Culling Dead Community Events

If you haven’t done so already, you should probably check out the - ahem - quite lengthy thread on improving racing at Anti sandbagging and other areas that need development and communication

I definitely did not mean to say that I don’t see a place for community / volunteer managed events like Herd. I especially see the value of that sort of thing for group rides like Herd and am not advocating those go away. I am just advocating that there be some automated race series so that the experience is a little more like jumping onto call of duty with a few friends.

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Fair enough, sorry for the misunderstanding :slight_smile:

Automated races (there’s quite a few that we put on) is one thing, but automated series are a bit different because of the manual interaction required in ZwiftPower.

This is exactly the issue I have with Clubs and events not on the public calendar. This look like a nice race series but it is so hard to find. Not SZR’s fault.

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FWIW there’s about 3 series that do this (SZR, RWB, TFC) and the findability has, to an extent, to do with how the events are published (but also the fact that they are not on the public calendar.

Where we want to get to is that our public calendar should only have great events in it, and that we’re able to promote ones we hear great things about (and no, that doesn’t mean every single Herd Race :wink: )

These events are absolutely ones that would fall under that category.

I swore I would never post in this thread again!

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haha! There is only one reason these events are not public - because that manual category system goes to pot if anyone and their nan can enter it and just choose the category they fancy.

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We bated you to post in this thread and it worked. LOL

I am just worried that we go the route that RGT has gone. They have hundreds of races and rides with only one or two people attending because they post all over the place and everyone think their route and race are the best.

But This should be in another thread.

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I think this is a valid concern, though the irony of it all is that I think it would be the logical conclusion of the current lack of improvement. I believe at heart all race organizers primarily want to cater to the community (be open and inclusive). Yet, since the current infrastructure doesn’t allow them to offer the experience they’re after, the events eventually turn private - which I believe is what also happened with the SZR series. Solve the underlying issue and the fallout also disappears, is what I would argue. But maybe I’m very wrong :man_shrugging:.

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I think the issue with this was that we are not adding events (without a seriously good reason) during core European hours. Clean up the schedule (which is essentially my job for the next 6-12 months) and you create space for great events like these.

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I think SZR and FRR wouldn’t have their events published even if there was calendar space?

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Probably right.

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is that all a manual process or any thoughts on automating it?
doing something manually once to clear the schedule would be a great help but is not feasible long term to manage event to that level of detail…well not without a lots of staff and lots of manual work.

I’d love to see it where a club hosts an event privately and if they get enough participation then they have an option to apply to go public.
Similar if an event is consistently getting a poor numbers it reverts back to a club event which would give organisers a bit of a kick to sort it out.

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The Clubs would have to evolve much more before I’d be happy to see events pushed off the public calendar. Limited invitations, limitation on members, limits on number of clubs one may join, no clickable link for sharing an event elsewhere, a customisable results service, etc.

Also, as with RGT, organisers are caught in a bind: an event has to be popular before it’s added to the public calendar but it’s less likely to become as popular as those already on said calendar because…the greater public doesn’t know it even exists.

Organisers will be become niche providers, while almost all riders will look and join whatever they see on the main calendar.

There won’t be any good, categorised, events on the public calendar without pen enforcement. Ever. That’s a given.

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It’s almost as if noone had mentioned that yet.

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He probably thought you’d forgotten - the same way you forgot you were never going to post in here again. :wink:

@Dappy-Muppet-TFC
@James_Zwift

Curious, how does one find out about and participate in non-public races? So if that’s a basic question, lol.

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You don’t need to be in a club to do a club event. You can get a clickable link you can share so the clubs size or limit on number of clubs is really not a big factor on whether an event is a success or not.

The initial requirements could be fairly low ish maybe 40+ riders to initially go public but then require more to stay there.

i agree though it does need to evolve to be of more use with further integration to zp would be a massive benefit. Linking zwift clubs with zp clubs would be my first step although i would say the clubs limit would need increased a little maybe to 300.

I’m confused. Are these things you want in the Clubs system? Because most of them are things I don’t want, other than the customisable results service.

Well, I was also pointing out that cleaning up the schedule to make space for great events is missing the point. I do realise that there are baby steps being taken towards enforcement but it’s specifically the enforcement problem that ensures that basically the only great (categorised) events are private ones. It’s not a busy calendar problem per se.

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