Add future events to automatic calendar[]
A good Wikia development is the automated calendar, which can be added to any page just with <calendar />. That gives a 3-month spread. For other desired lengths, insert "numberofmonths=12" or some such before the slash, leaving spaces before and after.
Set it and forget it! Add any coming event to the calendar as soon as you know about it (eg when a campaign website announces it). It will appear on the calendar when its month appears, until the day is past, but remains as an ordinary wiki page (attracting search engines, listed in Category:Events, and able to be edited at any time with, for example, other relevant categories and a report of how the event went).
Make one organisation's events subpages of the relevant page (each with a distinctive name) so that they get the automatic backlink at the top. See example at Blackout Britain/Blackout City - Lights Out London.
Robin Patterson 00:47, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Or stick with a more flexible approach if that's what's seems most useful, you decide[]
- Hi Robin, Thanks for this and related recent edits. Whilst the automatic calendar has
some plus points, there may also be some negatives or problems, see for example note on Talk:Current events. I've put in a few extra links on the Current events page - so that people can develop whichever kind of set up seems most useful.
I'm not at all sure about 'Set it and forget it' - many UK events simple don't reoccur the following year. For UK events there seem more possibilities via monthly pages, although I see that an automatic calendar might be useful where there are fewer events, eg for specific topics or different areas.
Also I think in many ways flexibility is good, e.g. so that the event doesn't disappear after the first day - awareness of it more sustained(?)
I suppose the biggest reason why I haven't personally made much use of the feature, even though it was tried out on a Diary UK page for several months in this wiki, is that I tend to put in only brief details about an event and rely on the source website for some (transient?) details, so it's perhaps a decision about what info most likely to have lasting value. I agree it'd be great if people put in things like reviews of events, and used a wiki like this perhaps even to think about how events could be improved e.g. Open source conference design, but until we get more editors contributing more regularly I guess I'm not at all convinced that this approach is terribly sustainable yet. I'm all for automatic generation of content to a certain extent, but I'm suggesting if we go too far with this we end up with too high a ratio of junk (unedited, unpatrolled, uncared for info ) to info of more lasting value. Philralph 08:50, 15 June 2007 (UTC)