Retiring the Google calendar?

Should the Google calendar be retired?

  • Yes, we should retire the Google calendar and just maintain the calendar on the nzLARPS site
  • No, we should keep both calendars

0 voters

This is in no way intended to disparage the great work that’s gone into keeping this calendar up to date, but now that the nzLARPS site has an events listing with calendar view (thanks to Naomi’s great work) I wonder if it might be better to retire this Google calendar to reduce duplication of labour and focus on having a single comprehensive event calendar?

The nzLARPS event calendar can be viewed here:

nzlarps.org/events/calendarview/

All committee members can update it.

This forum would then link to the nzLARPS events calendar and be used to suggest additions to it.

Wait, there’s a Google calendar? Can the one on the website have an ical output?

Since about… 2012. Its been through several maintainers, and currently managed by Rob Shaw.

There are differences between the two calendars:
[ul]
[li] nzlarps.org isn’t tracking regular events such as the Auckland WoD games. It has these on the front page, but they’re not registered as separate events, so don’t show up.[/li]
[li] nzlarps.org also doesn’t track important non-larp events, like Armageddon, SF cons, and gaming cons without significant larps. [/li]
[li] nzlarps.org is focused on advertising larps to the public. This is a slightly different focus from “avoiding clashes”, since obviously a public event can clash with a private one. [/li][/ul]

And an important note: both calendars only track what the maintainers know about. We’re not telepathic. If you don’t tell us about it, and we don’t hear about it (because you “advertised” on Facebook by setting up a private, invite-only event), then its not going to appear. So if you want to avoid clashes, publicly announce your event.

Yep. It actually does have something like that built in, but I didn’t have time to test/debug it, so it’s not there right now.

Edit : It’s actually ics format, which isn’t something google calendar appears to support. You can grab it here (disclaimer: might not work): nzlarps.org/ics/all

Edit 2: yep, looks like it won’t work without a bit of dev. And its single import, rather than a feed, so not really that useful.

Facebook recently (I’m not sure how recently, but I think it’s been in the last few months) changed how their event privacy works. Previously, you were able to set an event to “Public”, “Guest and Friends” and “Private”. Public and Private events remain the same, but “Guests and Friends” used to mean that friends of your guests could see the event (and could invite themselves), and now it means that only those invited can see it but those invited can invite their friends. Most of us who set up larp events used to use “Guests and Friends” because it was less open and vulnerable to trolling than ‘public’ but interested people (i.e. larpers who were friends of our friends) could still see it.

This change caught me out when I was setting up the event for “The Train Will Whistle One Last Time”, and I think it’s at least partially responsible for events getting obscured.