Packard Forum Index » Shows and Events

Ask and thou shall receive.

Enjoy folks.

Will NEW and UPCOMMING FUTRURE events be posted here too???

Thats the idea!

My feeling was that the best way to get people using this new forum was to quickly populate it with previously existing threads on shows and events and show just how useful it can be. (Many thanks to BigKev for moving them after I had identified them - over 100 in all.)

As long as Packards are involved, feel free to add news of upcoming shows and events - as I did with news of the 17th Annual S-P Cruise in OH. Then, continue to discuss the event before, during, and after - just like you've all been doing all along.

My intent in asking for this new forum was simply to have a new pigeonhole to make it easier to find info on past, present, and future shows and events - regardless of club affiliation (if any at all).

If you're reporting on your visit to a show or event and have pix, please attach some to your posts reporting on the event - as has happened with some threads in the past.

However, if you get a folder set up in the Photo Gallery for a lot of pix from an event, please post a link to that folder in the thread that's covering the event. If you're not sure how to do that, I'm sure you can PM BigKev for some guidance.

Good idea, but this doesn't seem to make it very easy to find upcoming events. There should be a listing by date and location for easy reference so that you can just look at what is coming up and see if it is something you want to attend. Otherwise upcoming events will get buried when people discuss or post pics from events that already happened.

LINC400 -

I'm not sure that can be done within the confines of any forum application. I would rahter avoid a calendar function becuase that disconnects from the opportunity to discuss and attach photos, links, etc. Given past discussion of shows and events, I thought this dedicated forum would be a good compromise.

I'd like to suggest the base year and location (city, state) ALWAYS be entered in the Subject line of the opening post of each thread. That info then defaults through each subsequent post, unless somebody changes it (and they should NOT change in this case). You don't have to look very far to see that some members have taken care to enter exactly such info in the past.

Now, you have a point that when new posts are added to past threads, they move up the list. However, from what I have seen there's a pattern to discussion of shows and events:

1) News of event gets posted.

2) Activity of that thread increases as the event gets closer, keeping it near the top of the list of topics, but might drop off a bit during the event (while the interested members are participating there).

3) Activity in that thread returns immediately following the event, and may even increase for a few days after, floating it all the while, but then falls off.

4) The thread moves back down the list of Forum Topics as news of other events gets posted.

Yet, how many events would be competing for the same time and space? How far down the list do you have to look down the list to find what you want, compared to wading through all the posts in the General Forum (and a few that were actually in the V8 Forum)?

Meanwhile, did you take a look at the end of the Forum Topics list? There's a drop down menu that lets you resort the list by a variety of criteria. The default is by "last post time", which is best all-around, but you might try sorting by "Publish date" for your purposes.

I must admit that people sometimes start a new thread for the same event and not only to attach photos. However, there's no law against that, and no one can control that. Yet, I wonder how much of that was due to a previous thread on the same event being lost in the THOUSANDS of posts now in the General Forum. Users have to take some responsibility and accept some trade-offs.

However, if you can paint a clear picture of a better approach (like storyboarding it) or help with programming a new feature, I'm sure BigKev will listen.

I don't know exactly how to program for forums, but I would suggest some sort of sticky at the top listing only the name, date and location sorted by date. That way at a glance people can see if there is something coming up that they might want to attend. Details and comments and pics can be in a regular post like they are now. Shows can be deleted once a month or so from the sticky after they are over.

Otherwise, the way it is now, info on upcoming shows will be lost as people post pics and comments after attending a show that already happened. Doing a search would work only if you are already aware of a show and just want info on it. It wouldn't let you know of events coming up in the next weeks or months.

LINC400 -

I never said anything about doing a "search", but merely asked you to try resorting the list of topics in that forum by (latest) "Publish date", which is based on the opening date of the thread (rather than most recent post).

I respectfully disagree that news on upcoming events will be lost in the new forum. I think the most recent events will still turn up on the first page of the "Shows and Events" Forum Topics list.

Yet, don't make the mistake of looking only at the "Recent Forum Topics" (RFT) window on the site's homepage. BigKev has previously and repeatedly warned about users relying on that too much and missing other good posts as activity at the site continues to grows. After all, that window only covers the most recent ten (10) topics from the entire collective of Forums.

Would an "Upcoming Shows and Events" window on the homepage, where you could click on the event for details, help? Unfortunately, that information would need to be fed into the new feature manually, and I have to question whether people will wanna do double work.

Only BigKev can tell us whether the Forum application software can be made to do what you have asked. While our Forum does support some capability for sticky topics, I haven't personally seen them managed automatically, as you've described, anywhere else.

As a mere member, I have no qualms with accepting better ideas from anyone regarding this or any other feature - as long as they're willing to work with BigKev to help develop and implement them (as I and others have been).

Any listing of cruise nights, car shows, etc. are always listed by date and location. So it just seemed to make sense to do it the same way here. I belong to a forum for my sick pet and add daily to a list for her. I just go into the topic and edit it every day showing her daily progress. So if that could be done with a sticky so that people can just add new shows listing just date, place, and name as they are known, that would be a lot better than searching through all the posts to see if something is coming up. The only thing I don't know is if it is not possible for anyone other than the person that made the sticky to edit it. I suppose people could just reply to the sticky and then the person that created the sticky could add them to the list and delete the seperate reply. Since I do not actually own a Packard, I am not on here that often. But I suppose I could do it since there shouldn't be that many shows going on that it would require monitering all that often.