The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook

Subject: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 06:49 AM

After being invited by those who set it up, I recently joined the Folk Clubs UK group on Facebook.

On the group's opening page there is the message On joining - you will manually be made an admin in order that you can post your club events to the Events...

"Great!" I thought, "Another useful source of free publicity for the events that I run at the Royal Oak in Lewes"

Yesterday I put up an event listing for each of the Thursday gigs at The Royal Oak in Lewes until the end of the season in July.

This morning, I received three messages from Facebook, one saying "Julie Smith cancelled the event "KEN HALL & PETA WEBB". There were similar messages about the events that I had listed for CHRIS FOSTER and for KEITH KENDRICK & SYLVIA NEEDHAM.

I do not know Julie Smith and she has no connection with The Royal Oak folk events in Lewes. I have sent her a Facebook message asking for an explanation but none has been forthcoming.

Apparently, all those who join this group are made administrators, which gives them the right to enter or to remove events.

If members can remove events posted by others at will, surely this negates the whole purpose of this group which I believed allowed organisers to promote their events.

Has any other folk club organiser had a similar experience?

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 07:07 AM

I am so surprised you even fell for that one Vic after all that has happened with other nasty people who shall not be mentioned.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 07:15 AM

Arthur itus wrote

"I am so surprised you even fell for that one Vic after all that has happened with other nasty people who shall not be mentioned."

Interesting, but not very helpful. Would you care to post (or send a private message with) a proper explanation.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 07:25 AM

PM sent

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Banjiman
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 11:44 AM

Care to share some insights for those tempted to use it?

Thanks

Paul

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Bernard
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 12:16 PM

Vic, it seems your 'friend' has struck again... I've had a notification that she's cancelled Middlewich Folk and Boat Festival (I'm only an attendee)...

Either she's a very malicious individual, or (as I'm more inclined to think) she's a bit of a nitwit who doesn't realise what she's doing. Perhaps she thinks she's only removing them from her home page.

Whichever, she must be found and stopped!! A bit like the woman, somewhere in the world, who is having a child every 3 seconds...

Anyway, I keep getting your little email missives, so I'm kept up to date even without Facebook!

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Howard Jones
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 01:17 PM

Bernard's explanation is quite possible. I wanted to delete some events which are of no interest to me, but then realised that this would delete them from the whole group.

The group is a good idea, but in practice it meant I was getting flooded with emails about events hundreds of miles away from me. I've now left the group in order to stop this.

A better arrangement would be for each club to have its own page, for the benefit of people who are likely to attend, and for the UK group to provide moderated links to the individual club pages. This way regular visitors could be kept up to date, while occasional visitors or people looking for a club away from home would have a single contact point to find a club. It would also prevent inadvertent deletions such as this.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 01:19 PM

However it doesn't stop people from cloning your Facebook.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 01:30 PM

Bernard said:-
Vic, it seems your 'friend' has struck again... I've had a notification that she's cancelled Middlewich Folk and Boat Festival

Well, it is good to know that it is not just me! However, there are now only nine coming events listed on Folk Clubs UK five of which I have put up; and I am sure that there were a lot more when I looked before.

I've found out that Julie Smith is part of a duo called Neil and Julie Smith and they are from the Mansfield area and have some association with the Mansfield Brown Cow folk club. Perhaps someone in that area might have a word with her as she doesn't seem to reply to my emails.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 01:49 PM

Know them well. Nice couple. Will call you Vic.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 01:56 PM

PM sent

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Anne Lister
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 01:58 PM

Echoing Howard's point above - I too was being bombarded with events that I had no hope of attending from this particular FB group and Vic, your postings were coming thick and fast. Annoying enough on the web, but thoroughly annoying on my phone, which has "newsfeed" as an option but not "status updates". I was wondering what to do about it. If Julie Smith was similarly challenged and attempting to stop the newsfeed she may well not have realised that she was effectively giving notice of cancelling an event - more likely, I'd say, than any malicious intent or conspiracy theory.
That's also possibly why there are only nine events on the Folk Clubs UK page ... most organisers are doing more directed, targeted notices to people who have a hope of getting to the club rather than a notice to the whole group. Which is, I think, the recommended policy - check Ali MacNamara's recent post on the subject.
I've had to "unfriend" various people because despite polite requests I was still being sent full details of their every forthcoming gig - it's really far better to take a moment and check who is actually wanting to receive this level of detail on a social site like FB, or who is at least within a geographic radius to make it worth while.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 02:35 PM

Anne Lister wrote
"Vic, your postings were coming thick and fast"
...and I really had no idea that this was the case!
I have just checked the relevant Facebook page for Folk Clubs UK and it gives three options on the Create an event page.These are:-

    * Invite members of the host group Folk Clubs UK
    * Anyone can view and RSVP (public event)
    * Show the guest list on the Event Page

... and each of them has a tick by them as default and I failed to notice this! I think this means that when I put up eight events in quick succession yesterday each of the 680 members got eight emails from me telling them of events that most of them had no hope of attending! I blush at the thought. I will make sure that I uncheck the * Invite members of the host group Folk Clubs UK option in future when I put up an event and apologise here for this.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Jane Bird
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 02:42 PM

Facebook lends itself to many things, but it can be surprisingly fiddly to list events as you can't easily select which members of a group you want to send the invitation to. This is particularly important when posting details of an an event to a wider interest group such as Folk Clubs UK.

I use the a similar FB group, E-ceilidh UK*, to list events for Oxfolk Ceilidhs. I now follow the same that Folk Clubs UK request, namely I create an event but I don't send any invitations. By creating the event it's automatically flagged up on group page anyway. (Whereas, of course, when I create an event on the Oxfolk group page, I send it to all members.) This works for me pretty well.

However, "cancelling" someone else's events seems a bit heavy-handed. Is that what she meant to do, I wonder? Wouldn't a brief e-mail to you, Vic, have been more effective?

* http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=319346316305&ref=ts

Cheers,
Jane

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Vic Smith
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 02:50 PM

Jane Bird wrote:-
"However, "cancelling" someone else's events seems a bit heavy-handed. Is that what she meant to do, I wonder? Wouldn't a brief e-mail to you, Vic, have been more effective?"

A bit-heavy handed, perhaps, but if I had received 8 emails about something that I was not interested in in quick succession, I would have been pretty fed up with the person who sent them... even more so if it was on a mobile phone as was the case with Anne Lister.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Jane Bird
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 02:54 PM

Really!?

I just declined your event invitations. I guessed you were probably just getting to grips with the percularities of how the group/invitation thing works.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 04:07 PM

Vic
Just spoke with Neil & Julie. They will get in touch.
Arthur

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Howard Jones
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 05:39 PM

I wasn't just getting notifications through Facebook, I was also getting lots of emails.

I doubt she meant to "cancel" the event, but it would be very easy to do this in error, thinking she was just clearing her own page.

Since folk clubs are essentially local, I do wonder what point there is in having a nationwide page. It's just too difficult to target notifications to those who might actually wish to attend.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Anne Lister
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 05:44 PM

Jane - yes, of course you can simply decline unwanted invitations but it's really not as simple as that on a phone and it does take up lots of space on an already crowded screen as well as time to scroll through the irrelevant stuff to reach the relevant. I ignored it all and decided to wait until I got to my computer ... and then used a discussion topic to flag up my concern. But I can see how someone else, equally "getting to grips with the peculiarities of how the group/invitation thing works", might have not realised that deleting something for him/herself might affect the whole page for everyone.
A bit of tolerance on both sides is a good thing, it seems to me. And thank you, Vic, for taking my comments entirely in the spirit in which they were meant!

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 05:53 PM

>>But I can see how someone else, equally "getting to grips with the peculiarities of how the group/invitation thing works", might have not realised that deleting something for him/herself might affect the whole page for everyone<<

Thats exactly what happened Anne.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 12 Apr 17 - 07:53 AM

Jeremy Tozer set up a raft of county and city FaceBook folk pages which get you more local information.

Some I can't find but this search should bring up plenty.
Add your county to the search box to narrow it down a bit.

https://m.facebook.com/search/top/?q=folk%20musicians

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 10:19 AM

tip\request.....
If you're adding an event
please include a location postcode in the title.
When posts get shared it's often not obvious without a lot of clicking which "Red Bull" or "church hall" is being referred to!

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Mr Red
Date: 14 Feb 18 - 05:33 AM

can't easily select which members of a group you want to send the invitation to.

You have to look at why Facebook exists for that one. They want people to be inundated. I have an account purely for family and after a day of no new posts I get three classes of assinine adverts 1) "comment on this post from 10 years ago" 2) "add friends and you will see more posts" 3) "here are people you may know, go on, add them"

And yet I can't see posts from the previous day. Call it filtering, or censorship - but lets face it Fakebook is lonely. And a lot FAKE.

FWIW your Fakebook group needs to spell out the correct way to enter an event in the "about" section at least. As admin, can't you do that?
If Julie Smith knows how to do that she should be communicating the knowledge. And the acceptance procedure should be listing the no-nos and requesting you acknowledge reading them before admitting you to the group. Some other forums do exactly that.

Post Code - a lot of "organisers" know where their event is, and don't spot the need. BTW you can get the post code of village halls (eg) by using the nearest house or one of the many "Halls for Hire" websites. I even downloaded the OS free pack, and run it in Excel (macros) so I can generate OSGR off line - or even PC from OSGR if I can see the OSGR. Otherwise I use Streetmap.co.uk

All my entries for mister.red & dance.mister.red have both PC & OSGR. In fact http://map.mister.red uses OSGR to place the dots.

Post Codes are notoriously imprecise. They are designated for the volume of mail. Which, in rural areas, can be a mile or more across.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Mr Red
Date: 14 Feb 18 - 05:51 AM

Since folk clubs are essentially local, I do wonder what point there is in having a nationwide page

IMNSHO Fakebook is the wrong conduit. (And often wrong). Doesn't Goggle do things differently?

there are many listing sites like mine that are more geographically local. Freddy's site does a similar map based job.

I list as many listing sites as I can in the periphery of my area (see map &/or drop-down menus - or more on my list of listings) on my homepage. For the occasional foray into uncharted territory such a list of listings would be more useful, if it had more visibility (and someone willing to administer it).

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 14 Feb 18 - 06:28 AM

And yet I can't see posts from the previous day.

fwiw the fb page i have bookmarked I think is "recent posts" on a browser. idk if the app has anything similar.
https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=h_chr

~~~~~~~~~
! I think I'd get lost with excel macros.*
Actually regarding the postcode I wasn't thinking in terms of arriving at the destination, more that I think a lot of people might have at least a rough idea of travelling time to fairly local post codes.
I find the first part of a post code is pretty good shorthand for typing into a Google search.

(*The site I use for checking poscodes\OS grid references\latlong... is
http://www.gridreferencefinder.com/)

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 14 Feb 18 - 07:02 AM

Folk music in Lincolnshire and beyond... facebook group.      This is a facebook group in the UK, where events or notices can be published. You can also put up videos of your own performing.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Feb 18 - 07:38 AM

In Scotland postcodes are not a lot of help - Paisley goes as far as Coll and Tiree.

If anybody has any ideas on how to get FB to shut up with the "celebrating your friendship" and "three years ago" crud, I'd like to know.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 14 Feb 18 - 06:49 PM

Paisley post code
https://www.gbmaps.com/4-digit-postcode-maps/pa-paisley-postcode-map.html 
ok, that is pretty weird!
I was thinking about stoke\stockport\manchester

~~~~~~~
"celebrating your friendship" and "three years ago" crud
ha!
no.
..maybe a hypnotist ,
or the scroll\page down key?
I somehow manage to blank them out between eyeball and brain.

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Feb 18 - 06:15 AM

A Paisley postcode might not localise things as well as some other areas but it still distinguishes a pub in western Scotland from one with the same name in west Wales.

There are occasional posts here about gigs the "Welly". How many pubs called the "Duke of Wellington" are there?

Subject: RE: The 'Folk Clubs UK' group on Facebook
From: GUEST,Malcolm Storey
Date: 15 Feb 18 - 06:43 AM

As far as I know the only Duke of Wellington pub with a folk club is the one the Wilsons (you may have heard of them?) run in the Billingham area.
It is also probably the best folk club in the UK - but then I could be biased.
I will not mention the Blue Bell pub in Hull which was initiated by the Watersons (some others you may have heard of) as I could definitely be accused of bias - and proudly so.