Events.

I want to start an art study group. People will meet ingame every day, if they can, to study, practice, and better themselves as artists.. but first..

Do people tend to make group notices more than events?

I notice the events tab on the website and ingame is almost completely useless because of the number of spammed events. Even ones you think aren't spammed turn out to be "shrines to the first ----" that no one ever goes to.

Is there anyway I can go through the events calendar without seeing millions of useless dance clubs where people stand around on dance balls AFK spamming gestures, advertisements, and Star Trek Museums?

Is there a group out there dedicated to telling people about the actual good events?

Is there a client out there that can ban people from the event list who spam stupid shit over and over again?

I tend to do both, send out notices AND post Events. You can also try Secondnighters, which is an SL group and a web site that work together to promote inworld events, though the web interface is at least as clunky as the SL Events one, and you have to register.

I can't answer all your questions, but:

I know that my own groups use Group Notices far more often than we use Events. There are more restrictive rules for listing an Event than there are for the Notices.

Nothing related to SL has a good Search function (that I'm aware of), and this certainly includes the Events calendar. The word is that LL has hired someone to work on improving Search, and the problem you point out would fall under that category. We can hope!

As for as banning someone---I guess you could enter that avatar's name into the parcel's ban list. But that wouldn't stop them from making a new account and showing up, anyway.

No, because the events list is on the Linden Lab website.

On the other hand it may be technically possible to have a client search the results from your search and refuse to even show you selected results. However I seriously doubt that it would be worth the effort.

I started a SL event group on Facebook because the SL event calender has been broken for 8 years. But you nest join teh group under your real Facebook account since FB is killing off SL Avatars.

I also have the other group: http://secondfacebook.ning.com/ Here you can register as your avatar.

Also in-world join th egroup ANNOUNCE IT! to send out PG and M event information. Then also join 'Zindra Adult Event Announcements' group to send out adult-rated events.

But it would be nice if one of M Linden's new features he is announcing this month would be a working event broadcast system so we can use the services we pay for.