Why don't people use the Events Calendar?

Because of my low-end computer, I avoid activities in-world that require a lot of "doing things" in groups; I just can't keep up with the other folks. But I also have very little interest in wandering around empty sims where nothing is going on, no matter how beautiful it might be. On the other hand, I love going to classes, lectures, and other discussion-based events.

But it's so hard to find these events. We have a place in Search specifically designed for them, but other than NCI, TUI, a couple other groups that teach in-world skills, the nightclubs, and the spammers, no one seems to use it.

I know of several groups that hold interesting events, but they only publicize them through the group, even though the events are supposed to be open to the public. Given the limit to the groups we can join, this is a real limit to the amount of exposure their events will have. And if the group has a lot of events, it can become a hassle for the members, since they end up spammed with notices and group chat advertising things that they already know about. More than once I've left a group because of event publicity being shoved in my face constantly -- three notices a week for the same event, or constant club events for a group that's supposed to be primarily educational or spiritual. There are some real problems with using the group-only method for publicity.

Others use prim-and-script bulletin boards for publicity, but like groups, those aren't going to reach people unless those people are already aware of the group and visit the land often enough to see the bulletin board. You're not going to reach anyone who isn't already in your audience. On the other hand, here we have this little Search button and the Events tab, right where we want it whenever we're in the mood to find something to do. It's not perfect, but it's functional and convenient and everyone can use it. It even comes with a Notify button to remind you of something you want to go to.

So why aren't people using it? What can we/I/the Lindens do to encourage groups that hold public events to use it? Is there some third-party calendar that everyone is using instead?

-BECAUSE- the nightclubs and spammers use events to list things that are not events, but constant ongoing activities - the tab is basically useless for anything other than searching 'NCI class' - and sooner or later spammers will start listing themselves as NCI classes (they already use class, and Ive seen a few use NCI but without class) and that term will go to the trash as well...

I tried the events calendar when I was new and just ended up frustrated at the quality of the listings. The only thing I tend to still use it for are educational/building, discussion or arts & cultural type events. The Showcase listings are much better but the bar is set pretty high in order to be listed. General events listings tend to be full of spam and not well moderated, if at all. It is a terrible place for noobs though, as you kinda need to know what to look for and it can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff when you're new.

I find some of the best ways to find out about events is just through word of mouth. I'll often try to spread the word amongst my friends list or a quick blurb in the forum's "undying thread" or in the forum cartel hangout group chat where you'll often hear about fun things going on. SL related blogs are also a great way to hear about interesting events. I use a feed reader and add interesting blogs to it and it makes it easier to skim thru many of them in one spot, plus you have the advantage of getting more information on a blog rather than the small space allocated in an events listing.

I know it is spammed terribly, but I agree, Rihanna.

I look through the events tab all the time. Even when I join social/club groups I almost never make it to their events promoted through the group because the times are rarely workable for me. I'm much more likely to pop into a random place that takes the time to use the events listing, and I wish there were a wider range of things to choose from there.

The spam is there, yes, but the signal-to-noise ratio is so bad not just because the noise is so high but because the signal is so low. Categories that are marketing-oriented anyway are probably doomed, but if even a few of the groups that I know have educational or discussion events regularly posted them, the spammers would be outnumbered.

I spent a lot of time writing a data mining and filtering program for the events listing so that I could offer a scrubbed version that excluded the spammers, non-events and bot havens. The problem I found was that even those who did list their events didn't do so far enough in advance for them to be useful. I'd have to run the program pretty much continuously, but it doesn't make economic sense to do that. It can't be fully automated and I'm not about to baby sit the thing several times per day.

Now if people would list their events a couple days in advance I could run the thing once per day.

I agree, however much spam there is in the events page, i think a number of ppl really look in it to see if there are any interesting events they can join.

Just try posting, you never know.

It's a bloody pain to add events.

For each event, you have to click through the rules, even if you've already entered an event during the same browser session.

The duration defaults to 10 minutes, which is a useless default. The first choices are 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 45 min, before you get to 1 hour - that's just plain dumb. All that's needed is 30 min, 1 hr, 1.5hr, 2, 3, .... It's not that it's difficult to set the duration, but it's annoyingly bad design. It would also be nice if the max duration were longer than 3 hours, and if it kept the monthly calendar visible while entering other info for the event.

The categories aren't thought out well. For example, there's live music and there's nightlife/entertainment. Isn't live music a type of entertainment?

The 'five event limit' is ambiguous and a pain. Does it mean at most five events scheduled for a given day? or does it mean you can only create five events within 24 hours real time, regardless of the day for which they're scheduled. I think it's the latter - which means that one person can't sit down and create a full month's worth of events for a club, let alone volunteer to enter events for several different groups. Even if it's the former, it still limits the ability to have one person take on the chore for multiple groups.

There's no 'preview' or 'save temporarily'. If you accidentally navigate away, you lose everything you've entered (at least the last time I was using IE and backspace didn't behave properly). If you make a mistake and have to edit your event, the edit counts against your five per day limit.

I know I use the Event calendar to find events, and I wish more groups would post there.

I think Rihanna makes a very valid point about the ratio of spam to real events - the more real events are posted there, the less prominent the spam would appear.

I didn't find posting to the calendar inordinately hard back when I was doing it. Maybe a little tedious, but nothing I couldn't deal with. I think another reason clubs, at least, don't post more events or farther in advance is that by the time everyone's schedule is coordinated (so you know who the host and DJ will be, for instance) the event is upon them...

Still, I wish groups/venues would use the Event calendar more.

Its the spam. Seriously. Another one of those *LL makes the rules, ENFORCE the damn things Deals* We try to list events as early as possible, but when you have PAGES of events listed for the same ongoing 24 hr sale etc etc, its hard to wade theu them to find the real events. Since spamming them is a TOS offense, they should have a place to AR them as well. More people might actually USE the events then.

~Brie

Not to mention that I'm much more likely to see it and plan to attend if I see the listing a couple days in advance. Maybe for most of the categories, it's not practical to scan ahead, but for the Education and Discussion categories, it's perfectly doable.


That does sound like a pain. I haven't hosted any public events so haven't had reason to post anything, but if it is that bad, I'm not surprised people aren't using it more. Who on Earth - or anywhere else -- has a 10-minute event?

I like having Live Music separated out, but having Entertainment tacked on to Nightlife does seem odd. It also seems strange to have Pageants separated out, since that seems a very very narrow category. It would be fine if people used it for all their "best in" club events, but those seem to be posted everywhere except Pageants. So the category ends up seeming empty and useless -- and odd to be so narrowly defined. I'm sure we could all think up plenty of narrow categories we'd like to see (I'd love a Medieval category, for instance), but it wouldn't be practical to please everyone, so why does Pageants get its own category?

There _are_ lots of ways it could be improved -- but that applies to everything about Second Life or First. I just hate seeing a potentially useful tool be ignored.

A few JIRAs I found (who knows what else is hidden in the unplumbable depths there):

Fixing the 5-event limit:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-361

Adding a "flag this as spam" button:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-184

And my favorite:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-448
This isn't very detailed, so I might elaborate on it if I get bored some day. The basic idea, as I envision it, is a Calendar tab that could appear in your profile or maybe under some menu. Events that you've clicked Notify on would show up in your personal calendar. I'd also like to see Groups have a similar calendar, where they could post things that aren't necessarily open to the public, and they would appear on the user calendars of all the group members.

is this calendar of events for in game events only or can it be used for real life events as well?

Yeah, that.

The Events list has been unusable since 2005. Someone should start up a event listing service that is actually moderated. Sell ads on the side to cover costs. Charge a small fee for the listing.

Do it well enough and eventually LL will buy you out and you get to be a Linden.

Er, it is the Second Life events list. For Second Life events.

I'm wondering if the people who find it unusable tend to only go via the "All" listings. Right now, for instance (using only the web listings, since I'm not in-world), there's no obvious spam in the Discussion category and very little in the first three pages of Education or Live Music (mostly just the Trek museum for the first and DJs instead of live performers for the latter). The other categories, yeah, they're unusable.

My favorite thing about the Events is that doing an edit counts against your five-per-day limit. So if you make a mispelling, or accidentally click through on one of the useless defaults, you have to live with it if you have five to post per day.

Very few people come to my club through the Events list. I use it because it costs nothing to use and may snag a person here or there, but it doesn't make much of a difference.

It is very frustrating to use the Event Search. I tried a few weeks ago and after far too many misses, I just gave up. I do hope LL revamp it some day or split events into better categories.

It's another channel that can be used to supplement Group announcements of events. Some people do use the search capability to find events that they would never have known about, Some people don't have a free group slot with which to receive those announcements, or would rather not get them for various reasons or are capped. The Events calendar is indeed pretty lame in many ways, and it's totally spammed (much worse than in 2006), but surprisingly it's not 100% useless. Just mostly useless.

Events listing has been deteriorating for some time now.

There used to be a time when a Linden would do a global announcement of upcoming events. Of course, the usual cry of favortism from individuals led to nerfing it.

The Lindens used to sponsor events, to the tune of $1000L, but of course that was exploited by clubs and others, who created events from non-events, every hour on the hour. Again, it only took a few abusers to ruin it for everyone.

In LL's infinite wisdom, rather than modify the event policy or supervise it properly, they simply nerfed it. Then they adopted the google-type search, which pretty much pushed all of the long standing shops and merchants aside, favoring the spam of the Business-in-a-Box model.

I am not interested in visiting anyone's mall, under the guise of an event.