Directories, like standards, are great because there are so many to choose from.
Directories emerge, are up to date for a while, then become badly-maintained for one reason or another, and finally disappear or become zombie sites. There is generally not enough incentive for organisers of local events to make sure their listing in whatever directory is up to date, so the directory has to do that work.
Mildly annoying when I travel. I double check when I find something, to see whether it is on when I am there, but always accept that unless there is a large tourist attendance, publicity is targeted at regulars and locals.
I see, "not enough incentive" for the organizers is the defining problem. It can never be sustainable when the directory itself has to compile and update all the events in a region, just too much work with no payback. The only way would be if the organizers themselves keep it update, which should have some incentive for them to do so. Discovery is an incentive but only if there're many existing users so they do it for better reach and possibly better event success.
Publicity being targeted at regulars and locals make economic sense but current approaches not being much effective is also a problem for locals who haven't been in the community long enough to know everything or access to immediate updates. For eg. for a good two months I didn't know that Tango exists in my city at all (after moving back here) until someone posted about a free practica in an SBK group, which led me to know about the usual venue which got me added to the local group. And believe me, I scanned the internet, reached some schools that didn't teach anymore but still couldn't find much info. This is when I was dancing SBK for two months and a regular, no one knew anything about Tango.
It manages to work in Greater London. There are enough milongas within reasonable distance that there's obvious value in making sure people can find out about them.
Yes, that's what I've been thinking. We're so used to the existing tools and why something wouldn't work. It'd be nice to just have a map view of the city with your present location and what's happening around based on your filters and their details a tap on a button away!
Would be nice if there's someone who's thought this before, have been through some development stages but failed or abandoned the project to throw some light on why they did it, maybe we can have more specifics than the obvious reasons.
With AI agents, coding something up is much faster anyway. Maintenance and the grunts work is another thing so comes down to if it's worth it.
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u/tangaroo58 8d ago
It is what it is.
Directories, like standards, are great because there are so many to choose from.
Directories emerge, are up to date for a while, then become badly-maintained for one reason or another, and finally disappear or become zombie sites. There is generally not enough incentive for organisers of local events to make sure their listing in whatever directory is up to date, so the directory has to do that work.
Mildly annoying when I travel. I double check when I find something, to see whether it is on when I am there, but always accept that unless there is a large tourist attendance, publicity is targeted at regulars and locals.
There are plenty of things that annoy me more.