Time to get my rant on: How to make a good post on Upcoming



0) Check for duplicates. Have a look, and if the event exists already, don't add it again. It's a silly mistake but it does happen. If the event exists but leaves out details that you want to see, add a comment.

1) Don't be totally obscure. If a post reads, in completeness "Adem, Jimbow, Aphex, Mogwai"¹ I can't actually be sure that you're writing in English, let alone about music. Sure I could Google and find out that these are bands, but why should every reader do this when the writer could do so once? Costing lots of readers a minute each because you won't take a minute to explain it is a false economy. Not providing the right amount of context is a common mistake for inexperienced writers, and a bane for experienced readers.

2) Don't assume that we know who people are. An event description of "Benni Marscapone live"², or "Monster Mash"² means nothing to me, but one of "Benni Marscapone, renowned Ukrainian folk accordion player and poet", or "Monster Mash, up and coming Mexican prog rock duo" gives me a better idea if I want to investigate further. Or not.

3) Link and link. Give a link to the performer's/speaker's/presenter's site. Normally you can find a page on it with a tour schedule listing the event. Link to that. Quite often the venue will also have a page about the event, or a page that includes it in a list of upcoming events. Link to that too. If you can buy tickets online, link to that page. If it's a conference, it's bound to have a page that you can link to.

4) Tag. If there's music, first tag it with "music" – really, that's important as it gives the event the little note icon. Then add some more specific tags, e.g., "techno", "folk", "choir", "rock", etc. You should be able to think up four or more tags for any event that's of interest to anyone. Even if the readers never search by tag, it helps describe the event.

5) Think of quirky things that we may need to know but didn't know to ask: is the event likely to sell out? Is the venue hard to find? Is there an admission cost? Is there a dress code or other entrance criteria?

6) Post early. You don't need to get all of the details right immediately: Post it, review and edit it. Sometimes it's better to post a vague outline far ahead of time, and revisit it when more details become known. For many of us, a good event that we see 24 hours beforehand is nearly useless. We need advance warning to plan our schedule. And tickets will be sold out by then.

7) Don't be too long. Upcoming isn't Wikipedia, and it isn't a closed system. Post a summary and/or links. That's all. We don't need an essay, that can live elsewhere on the web. You may not need to do all of the above: one good link can make up for lack of description. A few good tags can be all the description that you need. Just do some of it, please.

8) Check the year It happens from time to time - right event description, right place, right day and time, wrong year. Nobody sees it since it's too far in the future. Just look at in the near future's event list - if it's not there, then it's elsewhen.

9) Do not recycle events It may be tempting to add next month's meeting by just editing last month's meeting to change the date. But you drag along all the previous event's attendees and the comments. People are going to be confused and annoyed to find out that they have been RSVPd for an event that they hadn't planned to go to. From a more technical perspective, the database is now confused, since two different events are now represented by the same entry, and all linked data (not just RSVCPs and comments, but also flickr photos etc.) could now actually refer to either.

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Notes:
1) It's a made-up example. But take this real one from 6 April, 2006, titled "Poke (ed Dmx / vibert / cylob / µ-ziq / mike Dred)". Riiiight. In this case the event body text is long enough to provide clues, but in many cases there is no body text.

2) more made-up examples.