So something that still troubles my mind is why people don’t use the attendance reports to their own favor. Right now 21 people haven’t respond wether they expect to be there tommorrow monday night the event is in 27 hours and 7 of those you’re probably going to sleep away. It seems like a lot of us are waiting till just before the deadline at 1pm which results in two things:
The missions/trainings might be less suited for the numbers. If the mission is prepared a day before and only 6 people are set to attending the mission maker or trainer might not expect more than 24 people at the event which might cause a less enjoyable session if it happens to be a 36 player event. I know that MCC kinda helps out here but this is also mainly a problem for trainings.
Second of it might cause even lower player numbers. People will always pick what ever treats their ego best since that’s how we work. Say your favourite show is on tv tonight but there’s also an op going on at the same time chances are that the number of attendees can be the deciding factor wether you’ll join or not. Who wouldn’t rather watch top gear by now if there’s only 9 people set to attending. We’re here for the big stuff. You can’t fool me if you say that you aren’t a little extra excited if it says 36 attending compared to 16. So why not set yourself to attending if you think there’s over 55% for you coming. You can always change it before 1pm again, it makes no difference. All it does is that everybody gets a better idea for the attendance which will all in all lead to better missions. We can all agree that if the attendance said 50 people coming tommorrow right now, you would all be ecstatic to join.
And don’t get me wrong here. I’m in no way saying that you should trick people into thinking that there’s going to be a larger turnout than there really is but I can’t believe that you guys don’t have a clue what is gonna happen a monday evening that’s only one day ahead. I would get it on a friday or saturday but normally you would have some idea. This also goes the other way. If you think that you may be too tired or something then set yourself to not attending and maybe change it again if you find 2£ for a redbull at 1pm. it helps out in the same way. Giving other players and event makers an idea of the numbers. Hell even putting it on maybe shows that you have thought about it. Come on guys.
I think the main reason is that many players don’t frequent the forums like we do… Which is a shame, there’s a lot of awesome discussion going on here.
If there was a way to automate this process (Like using Google Calendar and everyone get the invites and reminders on their smartphone) I’m sure it would’ve been better but it’s just not entirely plausible yet…
Our members receive PM invitations to events, once they’re announced. By default, members receive e-mail notifications of new PMs. Using G-Calendar would be just a change of the medium, at best.
Our website is the main hub of this community. All announcements are announced here via pop-up notification or on our Forums, which are on our website. Forums, rules & regulations, events schedule, gallery, news feed, etc… Only two official mediums for official communication are private messages on our forums, or voice talk on TS. There is no justification of not visiting our forums on regular basis.
Just by visiting the forums, you have instantaneous overview of Community Announcements, PMs, and upcoming events.
A rule like that is wishful thinking. You can make it a rule for people to maintain activity in McDonald’s and eat a meal everyday but you can’t guarantee everyone cares about activity in McDonald’s or even if they like the food or not. In the end the rule only exists to be broken and it has no meaning because there’s no way to enforce it.
We already changed the attendance rule from right before the op to 8 hours before the op. Are you saying the rule should be changed to 24 or 48 hours before the op? I don’t think that would be a wise or fair decision so the solution must be manifested from a different angle.
What I’m saying is that I understand and agree with Anders’ concern but the original post doesn’t solve or advance towards a solution.
I made a Happening group (its an app with a collection of things like a chat, picture upload service, games and agendas) And I add the events there. Then 24 hours before the event I get a reminder on my phone saying there is a pvp or coop or training event in 24 hours. Reminds me to check events if i forgot or not.
The only realistic method I can think of is to find and choose a service that everyone is already using anyway, most likely something like Google Calendar appointments or Facebook events but there’s no guarantee that everyone will use it.
The most obvious one is our Steam group - seeing how ARMA3 is on Steam, we all use Steam, using it to pop up a reminder 24 or 48 hours before an event with a link to the Event on our website might be the simplest step towards improving or minimizing our problem.
I don’t believe there’s a way to solve this with rules and such. I made this to raise awareness and make people think about that it actually has a positive outcome if they use the attendance reports earlier. The rules are fine as it is and I don’t believe they could be changed for the better.
[justify]A rule is not wishful thinking, it’s us trusting our members to conduct themselves in a way that is beneficial to the community as a whole. Applicants are made aware of these rules before joining us. If people choose to abuse this trust by either clicking on "I have read and agree with the Rules and Regulations of Carpe Noctem" without having actually read them or if they have read it and still not follow them, consequences will ensue.
The rules would be meaningless if they were no way to enforce them. However, we keep track of not only the attendance ratio but also the reply accuracy to event invitations. Members who’s invitation reply accuracy drop will be first reminded via PM and finally removed from the community if they still do not adapt. We give our members a lot of options to be part of this community if RL keeps them too busy, but it is their job to be proactive and apply for Reserves or LoA. We won’t be babysitting dead weight.
But I agree with you that our current rules on invitation replies don’t need a revision for now. In the future when we grow further we might have to prohibit joining an event if no reply was given at all, i.e. "invited" status only. Switching to another medium such as Google Calendar would only help those who are already Google fanatics (I use Calendar, Gmail and Chrome for RL and CNTO) but there are plenty of people out there not using Google products. Which in return would only spread out the moderator and admin work load to different platforms, instead of having it all consolidated on one website. No matter what service we use there will always be people who don’t feel the need to update their status or follow the rules and they will be removed from the community over time. From the start my goal was to rather create a community of 10 great members than having 200 which are unreliable / passive / inactive.
I like Anders’ post because it reminds people of the possible chain reaction effect of their conduct, positive and negative. If a lot of members give notice early for an event it motivates others to do the same, if most don’t respond till the last possible second it will unfortunately cause others to follow that trend too. Every one of us is responsible to do their part to make this community work as a whole - in and off game.[/justify]
[justify]. From the start my goal was to rather create a community of 10 great members than having 200 which are unreliable / passive / inactive.[/justify][/quote]
