more effective in the long run.

Only those that break the rules.



It's yet to be determined how effective it is. Note that my currently 3 member group is closer akin to a grass roots effort than a lynch mob.

A couple ideas:

-Create a Hotline post and/or send a private message to Robin Linden about the "Events Workgroup". It was Linden sponsored, and we used to have regular meetings. Lately, its seemed to have nearly disbanded. Maybe some pressure to wake that group up, and ask to be a part of it - is in order.

-Start a Metaadverse campaign to educate the community on using the Abuse Report button to report event calendar abuse. I did this myself a while back for my own personal crusade (vote for prop 244), and it did help increase awareness.

-Create a forum signature that encourages folks to use the abuse report tool to report abuses of the event calendar.

-Talk to some of the non-profit or sympathetic groups around SL and see if they would be willing to host a sign & notecard dispensor that communicates your mission.

-Create T-Shirts that suggest abuse reporting bad events, and give them out as Freebies. (I'd be happy to give them out at the Shelter )

2 thoughts here..... take away all the rubbish in the events and all you have is 5-10 actual things going on!...sooooooooo!... if you could get rid of the blatant scams like yard sales and the "opening today" crap....... i think it would be ok. as...!. things like tringo are an event .. as it seems to be more a social get together than to just win money.but it is annoying to see when i have to pay for my ads. etc...and these people just get away with not paying!. also have you ever gone to some of these "yard sales"...??....... there no more than a few designers that already have a few shops on the go..... getting together for a fast. scam!.... or there selling items that were in the freebies 6 months ago.....mmmmmmmmmmm.!..seems like a catch 22...
PS.... knowing this! would you buy from these people?....lol...

Right now I'm trying to remove the most blatant offenders of events calendar abuse but this is clearly a stopgap measure and not a terribly effective one at that. Beyond the obvious $$$$$$BUYMY PRODUCT$$$$$ posting there is a lot of grey area which is a time sink. With all respect to Intent Unknown, I can't take a list of abuse reported events at face value. In the interest of fairness I have to verify that the reported event does in fact violate the posting rules. This requires about an hour of work everyday. And I'm sure you have seen elsewhere in the forums, the reaction to Lindens spending their time doing this from residents is 'OMG WHATAREYOUDOING FIX THE CLIENT' regardless, I'm going to keep this up for the next week hoping things will improve but as SL continues to grow, this strategy becomes less and less scalable. The answer is clearly more effective tools and a better events system in general. Since our development resources are focused elsewhere for the time being, however, that's not really an option. In the meantime, if you have suggestions, please feel let me know...
I've been watching Flipper's thread here as well:

/108/e2/75216/1.html

Thanks Jesse, and thanks for linking to Flipp's thread too, I was about to link it in here too but you beat me to it! hehe

I am glad to see you guys are working on stuff that concerns a lot of SL rezzies =]

Thanks, Ashen and everyone.

Jesse, if there's any code I can provide to LL that comes out of this project, feel free to contact me.

If anyone has ideas for improvements that could be made to my system, feel free to pass them along. I've tried to keep at as simple as humanly possible while allowing for maximum flexibility. Thanks to Travis for already suggesting some great ideas, like recurring events (which may encourage more regularly scheduled events!).

Regards,

-Flip

I really don't have anything to add with this thread, I just wanted to 69 here

(post 69 that is)

Meet me in the Atomic Cafe at 3:15. Bring a cop suit.

>.>

<.<

'Pssst. The cheese stands alone.'

(I wasn't here, you didn't read this)

I'm not a regular poster on here but the events calender is something I really hate to look through now. Even when I use the catagory option I see....free money, dance pads camping chairs. This is definately NOT a game or contest. I have reported for abuse before but nothing was ever done about it. I still see the same people abusing the events calendar. Yes, by now we all know where to find the dance pads and camping chairs 24/7 it does not need to be posted every 2 hours.

And on the topic of of those to objects, its very sad to see where SL is going, paying people to come to your land, how sad is that? Host a REAL event and you wouldnt have to pay people to be there!!!

And sort of of the same topic..

When you finally do search through them and find something that seems interesting, its just the same useless junk that is always there.

For instance. I found an event that had a theme. Not the regular tiki swim come as sexy as you can theme. An actual period theme. Well. Not really. It said on the event that it was an hour long, and they were going to play Jazz according to the period theme, that is not generally found anywhere in SL. A type of thing that I for once liked.

I get there 15min before the event. They are playing the same junk everyone else plays. There are some people in period clothing, but not most. Actually out of the 3 of the club staff that was there, 1 wasn't in super sexy clubber clothes.

So I wait.

The event "starts" according to the event calander.

And I wait.

No jazz.

My friends are sending me IMs getting rather annoyed. So I IM the DJ. Asking her for some jazz. She is extremly rude to me and insists that the event ends in 5min (50min according to the event listing). That she has already played one set and might get around to playing some more.

Personally I would have never gone to that club and now I NEVER will again. I just want that 30min and my portion of dwell back to give to someone less false.

Ok yes. There was a host who was attentive. But shouldn't people be actually holding the event that they stated instead of what they always do? So even if the events were cleaned up a bit, people will still game this. Posting events that do not actually happen.

Back to the topic...

Yes events need a LOT of work. Personally I think it should be 1 event per parcel and person. Meaning that a person can only host 1 event per day and a parcel can only have 1 event per day.

Not to mention the fact that since LL is so busy with other things, hire another person to babysit these people. Who clears out events that are against the rules, suspending the person that posted it. Someone who randomly shows up to events that have already squeeked by, making sure its legit. Someone that people can IM to inform that something wrong is happening.

Yes its costly to hire a new person. But how many newbies would stick around if they had a real way to find interesting events and people who are interested in the same things? More people stick around means more people who might buy a premium account. In turn means more money to LL. More people who enjoy SL, the more they will tell their friends.

When I mentor and asked what is there to do, I really am at a loss for words. Interesting events go unnoticed in the heaping pile of rubbish that is the events calander. So those people stop having events. I hold a swing dance sunday afternoon. Yes it might not be the most interesting thing to some people, but its something I and a few others enjoy. Do many people whom I don't know show up? No. But that's not why I do it. So I tell these newbies how to search the events, but doing that will make you miss something that might be interesting that you never thought of to search for.

You have rules but don't seem to Enforce these rules. People WILL walk all over you if you do not. That it is why the event listing is a bloody joke. Yes you don't want to have to babysit us, you don't want to be strict. Well.. it looks like in this case its the only way to get people to act according to the rules. It is human nature to test the boundries to see how far we can go to get away with things. We do it with our parents when we are children, we will do it in our "adult" relationships, and we do it at our jobs to see how little we can actually do before action is taken. Some people are mature enough not to have to be micromanaged, but being 18 does not mean mature.

Just my 2 pence.

well, though I personally am not much of a fan of sexy tringo/slingo/etc and other events clutter, most of the listings are perfectly within the bounds of the events posting rules and are popular within second life. i dont think linden lab should be in the business of policing good taste I agree that the events calendar itself could use improvement though. if you have suggestions, feel free to post here

Suggestion:

The ability to filter out keywords in our event search. Even better would be a way to save these keywords, so we can craft a search filter to our personal liking, and have the event calendar display that way.

My personal search filter would be:

-ingo -sex -bling -yard -slots

Very very true. I've run two small events and people have turned up. So what if it's only 5 people, its getting the word out, and the big 'popular' places aren't the ones taht need to be advertising!

Why don't we just enforce the rules that there are supposed to be on the events calendar of no '24 hour sales and ongoing events'?

The simple solution is to get a few volunteer moderators to approve or deny submitted events, based on the rules. It works on the Stratics message forums for Sims Online, so with about a dozen volunteers that check a few times a day we could easily get real events applied to the calendar, and all the dross gets rejected - making the calendar actually useful!

Sure, some will still find a way to abuse the system, but it'll cut down on most of the "perpetual events" that clutter up the calendar, obscuring real events.

Unfortunately restrictions will affect places like Teazers who run legitimate 'how to' classes every few hours - and I don't know how to get round that, but something has to be done otherwise you might as well just dump the calendar.

Lewis

I do.

It seems that individuality and expression - which SL excels in giving opportunity to - is not rewarded, because of the way 'popularity' is calculated, and the events calendar is abused.

There are far too many copycat places out there, all using same same "*.ingo" stuff, and frankly that stuff bores the pants off of me. I don't understand why people can't create unique things using the endless creativity the tools available. My club (Disco Inferno) is created entirely from nothing, except for the barmen (a christmas gift from my friend and neighbour), and a couple of freebie scripts that I picked up. Textures are 95% my own creations and uploads. I come to the game to enjoy the creativity of talented people..... not to visit 20 clubs one after the other where nothing except people sitting in 'camping chairs' listening to questionable music streams in total silence.

Lewis