[6] See my show at 7pm! [6] See my show at 8:30! [6] See my show at 10:00!

August 6, 2010 1:31 PM

IRL, performances: how many posts is reasonable for a single show with multiple performances?

Couldn't help but notice that Help, I can't stop talking! is listing one show's individual performances as separate (but duplicate) events over multiple days.

Considering the large number of performances that have been posted in IRL in the short time since the official go-ahead, and how much space is at this writing being taken up by multiple entries of HICST's one performance (the IRL landing page shows 21 entries, and four of those entries are HICST's, almost 20% of the total entries shown) -- I find myself thinking this may not be the best way to go about it.

This is not intended as a callout of HICST, who as of this moment has not broken any written or unwritten rules. A new site requires new policies -- and with twelve performances on the landing page right now, if each day's performance warrants a separate entry, it seems like a potential problem best nipped in the bud now while everyone's still feeling the new site out.

Or maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon with an oversized lawn. Please discuss.

posted by davejay to Etiquette/Policy at 1:31 PM (45 comments total)

That's a good question. It's also a self link but in the IRL section I guess that's unavoidable. Is this something that is ok until it becomes not ok?
posted by chairface at 1:35 PM on August 6, 2010

I thought this was covered in the previous post by mathowie about IRL?

"4). Ten event limit. If you have a reoccurring event or a long book tour or something, you can post up to ten dates in the future as IRL events. Beyond that, you'll have to add them as events pass (once 1 event passes and you have 9 events to go, you can post one new one, etc). There is no bulk entry feature or way to repeat an event automatically. We don't know how often reoccuring events would happen, so we didn't automate the process to create them (we may revisit this)."

Or is this more of a concern about the impact of a single performance pushing all other events off the front page?
posted by millions of peaches at 1:43 PM on August 6, 2010

It's also a self link but in the IRL section I guess that's unavoidable. Is this something that is ok until it becomes not ok?

That's the majority of IRL. The site reads:

IRL is a subsite dedicated to showcasing meetups, concerts, art openings, and other events MetaFilter members are involved in and other members can participate in.

Anything public involving a MeFite is fair game, commercial ventures included.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:22 PM on August 6, 2010

Hmm, yeah, I guess we never thought about people using it for several things on the same day. It seems like one item per day might be a new limit we could put in place, though the iCal info does include a specific time.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:28 PM on August 6, 2010

Other options might be to limit it to ten events per user (so if you had two shows a day you could list 5 days of perfomances before you hit your limit), or allow multiple show times for each event. The second would be cleaner, since you'd only have one listing for a specific event on a given day.
posted by InfidelZombie at 2:42 PM on August 6, 2010

I also just posted a show but lacked the patience to list every performance. Depending on how this thread hashes out maybe I'll go back and do it because I don't want it to disappear after opening night if people want to come. I know it's been discussed as a feature that might be added in the future but I really like the idea of having a quick way to automate multiple dates for the same event- especially under "performances" and things that will tend to need it more. Not only would it make it easier for the person posting and people looking to attend, but if there were only x number of additional dates you were allowed to add it would give posters a heads up that more than x is not ok. If you're worried about space per day then maybe reoccurring events could be just a headline and date with a link to the original post.
posted by Thin Lizzy at 3:39 PM on August 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

A question in a similar vein...is it appropriate for someone to post multiple meetups (no more than 10, obvs), in different cities, if they're traveling and want to meet MeFites along the way?

I ask because I'm hitting a few different cities as I move to York, England over then next 2 months, and I'd love to propose meetups, but I also don't want to monopolize IRL or make it the traveling-Kim-show. What do you all think about it, mods and MeFites? Even if it is allowed, is it obnoxious?
posted by iamkimiam at 3:49 PM on August 6, 2010

Ooh the traveling-Kim-show! May I request a SF stop? please?
posted by special-k at 3:50 PM on August 6, 2010

iamkimiam: I don't even understand why that would be a problem. If you want to go to multiple meetups, post multiple meetups.
posted by Jaltcoh at 3:53 PM on August 6, 2010

If anything, it'll be less annoying than it was when I did the same thing (or did it by proxy with other people making meetup posts) last fall on the front page of metatalk.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:20 PM on August 6, 2010

I ask because I'm hitting a few different cities as I move to York, England over then next 2 months, and I'd love to propose meetups, but I also don't want to monopolize IRL or make it the traveling-Kim-show. What do you all think about it, mods and MeFites? Even if it is allowed, is it obnoxious?

Well, I don't think we currently have a "too many meetups" problem to worry about. If you're the only person who does this, the resulting volume of meetups still won't be a problem. And if others do it too, then you won't be monopolizing it, right? So add my vote to the non-problematic column, with an asterisk that if the whole thing gets out of hand somehow, it might reach a point where Something Must Be Done.
posted by FishBike at 5:33 PM on August 6, 2010

So add my vote to the non-problematic column, with an asterisk that if the whole thing gets out of hand somehow, it might reach a point where Something Must Be Done.

But by that point, there will be an entrenched sense of entitlement! /Devil's advocate
posted by Jaltcoh at 5:47 PM on August 6, 2010

I had posted a performance with various dates and times listed in the more inside section, but with the official date and time as the first performance. My intention, was to go back and use the edit/update option to change the date to the next performance time instead of listing each performance as an individual event. I went back to try, but the thread had already been archived.
I think an easy solution would be to allow the poster the option to edit past the initial date just to update the day and time. Then it would still be the same post but not kicked off the page. I don't know if that is more or less annoying than all the multiple posts though or pretty much the same thing.
posted by typewriter at 6:50 PM on August 6, 2010

I think an easy solution would be to allow the poster the option to edit past the initial date just to update the day and time. Then it would still be the same post but not kicked off the page. I don't know if that is more or less annoying than all the multiple posts though or pretty much the same thing.

But wouldn't that deprive people of useful information and have negative unintended consequences? If someone looks at your earliest event and can't make it on that day, they're going to ignore anything with that title from then on.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:02 PM on August 6, 2010

The solution is to make easier to filter IRL by category. Right now, the only way to just view meetups, as far as I can see, is to click a specific meetup, then click the "meetup" link. Well, you can scroll down to the tags and click "meetup," but that's too inconspicuous and haphazard. Instead, there should be a clear, prominent set of tabs or a list at the top of the IRL homepage.

With thousands of people on this site and a forum for posting any events as long as the user is involved in them, there are going to be a lot of bands on tour, runs of plays, etc. Yet many people are going to pretty much think of IRL as "the meetup section of Metafilter." There should be a very clear, accessible way to apply the meetup filter.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:09 PM on August 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

pb says in the other thread that categories are forthcoming.

Meetups won't be in Meta. Looks like we still need to add category feeds at IRL. I put that on my to-do list and I'll post here once they're available.
posted by pb at 10:42 AM on August 6 [+] [!]
posted by typewriter at 7:15 PM on August 6, 2010

But wouldn't that deprive people of useful information and have negative unintended consequences? If someone looks at your earliest event and can't make it on that day, they're going to ignore anything with that title from then on.

Yes, Jaltcoh. I see your point. I was trying to think of a way that was more efficient for the user, but also less annoying for those visiting the site.
posted by typewriter at 7:17 PM on August 6, 2010

pb says in the other thread that categories are forthcoming.

Oh. Cool. Thanks.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:26 PM on August 6, 2010

I think it might be best for a recurring event to only show up once on the front page.
posted by empath at 7:39 PM on August 6, 2010

I think it might be best for a recurring event to only show up once on the front page.

And just randomly show one of the dates, or what?
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:44 PM on August 6, 2010

I think it's useful to have separate postings for recurring events on different days, because that way if you look at the site, you'd immediately see the post that pertained to the current day or weekend or whatever.

If there was a way of including multiple show dates for a single event, so that it wouldn't push stuff off the front page but would show up in the stream as the date drew closer, that would be neat.

For now I am just glad people are posting things there and that other people are checking the site. I am really impressed with IRL and really want it to catch on.
posted by hermitosis at 8:52 PM on August 6, 2010

(On a more biased note, HICST's play is really impressive and legit, and I hope NY'ers will come out and give it a look.)
posted by hermitosis at 8:54 PM on August 6, 2010

To clarify: I emailed the mods before the multiple postings and got the go-ahead that this was how to handle a multiple-date IRL event. I'm sorry if the five posts are a bother to people, but I didn't want the listing to disappear after opening night, and this was the only way to make it clear on the site that there were several opportunities to catch the show.

I'm glad, I guess, that I was able to trigger a discussion about how to work IRL, though. I found reposting the event several times to be kind of clunky and time consuming. Personally, I'd love it if we could set a start date and end date for events that happen over a wider span of time.
posted by Help, I can't stop talking! at 9:30 PM on August 6, 2010

Yeah, this is very much stuff that we'll only get a feel for in terms of Works or Sorta Works or Really Doesn't Work by having this stuff play out in practice. So if we find that multiple-date stuff really is more distracting and problematic than we'd hoped, that'll be a good reason to take a closer look at subtler handling of same—possibly logically grouping multiple dates for a performance and displaying the independent instances of those in some selective or reduce manner, etc.

For now, busy schedule will just look busy. That's okay for the moment.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:13 PM on August 6, 2010

Help, I can't stop talking! writes "I'm glad, I guess, that I was able to trigger a discussion about how to work IRL, though. I found reposting the event several times to be kind of clunky and time consuming."

My feeling is this is a feature not a bug. People will be less inclined to spam IRL with events if they need to enter each individually. Not to imply there was anything wrong with your posts Help, I can't stop talking!.
posted by Mitheral at 10:34 PM on August 6, 2010

cortex posted something to MetaTalk, informing us musicians of the new possibility for listing gigs. When I went to post one, though, I had a bit of a problem: Japanese addresses seem to not work in the address field (a required field).

Here's the address that IRL can't grok:

Tōkyō Metropolis Suginami Ward荻窪３丁目４７−２１

but that address gets me a map at Google maps, no problem. Hmm...

I'd also like to mention that in Tokyo (and elsewhere in Japan as well) a street address isn't always, um, relevant, exactly, or necessary. People often go to and find places strictly by directions and/or a map. Personally, I think it shouldn't be a strict requirement to include a street address in that little box. But if it has to be a requirement, it should certainly work for any address in the world.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:39 AM on August 7, 2010

Sorry, I meant "cortex posted something to Music Talk"...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:40 AM on August 7, 2010

Sorry flapjax, we decided to go with the Google Maps API to power everything. And they explicitly state in their documentation that what you get at the API can be different from what you get at maps.google.com. Sounds like they aren't making Japanese addresses available via the API.

If there's no address, there's no map. We made the map a requirement so it's easy to find events. And without that requirement, I think we'd get some lazy posting along the lines of, "it's at The Blue Dog, downtown." And we'd rather have something more formal than that.

So we're bumping up against the limitations of the Google Maps API here. If we provided a spot for longitude and latitude instead of an address would you be able to find that for Japanese locations? Then we could map the spot and bypass Google's knowledge of addresses.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:40 AM on August 7, 2010

ok, did some more experimenting with Japanese addresses, and it seems like Google is treating them differently in their system and our code wasn't expecting it. Try your address again at IRL and see if the location is close to accurate. If it is, we'll go with this and see if we bump into Google's limits again. If not, I think we'll need to explore lon/lat a bit more.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:50 AM on August 7, 2010

I think long/lat for an event would be great. I want to post the craft show my wife and I go to but there's not an address because it's in the alley behind some buildings downtown. I can certainly fake it by using the address for one of those buildings and telling people to go behind it though.
posted by theichibun at 2:25 PM on August 7, 2010

Thanks, pb. I'll try reinputting soon.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:26 PM on August 7, 2010

The map is a must, hm? I've had meetups at my house before, and in order to avoid plastering my address on the web, I memailed or emailed people the directions, my phone number and etc. This will be a problem for that sort of thing.
posted by Stewriffic at 5:03 AM on August 8, 2010

Yeah, a map is required at IRL. If you want to have a semi-public meetup, you might just start a proposed meetup at IRL and never change the status. You can have a thread at IRL without a map that way. We want the site to be for public events that people can attend and we know that limits the type of events that can be posted.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:22 AM on August 8, 2010

And then if you don't change the status on IRL it doesn't get listed on the sidebar at MetaTalk, right? Which would mean people likely won't see it. Or have I mistaken how it works?
posted by Stewriffic at 8:11 AM on August 8, 2010

Wait, ok, i see it would go to the "proposed meetups" section on the metatalk sidebar. Do those ever expire?
posted by Stewriffic at 8:14 AM on August 8, 2010

Yeah, I'm comfortable giving mefites and their friends my contact information, but not everyone who can see the thread.
posted by Stewriffic at 8:30 AM on August 8, 2010

How do you plan a picnic in the middle of Central Park? There are no addresses nearby.

Or should those sorts of events just go to MeTa like always?
posted by Eideteker at 8:38 AM on August 8, 2010

Yeah, I'm comfortable giving mefites and their friends my contact information, but not everyone who can see the thread.

That's fine, but that might mean IRL isn't quite right for planning that kind of meetup. We don't expect it to cover everything. Sometimes you'll have to jump ship and use something outside of MeFi to organize/communicate. Maybe a MeTa thread for these situations?

Do those ever expire?

Right now I have some arbitrary time period for expiration. Maybe three months or so. But that will be adjusted, we're still feeling things out.

How do you plan a picnic in the middle of Central Park?

"Central Park, NYC" is a valid address. The Google API includes parks, points of interest, and generally tries to understand what you mean. It definitely prefers street addresses for things, but try plugging in a good descriptor and see if it works.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:43 AM on August 8, 2010

Based on many of the above comments, I'm thinking the address/map requirement might not be such a great idea.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:44 AM on August 8, 2010

Hmm... it'll take "Central Park," but it will also take "Central Park Reservoir." I hope you're happy, pb! Now our picnic is underwater. =(

Seriously, though, "Central Park" is a big place. And I can understand the concern of folks like Stewriffic who are welcome having unmet MeFites over (I've done it), but don't want to post their address on the web. Can we have a "residence" category for the venue? You could then have a link to "Contact the host/organizer" which leads to either MeMail or email. OR you could mask the address for non-logged-in people, but that's not as secure (bots?).
posted by Eideteker at 8:47 AM on August 8, 2010

I'm fine with using MeTa, but will those meetups show up on the sidebar?

I don't mean to sound ungrateful; new things are always cool, but losing functionality sucks.
posted by Eideteker at 8:49 AM on August 8, 2010

For the time being, the most viable approach is what's always stood for oddly-located meetups or address-obscured meetups: be vague in public and communicate details in private. With the map as part of the plan, that means be vague on the map. So, for these two examples:

- Stew provides an address that is, say, a post office or whatever in the general vicinity of her house, so no one can figure out where she lives at a glance; she follows up with her Yeses and Maybes with a mefimail with address info.

- Eid plugs in a couple different "Central Park" variants to see if he can find something that's right on the money for where he's thinking of; if that doesn't work, he throws specific lat/long coords to get a pin right in the right spot, or just says in the thread that "we're meeting at the pavilion near the pond in the SE corner near blah de blah" to make it perfectly clear that way.

Again, this is basically exactly what's happened previously. The map is intended to be an aid, one that'll probably be fairly useful in 95% of cases; in the other 5% where it is either useless or actively problematic you can route around the problem by being intentionally vague or extra specific in the text. Anybody who elects to attend a meetup solely by looking at a google map point and refusing to read any of the accompanying text does so at their own risk.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:02 AM on August 8, 2010 [2 favorites]

I suggested a park or the town hall to Stew, cortex (as you probably saw on IRC), but I get the idea. Hopefully, it doesn't cause too many problems.

Like I said, I'm psyched about IRL. It's been a long time coming.

One other question before I head out for the day: Is there a way to filter for categories? Like there are 10,000 performances in NYC, but if I just want to view meetups (no offense to the talented folks out there), can I do that? Right now "Performance:" or "Meetup:" are part of the URL for the event, but ideally clicking on them (or "Filed under: meetup" below the event) would take you to a page with just meetups in an increasing geographic area (so I might see something in Philly or Boston before seeing any performances).
posted by Eideteker at 9:12 AM on August 8, 2010

Darnit, lost my comment.

Eide, pb has categories on the to-do list.

Thanks for the workaround with these edge cases. Part of my concern was not knowing how to make it work. The other part was not wanting to manipulate the site with fake-but-nearby addresses, MeTa and etc. without the go-ahead.

And yeah, IRL is cool! I apologize that my observations/criticisms came without the dose of gratitude I also feel.
posted by Stewriffic at 9:21 AM on August 8, 2010

Just to chime in--I'm struggling with this issue as well. I'm running a show in Scotland for a month (6 days a week for the entire month of August), and I'd love to invite Mefites to the show, but I really don't want to spam IRL with a ten day listing and then reposting it all again after it scrolls off.

Maybe there's a way to divide IRL into the two sections: One night only events, and then recurring events?
posted by geryon at 9:45 AM on August 12, 2010