See c'mon peeps, let's not start a fallout again. I thought this thread was supposed to be about the Calendar and ways of getting it to work better for the membership.
Try to keep your personal comments off here as it's not necessary, insults can be traded via pm or better still face to face. Let's not put our dirty washing out for all to see. I learnt a hard lesson, becoming embroiled in petty spats and quite frankly they ain't worth the time typing em! Move on.
Btw, don't know who you are referring to re 'keyboard hardman', I don't think there is one any longer. Btw don't want to know and trying to antagonise someone is basically silly. We are all adults let's start thinking like em
I find the calendar really useful, whether it's BM organised events or others. Yeah, of course we can find stuff elsewhere on t'interwebnet, but it's handy for the lazy amongst us (=me!) not to have to trawl around elsewhere.
Get yourself a reputation for having a comprehensive events calendar & you'll attract more members... More members = more chance of BM organised meets/events
It's all good. & you'll be getting a few more from me as soon as I've sorted my life out... Ok... As soon as I've sorted my diary, at least
JP I don't know why you're having a go at me. I was just trying to explain why events may take a bit longer Pardon me for being helpful.
If you're referring to me when you say option of staying at home I have several health issues, the latest one was cancer, for which I take several meds and it's those that keeps me from going to work.
I agree with BJ I think BM arranged events should be coloured or marked differently in some way. As Steve H said, it used to be so easy to look on events, see who is going, maybe pm someone or just turn up. I did this at Squires Christmas lunch, I just turned up :)
Matt, how about putting this one to the vote? Those for a calendar with every event on Earth and those for a calendar with just events that B M ers are going to.
I hear you and understand. Let's look positively forward though and find a "best of both worlds" solution.
I can think of a few things...
1) On the search page you have "Only events my friends attend". I can also add "Only events with minimum attendance of 1, 5, 10, 20 members"
2) Need to push people to USE the calendar and actually put their names down. I'll figure out a way to do this. Maybe a little prompt when you open the event saying "do you plan to visit this event - yes or no?"
3) I could add a Yes/No flag to the database for "BM Event". So if the event is specifically by BM members for BM members then the box is ticked. This would then be a searchable piece of data allowing me to highlight BM-organised events in the calendar overview (and also searchable on the search page).
What do you think? Please no negative / unproductive feedback - just be clear about your thoughts and how you think it could be improved, rather than complaining about how it is. Such feedback is always much more welcome and less disheartening for me to read
PS: Those who are saying that most folks "know where to find other events online".... that's exactly the point of having BM! As a social site and a place where you can find ALL UK biking events, in one place so you don't have to scour all over the place online.
To compare... it's like a taxi company saying "we don't need to park our cars in the city waiting for customers, because people know where the bus stops are"
Hi Matt, good to see your comments/thoughts.I personally will get irritated by being presented with a yes/no option to complete when looking through events.
Last year the Calendar was so full of stuff that held little or no interest to me and I couldn't see the stuff I was looking for. I'm now checking forum threads and hoping the dates are on possible events, then going straight to the calendar to see if the event has been added in order to add myself as a guest.
My comments weren't intended to be negative (hopefully you didn't think they were!), rather more helpful and honest. People do know where to look for rallies etc, they don't tend to scour online, as you suggest. Interesting to note that your initial request on this thread was to ask folk to do just that.
There are regularly queries from BMers asking when their event is going to be on the Calendar. I agree that it is time consuming and the 'team' who deals with it is only small, my suggestion was intended to alleviate the workload of said team, as they themselves had said on occasions that they have a lot to do and wish to have their own lives too.
I'm not so sure that a full Calendar of events will entice more members as mentioned on this thread. As I pointed out the dynamic has moved again from social to dating and therefore events are not necessarily what new members are looking for. Look at the forums to see the difference in the dynamic.
Many, many members do not post on the threads nor go into chat, so the assumption is that the site is being used to arrange 'meets/hook-ups' by PMs rather than the social side of things.
Um..i suggested a blues weekend in Cumbria as a 'filler item' just to help fill a space in late july,a couple of weeks back...nowt...but a cider and beer festival has been put on events...comments??
And for all those BM members that have enjoyed the Barflys Rally in the past...It's 7th-9th july this year...Tickets go on sale 1st Feb. at 9 a.m(be swift,they sell out limit FAST)....just in case it's not'biker' enough for events calender..lol :)> Seemed to be some BM people at the last two i went to....my point is not EVERYONE likes bike rallies,give a few alternatives,maybe? NOT a pop at ANYONE...just my very humble opinion..:)>
AND...lots of people seemed to be up for a camping weekend at the Bridge Inn,Wiltshire...but not on events calendar..in plain sight on forums though...??
Lindsay, my comments weren't aimed at you. I was just commenting on the "negative" feeling I got from reading through the replies here.
My initial request to scour the net for events, rallies etc was in order to make BM a better place for finding biker events. When someone searches "Big Bob's Biker Rally" on Google - it would be nice if one of the top results was for BikerMatch. Maybe when they come here they think "ah nice site" and forget about the rally they were initially looking for.
My point is that having a more-complete database on BM brings in new members and gives people a good reason to use the calendar.
if the only bug for members is that they cannot see if A) people are going to an event, or B) The event is BM-organised.... then these 2 points are (relatively) easy for me to fix.
So then everyone's a winner! We can have a comprehensive list of UK biker events as well as keeping members happy who are looking for "active" events or "BM" events.
LOL at Izzy's post. I reckon I did. Oh well. Matt thanks for responding so quickly. Not negative just pointing out that some members don't add their name to the calendar, in some cases probably because they're not sure they can make it.
I like point 3, marking BM events with the letters BM would help when scrolling through the calendar.
Matt I think the flag idea of whether an event is BM organised is a good idea Also how about a button to press only if want to saying attending "yes/no/maybe" then peeps that don't want to comment don't have to ?
If you find this negative then just delete it, Why should I waste my time adding events to the calender, I added events 4 weeks ago and some still have not been added. Also I have sent you 3 PMs over the last 17 days and you have not even opened them let alone read them. So please Matt tell me why I should use my free time to promote and arrange BM events
Matt could you add some kind of filter button? People could set it when posting an event and it would allow people to filter their search. Besides picking up BM events it would also allow people to search event of interest. This could be developed from the event category already specified when posting an event, although a couple of additional selections might be needed and the option to select more than one category. I'm not sure how much of a coding headache this would be for you but it looks like it's mostly there already.
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