The rules
This is the whole contract. It is short so that it can be kept.
Nobody can pay for placement
There is no paid slot on this wall. Nobody can buy one. A venue that talks to me ranks exactly where a venue that does not: by start time. The order of the wall is time, and only time.
If this ever makes money, it will be from something other than the order of the wall. If that changes, this paragraph changes first and says so in plain words.
What the machine does and does not do
A program reads public calendars and feeds once or twice a day, and turns what it finds into the posters you see. It puts every time into one shape. It works out that the same gig listed on three boards is one gig, and shows it once. It notices when something recurs weekly and shows you the next one rather than fifty copies. It scores which of two conflicting listings is more likely right, and where the score is close, it asks me instead of deciding.
It does not write. No description on this site was generated by a machine or copied out of anybody else’s listing. A poster here carries facts: the title as its source wrote it, the time, the place, who it is for, what it costs. For the words, the page links back to whoever wrote them.
It does not list everything it reads. The wall is for occasions, things you would leave the house for. A council meeting, a garbage day, a flu clinic, a Sunday service, a staff orientation, a support group, a rehearsal, a members’ night and a weekly drop-in class are real entries on real calendars, and they are held off the wall on purpose. If one of yours belongs here and was held, tell me and I will look at the rule, not the entry.
It does not guess. If a source does not say who an event is for, the poster says nothing rather than something. If a source does not say the price, the poster shows no price. It never shows Free as a guess. A blank on a poster means the source did not say.
Where the posters come from
Every event on this wall came off somebody else’s board, or somebody sent it in. Every poster names the board it came off and links to it, with a normal link that search engines follow, because the board that did the work should get the visit.
The boards page lists every source, what it covers, how many events it has contributed, and whether I have permission to read it or am still asking. A board I am still asking is named there under Asked, waiting, and nothing of theirs is on the wall until they say yes.
Cancelled stays up
When something is cancelled or moved, its page stays, the original time stays printed on it, and a strip across the poster says what happened. It comes off the wall when its start time passes, not before.
Every other calendar in the region handles a cancellation by deleting the listing. That is how a person ends up standing outside a dark hall on a Friday, certain they had the right night. A line through the poster tells you what happened and when I found out.
The same goes for a listing that quietly disappears from its source. The page stays and says so, and the event comes off the wall.
Getting something fixed, or taken down
Every event page has a link that says Wrong? Tell me. It opens the add form holding everything the wall currently says about that event: the title, the date, the time, the room, the town, who it is for, what it costs and the link. The first box asks what is wrong. Change the fields that need changing, leave the rest, and the only two things it asks you for are your name and your email. That is the fastest route and I read all of them.
If you organise an event and want it off this site, say so and it comes off. You do not have to give a reason, and I will not argue with you about it. Email hello@kootenaylist.ca.
I answer within two working days. If the fix takes longer than that, the reply tells you when it will land.
Which towns are on the wall
A town gets its own page once the next thirty days hold at least three events there. Below that, a page would be a promise the region cannot keep yet, so the town sits on the region wall instead and its events show up there in full.
Right now 13 towns have a wall: Nelson (55), Cranbrook (46), Fernie (19), Creston (13), Rossland (12), Kimberley (8), Castlegar (6), Invermere (6), Kaslo (6), Trail (6), Nakusp (5), Fairmont Hot Springs (4), Radium Hot Springs (4). Counted on , over 967 events from 35 boards that have something on the wall.
These are on the region wall and not yet on their own: Crawford Bay (2), Kootenay Bay (2), Fort Steele (1), Harrop (1), Panorama (1), Salmo (1), Silverton (1), Slocan (1), Vallican (1), Warfield (1), Winlaw (1). As soon as one of them holds three events in a month, its wall appears on its own.
And 80 more towns with nothing on the wall in the next 30 days. Nothing is hidden: the region wall is where they land the day something is posted.
Revelstoke and Golden are not the Kootenays
They are lovely, and they are not on this wall. Revelstoke sits in the Columbia Shuswap; Golden sits north of the Rogers Pass in the Columbia Valley’s upper reach. Neither is in the Kootenay region this site covers. The tourism sites that lump them in are selling a trip. This site is drawing the region.
The four parts of the region this wall covers are the West Kootenay, the Central Kootenay, the Boundary, and the East Kootenay. The Boundary has a wall of its own, and today it says, honestly, that nothing is on there yet. The day a Boundary board goes up, the wall fills.
A town outside all four is still a town I know the name of. If a listing says it, I read the listing and file the event under the town, so nothing is thrown away. What that town does not get is a page of its own on this site.
Who is behind this
Brett Faucher, in Castlegar, under Kootenay Made Digital. The same publisher as the Kootenay List. One person, one region, and an inbox that is actually read.