Hello fellow pilots.
I would like to propose an idea.
(If there already is something like that please ignore my whole post - and point me towards it please)

Here is the thing, my english isn't stellar or anything like that but i"ll try my best to explain what i mean, right?
Bear with me for a minute while i explain it.

I for one like to race in leagues (even only having LFS for such a short ammount of time now), everything is a lot more organized, people tend to be more on par with each others' times, peaple race a lot more "seriously" and prudently and so on. My kind of racing.

I'm sure a lot of you guys too like to race in some leagues, right?
For the same reasons i think and others more.

Here at the forums we've got a section for leagues and stuff. That's cool.
There are a lot of leagues listed here and there's plenty more which aren't listed and have it's own subforum (here). That's cool too. There ain't enough room for "all" of them, of course.

I'm from Brazil and we just wrapped up our events (brazilian league - www.lfsbr.com) for the year and will be coming back only around march next year.

Now, i'm looking for a league to spend some quality racing time on.
I've looked through some of the subforums (i'm mostly interested on open wheelers, pretty much only the fox and fo8), followed some signature links too, that kind of stuff.

Well, a lot of leagues are already running. Some, it looks like, aren't "active" and others while apparently "active" haven't a date for their next "season".

What i would like to propose is a pretty simple "LFS Leagues' Global Calendar".

I know nothing of "coding" and the like but i guess it would be really easy to do it, on the technical level.

What it would be is a website where "all leagues" (thats the tricky part i guess) announce their seasons, that's all.
Maybe some "stand alone events" too.

What i would like to know is when events (be it full seasons or just "events") of such level ("leagues", as i explained before) are going to take part.

If we had such a website on which the leagues could announce their events my LFS experieance (and i guess a lot others too, right?) would be much better.

What do you guys think? Dumb idea?
Please share your opinions about it and again i'm sorry about my poor english.


Ps: Then if and when we get this website running we could add some filter options (to see what is going to take place on any given month, for cars, kind of event, if it's open to "anyone" or no, etc etc), maybe a subscribe option for updates via e-mail os something. the main idea is to have a place of easy reference to go and find out "everything" which is going to be happening on the lfs leagues' scenario.

The main idea is that. If the event isn't "open to anyone" (a only nationals' pilots league, a "higher class" inside a league cup, anything really) it doesn't matter, it will be listed and then whoever is interested on that league (cars, combos) go to the league's website listed for specific info about that "event" and to see if they can apply or not.

The only "tricky" part would be to get in touch with "all" those leagues' "owners" and get the info from them, but even that shouldn't be a problem, a mere "pilot" could give us the info regarding the event's date, someone else validate the info and bam, there we got another entry on the website.

Ps2: what a bloody large "Ps", eh? hehehe
Just to be clear, again, what i would like to see is just a very simple "listing" about all the upcoming "events", comprising "all" leagues, really. That's all.

It's always a good idea not to make the reader not have to read through all your text to find the point. What you are saying is on the 9th paragraph or smth.

I think it has come up before but not as detailed and assessed as this one.

I for one think technically it would be very possible. The only important thing is how would the person updating get the information. The necessary information for the leagues is findably on the internet in the LFSForums and the respective league sites.
It's all about finding someone willing to go through all that and finding someone to make a template website/page to be updated everytime there's a new league race underway.



I'd love to see this as I still don't have a clue wich leagues are going on right now and wich I should join next. There are probably alot out there wich I'd love to join but have never heard about yet.

Opinions?

Quote from PLAYLIFE :

It's always a good idea not to make the reader not have to read through all your text to find the point. What you are saying is on the 9th paragraph or smth.

+1 and thanks you the above post.

speedfreak227

Quote from PLAYLIFE :

It's always a good idea not to make the reader not have to read through all your text to find the point. What you are saying is on the 9th paragraph or smth.

I'm really sorry about that.
Made my best to sound as clear as possible.
It's just the lack of vocabulary or something, i don't know

You have no idea how exasperating it is to be able to convey and idea in words perfectly on one language (maybe you do) and not being able to do it in another one. :/

I'm sorry again.

Quote from (SaM) :

I for one think technically it would be very possible. The only important thing is how would the person updating get the information. The necessary information for the leagues is findably on the internet in the LFSForums and the respective league sites.
It's all about finding someone willing to go through all that and finding someone to make a template website/page to be updated everytime there's a new league race underway.



I'd love to see this as I still don't have a clue wich leagues are going on right now and wich I should join next. There are probably alot out there wich I'd love to join but have never heard about yet.

Opinions?

You got exactly my feelings.
I hope there's more people who can see that and maybe feel our way?

As you said, the technical part should be simple enough.
AND the tricky part, i think, would be tricky only in the beginning.
You know, as the "listing" gets more and more popular it would pretty much "update itself". Or maybe i'm being too naive.

But yes, we would need some people "validating" things anyway.
And i'm a volunteer for that chore.

Cheers.

Actually we've already been discussing something similar to this between us mods, but the discussion hasn't got that far (yet). So I'm certainly all for it (I brought the idea up with the other mods).

Before you go way ahead of yourselves, check out the built-in calendar, why dont you?

http://www.lfsforum.net/calendar.php?c=1&do=displaymonth

Easy peasy. Filtering out the birthdays would be an improvement though. It would also be great if people could try not to spam the calendar(s) with completely redundant reminders about holidays, etc.

EDIT: Actually, i just noticed there calendar is called default calendar, so it's obviously possible to create more calendars. That'd make a great filter. Leagues could have their own calendar, reoccurring events could have theirs, and single events could have one too.

However, there are no edit/delete buttons, that'll have to be fixed to begin with.

Good idea, if I'm correct I believe Mercury and Cyber have such a calender on their website, where you can see date, place and what sort of league the team will be riding. Is being manually updated tho.

http://www.cyber-racing.org/website/index.php -> at the right side: "Event Calender"

Maenie, the idea is realy good, but who will organize all that, you?
And I know how hard can it be to explain something on English

I think your gramatics and speeling are exelent, only change first person into big, hmmm:

you writte wrong: " i "
writte like this: " I "

Hey all chek my trade:
Names for LFS track CORNERS
and say your propusual (suggestion)

Quote from N I K I :

I think your gramatics and speeling are exelent, only change first person into big, hmmm:

you writte wrong: " i "
writte like this: " I "

Pretty funny hearing that when his English is actually better than yours..

Anyway, yes the calender looks very good, only a filter option would almost make a perfect league schedule.
It also has background information because it links to the thread.
Not what I had in mind but it sure looks alot like it.

Quote from (SaM) :

It also has background information because it links to the thread.

Exactly what do you mean by that? Can a calendar entry be automatically linked to a specific thread somheow?

Quote from felplacerad :

Before you go way ahead of yourselves, check out the built-in calendar, why dont you?

Yep, when Bob raised the subject among the mods, we also looked at the calendar on the forum. I think the truth is that we don't really know, yet, how the existing calendar works, how it could be altered to be more usable, or even IF it could be altered to be more usable.

Alright.

I don't want to tell you how to do your jobs (or do I? ) Either way, if nothing better shows up, mulitiple calendars would be a vast improvement. At least if you look at it long-term and it gains some popularity. And the possibility for users to edit their own entries is, well, it would be neat.

By looking at CRC's and lfs-dk's forum I've been able to confirm that both features are possible to implement. I don't know exactly how much work it'd take though.

people can now edit and / or delete their own calendar events.

I see there's also the option to create more than 1 calendar, so maybe one should be created for this purpose.

A detail, events on that calendar can also be posted on the forum's main page (at the bottom, like birthdays).

That's about all the relevant options I can see.

That's great! Thanks Victor.

It's now our responsibility to keep the calendar(s) organized and free of spam.

I vote for adding the entries to the main page, like birthdays.

EDIT, by the way, would it be possible to exclude the birthdays from any future event forum?

Didn't the Cyber Racing team website have a calander indicating all the LFS league seasons on it at one time don't know if they still do it though

Quote from felplacerad :

That's great! Thanks Victor.

It's now our responsibility to keep the calendar(s) organized and free of spam.

I vote for adding the entries to the main page, like birthdays.

EDIT, by the way, would it be possible to exclude the birthdays from any future event forum?

Victor could get a bit creative and highlight the events and not show birthdays (or at least make that link less visible). There are several options that will allow this.

The events should also have an option to be visible on the frontpage at the bottom, Victor could set that up, there is an admin option for it, and designating how long before the event it will show up (Show X nr. of days before event, etc). I usually put it 7 days ahead of time. But if there are numerous league events constantly coming up, putting it down to a few days ahead of time is the best. Or having it show 1 day before would be the latest. Showing it the DAY it is happening is a bad idea.

Yes, I was updating our calendar with many leagues, at one time it was really useful and filled with lots of info, but it proved to be a lot of work, and I can't update it regulary anymore. It's great to see that LFS News is planning to make this with help of leagues admins, and that it can be done in forums calendar too.

i just added the new calendar. Thing I'm not sure about is whether to set it as default or not. Atm it's kind of tucked away and unfindable for someone who doesn't know there's a second calendar. hmm Should I set it default?

Maybe gotta have some advertising linking to that calendar as well hmm..

Could it be done that only the league sub-section owners get rights to edit that calendar? They could add the dates, times and links to the correct forum&web sites shown in the calendar. And the rest of the users could then "subscribe" these calendar dates based on the league to be shown in their own calendars. Maybe there could be some kind of link to show a list of active and forth coming leagues where users could just "tick some box" to select which leagues are shown in the calendar? So you wouldn't need to manually add every single event.

Or is this even possible

[/complex]

I definitely vote for having the events calendar the default calendar. Although I do like to see if a friend of mine is having a birthday today, when I think to look, I'd definitely be looking to see what events are happening.

I think the net effect would likely be more full grids for all those open events.. people will see an event happening in the evening and seek to participate, even if they hadn't thought to even go look before. I'm sure lots of people would be more involved in leagues and events if they had short enough notice.. bizarre as that sounds, I won't know what I'm doing tomorrow, until tomorrow

A thing people entering a league to the league calander need to remember is to post it to the respective calander, not the default one.
I can already see plenty of leagues appearing in the default one by error.

-I've made the Leagues & Events calendar default now.
-Renamed the old default 'Default Calendar' to 'Birthday Calendar'.
-People cannot post events in the Birthday Calendar anymore, but to allow changes and clean ups to be made, people can still edit any event they've posted (or delete it).

I suppose after a while, us mods can cleanup the old calendar, if that's needed at all.

Is it possible to display the default calendar events somewhere prominent on the forum? I don't expect there would be more than, say, 5 or 6 events on any individual day. I think it'd be a real boost to the leagues and events organizers if the calendar was something you could see without having to dig too deeply. Just wondering.

And.. your sleeping pattern is now as screwed as mine, and mine's really really bad!

[edit] I moved two event sequences from the Birthdays to Leagues & Events calendar. Nice one Vic!

[edit] I just saw the announcement in the L & E section.. rocking!

Wow.. just wow...
That's why i love LFS.

Truly it have the closest players/devs ratio of all games.
Thanks a lot Victor.

I'm glad you guys enjoyed the idea and now let's get working on those entries.

Later on i"ll try to make a list of "all" leagues and then i"ll ask to you guys for help to get in touch with every single one and tell/explain them about the calendar. Alright?

Thanks a lot.
That's terrific.
And what a quick response too!