M3P talk:Current events

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I suggest we use this talk page for all discussions on the events pages, especially until we find a way to handle events in a streamlined manner and activate the current events page/section to present just that. --Toni Sant (talk) 13:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

May I suggest that this Talk page be moved to the 'Category:Music Events in Malta' Talk /Discussion page...contributors are finding it hard to locate this page. - Tony Grimaud(talk) 04:56, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
You're absolutely right to think and say that the Category:Music Events in Malta can and should have its own talk page. If you're talking about issues related to the category, then the respective category talk page is the right place to have that discussion. However, most of the discussions we're having on this page are about handling current events vis-a-vis the M3P in general. Please don't hesitate to let me know if I've misunderstood what you're asking -- it happens! :-) What I'm trying to say here is that not all the current contents of this talk page belong on the Category talk page, but I wouldn't mind if you (or anyone else) cut/paste the whole section about Categorizing Events currently still on this page as it's probably better placed on the Category:Music event in Malta talk page. --Toni Sant (talk) 16:23, 26 October 2010 (UTC)


Categorizing Events

In an earlier discussion with Lito through FB, he, quiet rightly, pointed out that there should be a difference between live music events and others with playback music. I agree totally with that, and that was the reason why I had introduced the Gig link. Perhaps a better way would be to create more that one section in the events category, say; Rock/Pop/Jazz, DJ/Clubbing, Classical. - Tony Grimaud(talk) 10:39, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this makes sense. We can only really see how to do this depending on which MediaWiki extension we adopt and what functions it has. If we can distinguish the type of event that way, all's well and fine. If not then we'll simply find another way to do it. M3P is interested in all types of events, regardless of whether they're live or not, across all genres and types of audiences. Gigs limits listings to, well, gigs! Anyway, let's keep this discussion going, but as a matter of urgency we need to source the appropriate MediaWiki extension to get going with a site-wide event calendar. --Toni Sant (talk) 11:20, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

A gig could be a dj's gig. As I told Tony Grimaud & Toni Sant on FB regarding the whole m3p, html hinders people to make their contributions, such should be free text. My contribution could be on a live gigs page and then inserted in the general events page arranged by the administrators. Mine would be a free text, easy to amend & and add page. - Lito

Lito and I had a long chat on the phone, and its now fairly obvious that we need to do two things: (a) work out a way to make it easy for everyone to submit events to the M3P (past/present/future), and (b) ensure that we can offer some sort of hands-on workshop to train Lito and others in the basics of wikitext and rudimentary administrator roles. --Toni Sant (talk) 18:25, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

After brainstorming with Toni Sant and Tony Grimaud about terms such as 'events' and 'gigs', we all realized that the m3p events/gigs page should evolve. The fact that apart from my live gigs list which includes every Maltese citizen or resident artist live event/gig that happen in Malta (with some exceptions), there are other sectors that should be addressed. I have proposed that we get interested people from all sector of the Maltese musical community to create a page for their events and then the administrator/s sum all events in a whole events page. This cannot be done without manpower. - Lito

It would be great that there would be people like Lito, putting together events for the different categories of music for M3P. Individuals can also include their event. I agree that we need to discuss and decide on the sub-categories as a matter of urgency. As a starter, look at these proposed sub-categories:- Events-Classical, Events-Blues/Rock/Pop, Events-Folk/World/Jazz, Events-DJ/Dance/Clubbing. Your comments and suggestions are appreciated - Tony Grimaud(talk) 07:31, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
Two comments: (a) Aside from Lito's drive, I'm not expecting much engagement from the wider M3P community at this point because general users are not yet accustomed to using the talk/discussion pages, and (b) aside from music genres, we should also consider having other options like theatre, musicals, cinema, traditional festas, funerals, etc -- keep in mind that M3P is not just about music but also about associated arts and culture in broad terms. The first issue here can be addressed over the short- to mid-term with a systematic awareness programme aimed at community building. The second issue requires a wider approach in relation to types of events. Categories on other events calendar sites will probably prove to be a helpful in assessing what to include a priori. I remember that when we ran an events calendar for aboutmalta.com people kept asking for new categories years after we had established the initial categories. --Toni Sant (talk) 08:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
True, when I published the Creative Malta Directory, people also kept asking for new categories...but I believe that is a healthy exercise... it shows that the project is evolving, not static. My proposed sub-categories above were a mere starter, taken from other music mags such as Time-Out, etc. Of course there are other categories to be added to m3p - Tony Grimaud(talk) 04:44, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
  • We also need to discuss and decide on the sub-categories. I propose the following sub-categories:- Events-Classical, Events-Blues/Rock/Pop, Events-Folk/World/Jazz, Events-DJ/Clubbing. Your comments and suggestions are appreciated 24 October 2010 (UTC) - Tony Grimaud(talk) 21:45, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


Links to specific events-related pages

As it stands, the two links; 'Events' and 'Current Events' point to two different pages that do the same thing ...really a bit confusing. One suggestion would be that we can get away with the 'Events' at the top of the 'Main Page' , and just leave the 'Current events' on the left hand navigation box. --Tony Grimaud(talk) 12:52, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The Events link in the top banner on the main page is temporary. It's just there along with other main categories. Eventually, it may just go away, especially if/when we have much more info page and categories and we decide what we'd really like in the top banner on the main page. Meanwhile it's essential that we sort out what we're actually doing with gathering data about events by having an extension installed and seeing how we're going to capture data that's readily available via Lito and others while attracting others to input more data about both past and current events. --Toni Sant (talk) 16:15, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
I will arrange a meeting with Darren asap about the possibilities of installing a calendar extension. Tony Grimaud(talk) 09:49, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
Please check out my updates especially when others' updates regarding dj sets were included and tell me what do you think, please do not make a calendar more difficult and time consuming as the present ... lito

Using an extension for an Events Calendar

Tony Grimaud is looking into what extensions may be available for the kind of work we're looking into seeing done with events announcements and archiving on M3P. Tony, can you please list any extension/s you think we should be using here? --Toni Sant (talk) 13:37, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

The calendar that wikipedia uses is not exactly what we are looking for. Although you can have different sections, the contributors still have to be familiar with imputing the information, making sure it's added in the right way, placed under the right section, etc. What we need is a calendar that entering events would be like filling an online form; with named text fields, buttons to chose under which category the new event entry goes under, etc. That would be the ideal calendar extension for M3P. So far, the other different types of event calendar extensions I found works more or less in the same manner. The search therefore continues... If any one out there stumbles into something good...let the M3P community knows about it...cheers - Tony Grimaud(talk) 11:52, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
It's possible that there isn't an extension that does exactly what we're after, so we'll have to go with one that's close and then recommend or work it's development with the wider MediaWiki community rather than just the M3P community. The M3P community doesn't have enough members who know about MediaWiki extensions and how they work, so we have to look further afield if/when we get stuck with something like this. So, I've done a quick search and come up with something like this or perhaps one of these. There may be others too, we just need to look. Anyway, see which one you think will work best (tell us what features they have and/or don't have) and let's go with whatever we can find that works best, otherwise we'll be waiting till kingdom come for the right extension to be developed by someone else. I'm sure Darren Stephens will help us find the right one, but we can be very helpful to him if we can say what it is that the extension/s we have found don't do that we think is so essential. --Toni Sant (talk) 12:34, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes, those are the calendar extensions I was referring to earlier ... as you said...we just have to look further ... or else we will end up doing things double. - Tony Grimaud(talk) 14:49, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
OK, that's great. I'll leave it to you to gather together whatever is available for us to consider. We can then make a plan of action with Darren next week, via the M3P:To Do list. Thanks! --Toni Sant (talk) 16:10, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
I have been looking for an events calendar extension that offers what we're after. What I have found was a variety that offer pretty much the same; one of them even creates a wiki page for each day of the year, which in out case, is too much. I went back to have a another look at the calendar extension used by wikipedia current events ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events#2010_October_22), and found it to be the best alternative for what we need. It offers certain facilities that could be adopted to the M3P calendar of events; it allows the user to go back to past events (archive), could be divided into sections (For example sections like: Armed conflicts, Business, Disasters, Politics and Sports, could be renamed, say: Classical, Folk blues & world, Jazz Latin & Improv, Rock & Blues, Pop dance & DJs to suit the events calendar), it also presents on screen that current week of events, while letting you browse the whole month at a click of a button. So, in these circumstances, I would suggest to go with the events calendar extension used by wikipedia. - Tony Grimaud(talk) 17:53, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
That's great! So, I've made a note about this on the M3P:To Do list now and listed it as urgent. I'm sure Darren will pick it up as soon as he finds some time this week. Meanwhile, you may want to have a face-to-face chat with him about it since there may be some settings that need further consideration beyond whatever the default categories etc may be. --Toni Sant (talk) 18:34, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
As I said earlier, this extension is not the best solution for M3P since it is still not easy for people to enter data. But it's the best solution under the circumstance. - Tony Grimaud(talk) 21:37, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
OK, let's see how the extension works once it's installed and we'll take it from there. I take it you'll have a chat with Darren about this asap, right? Thanks. It's listed as urgent on the M3P:To Do list --Toni Sant (talk) 16:06, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I'm at uni in the morning, so I'd do it then. - Tony Grimaud(talk) 23:43, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Which extension/s to use for events?

Darren S started installing the Events extension yesterday afternoon but it proved to be a little more complicated to install than we had hoped. I've now looked into the documentation for the extension a little more and although Darren says he'll try to get the installation sorted on Monday, I'm beginning to realize two things: (a) this extension by itself is not going to be enough for what we actually need to do on the M3P with Events, and (b) we need to do some research to see which additional extension/s we're going to need from these. I've found the Calendar kit evaluating table at the bottom of the Calendar extensions page to be quite useful in helping me start to think about what we should and/or shouldn't look into installing next, if/when the Events extension is sorted. Again, this is mainly because I'm pretty sure that the Events extension by itself is not enough to fulfill the needs we've discussed over the past couple of weeks in terms of displaying a current events page and arching events in general. --Toni Sant (talk) 17:27, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

My comments on how those calendar of events work are in the previous section. The one used by wikipedia caters for easy access to current week, current month and most importantly, archiving. Of course there would still be the normal wiki pages from where the calendar extract the information, ie. the events. Information would still have to be imputed in the normal way. The issue of having a sort of form to facilitate entries is a totally different ballgame. The Events calendar extension' function is to facilitate the accessibility of the information/data on the wiki pages where events information is imputed and stored..it does not hold the information within itself. I would imagine that the wiki pages holding the events information would have to be imputed in a certain way in order for the extension to be able to 'understand' - just like a database...but that would depend on the extension installed.
I'm pretty sure that the events input 'form' that we were talking about for these couple of weeks would also be another extension...and as the used clicks the Enter button, that info would automatically be sorted in the wiki events page/s for the Events calendar extension to 'understand' and show on demand. But lets sort the calendar extension first :) - Tony Grimaud(talk) 07:49, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
There are two essential distinctions we need to make at this point: (a) marking up events mentioned on general wiki entries, and (b) an events calendar to enable users to announce forthcoming events, which are then archived, possibly with comments, reviews, pictures etc. on an individual page. It seems to me that the Events extension we're installing should take care of the first issue. The second possibly needs to be addressed by more than one Calendar extension from these. --Toni Sant (talk) 08:54, 1 November 2010 (UTC)