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parkrun thread

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Rascal Jun 2021 11:12am, 11 Jun 2021 103 posts	Quote Pin Rascal I'm not on FaceBooks. So I also had difficulty JDA. Many parkruns don't use the Web site or Twitter for updates. V frustrating.
larkim Jun 2021 11:15am, 11 Jun 2021 14,722 posts	Quote Pin larkim It's that lack of consistency which is the issue; settle on a few standard channels and make all of them work. I've had the same jda, when on holiday trying to contact a local team or find out info. I suspect the reality is that whether the teams use FB / twitter / email etc is quite heavily linked to what they do in their personal lives, so if someone doesn't use FB at all then the parkrun won't use it. Obvs, they are all evil US corporations, so I get why people don't do that. And parkrun mostly don't appear to want to be dictators, but in terms of communucations consistency I am quite surprised they've not enforced things.
sallykate Jun 2021 11:20am, 11 Jun 2021 7,923 posts	Quote Pin sallykate We notify HQ of any cancellations and also use FB and Twitter (though zero activity there at the moment). There's only one regular annual cancellation when the park's used for something else, but we know from experience that even if we start warning / reminding people four weeks in advance through every channel available to us we still get people turning up on the day. We're not actively using social media at the moment because there seems precious little to say...
Dvorak Jun 2021 11:21am, 11 Jun 2021 22,595 posts	Quote Pin Dvorak Maybe HQ have spent lockdown making online feature improvements eg an easy cancellation notifier? And course updater. I'm of the firm opinion that organisations should use their own websites as primary source and FB, Twitter, Instagram as secondary/pointer sites. (Not as specific parkrun only issue - other places, including the BBC, can be just as guilty.)
DeeGee Jun 2021 11:24am, 11 Jun 2021 20,981 posts	Quote Pin DeeGee Cancellations have to be done via Webfms, the results system, to automatically populate the website. In 2014, when I/we set-up Cleethorpes parkrun, I/we was/were told to always publish news to the website and copy a link to it, or the text, to the socials after, as more people have access to the www than have social accounts. I generally always follow that, apart from a couple of times when I've used video to speak to the community recently.
larkim Jun 2021 11:24am, 11 Jun 2021 14,723 posts	Quote Pin larkim Agreed Dvorak - so much easier and consistent / controllable.
DeeGee Jun 2021 11:24am, 11 Jun 2021 20,982 posts	Quote Pin DeeGee Cancellation on webfms is 2 clicks and a sentence.
larkim Jun 2021 11:29am, 11 Jun 2021 14,724 posts	Quote Pin larkim It's pretty standard though for a modern CMS to trigger updates to social media accounts when a website update happens (of a particular sort), so presumably webfms could do something similar if they wanted it to. Though maybe maintain the usernames and passwords for all FB / twitter / insta etc accounts for all events would make that a little unwieldy.
Spideog Jun 2021 11:58am, 11 Jun 2021 1,138 posts	Quote Pin Spideog Guardian stepping in where Hartlepool newspaper has failed and saying its a yes: amp.theguardian.com
larkim Jun 2021 12:02pm, 11 Jun 2021 14,725 posts	Quote Pin larkim 12 noon been and gone - I was expecting that to be a good time to lift an embargo. Ho hum.