The Events Team work hard to setup community events and boss masses using our image. As such, it's obvious that we have pages on the wiki dedicated to them, their upcoming events, and applications.
Recently, we (I) started advertising ET events on the main page just above the "recent updates" section to encourage more people to attend events, as the event info can be quite hidden away. I also took the initiative a little while ago to remove sub-items on the navigation menu of the wiki linking to each upcoming event, because it was clear that it wasn't kept up to date often enough and things can get confusing.
Confusion caused by information on our pages is my main concern for this thread. Sometimes, events get moved around and rescheduled, especially during a busy time where people may be doing exams. This causes inconsistent scheduling across our pages. For example, here's what RuneScape:Events Team looks like currently:
| Screenshot of the Events Team page |
|---|
| https://i.imgur.com/SPzZKb8.png |
Yet, according to Reddit and other platforms that ET events are advertised, there's no Deathmatch event today (15 April), it's a Vindicta event instead...
| Screenshot of a Reddit post |
|---|
| https://i.imgur.com/3zazAMt.png |
Really, this is nobody's fault - people forget to update pages, and updating so many different pages is a lot of hard work. Here's what the average scenario would be to keep everything up to date for ET if events were added/updated/changed around:
- Update the Google Calendar events
- Edit RuneScape:Events Team
- Edit the event page (e.g RuneScape:Events Team/Vindicta)
- Edit RuneScape:Events Team/Notice
This isn't ideal. Obviously, I'm not a member of ET, which is why I'm making a thread to discuss this - and hopefully some ET members will give their thoughts here. But, in my opinion we should try to clean this up and make sure people can stay up to date on our events. We also shouldn't be relying on Reddit and our in-game clan chat as the main source of advertisement for ET, when we get so many visitors on the wiki each day.
Proposal
- Remove the individual event pages
- They are literally just replicas of the strategy pages that we already have on the wiki along with some (usually inconsistent) event info. Using the wiki as a sort of calendar just doesn't work with how MediaWiki is intended to be used. And it's confusing - the info on the Vindicta page right now is completely different to the other pages.
- Replace the schedule on RS:ET with a table of upcoming events
- This means dropping the Google Calendar and the links and replacing them with an easy-to-read, easy-to-update table. I mean surely updating a table on the wiki, even if table lines were done using templates to keep it simpler (like drop lines), would be better and faster than updating multiple locations? Maybe something similar to this: (note that keeping our times consistent with game time/UTC avoids confusing people with a list of times in different timezones)
| Event | Date | Time | Friends Chat | Requirements | Drop distribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vindicta | 15 April 2018 | 20:00 UTC | Corn Colonel | 80  , a high combat level and appropriate gear is recommended
|
LootShare |
- Make RuneScape:Events Team/Notice update dynamically
- This allows us to still have a list of upcoming events on the main page without the need for people to manually update yet another page. If we're working with tables/templates in a consolidated location like described above, this should be straight forward to embed.
- Change the title format of ET's Reddit threads
- Okay, really this is kinda optional, but the wording for the threads we make on Reddit for ET events is something along the lines of The Runescape Wiki Events Team will be hosting a [name] event [at time]! Check the page to confirm your timezone and requirements!. This feels overly complex and doesn't get to the point immediately. It just isn't a good advertisement. I feel like something along the lines of "Join the RS Wiki for a [name] event [at time]!" linking to the ET page is more than good enough.
If anyone has other suggestions, shoot. We need to make it easier for both the ET to run events without extra hassle, and we need to make it easier for people to know what is going on without confusion. Right now, I wouldn't know there is a Vindicta event today unless I either saw the Reddit post or clicked through to the actual Vindicta event page (which would be unlikely given that it is incorrectly dated on the main ET page and Google Calendar). In my opinion, that needs to change.
Discussion
Support - https://i.imgur.com/xHR7zpA.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/6encXAo.png 04:04, April 15, 2018 (UTC)
I'm glad someone said it, I guess it took someone outside of the ET to speak up. I totally agree, the way we organise/advertise events is a bit of a mess mostly due to a combination of busyness, disorganization and (admittedly) some laziness. I'm generally in favour in a revamp of the events page, my specific thought are as follows:
1. Oppose/Neutral (Event pages) - I'm on the fence on this one - on the one hand having individual event pages could be replaced by the strategy pages, but on the offhand event pages differ in an important way: they're written with events specifically in mind. Strat pages are very detailed and mostly intended for people who want to learn to solo (or role, for group bosses) and I think this is a bit overwhelming and unnecessary for people wanting to join events. The reality is most people just need to know enough to survive in a mass situation which I think our current event pages provide. Furthermore, there are many non-boss events (Treasure Trails, Hide and Seek) which definitely require their own pages since they are player-created activities. These arguments probably don't apply as much to minigame events tho.
2. Support (Events table) - Yeah, honestly I don't know why we haven't done this sooner - it's a much better system and nicer looking. Using templates would be ideal depending on how they're implemented. The purpose of the google calender was to provide a nice visual representation of when events are but this new table takes care of that problem so I'm happy to get rid of it (also since I was the only one updating it :P)
3. Support (Events Team/Notice dynamically update) - Sure. I don't know too much about how to do this but if its no trouble for whoever does then why not.
4. Support (Reddit title) - Also yeah. Another thing I kinda wanted to do earlier. The feral community that is r/runescape has no time for our frivolous wording. Keep it concise.
Superiosity the Dragonrider
: User:Superiosity/Signature chat 10:46, April 15, 2018 (UTC)