The Desert Bus Roundup

[Fuzzyfreaker]

There's a very nice thank you post over on the Desert Bus site. Many props to Jer for sifting through his Desert Bus feed and doing such a comprehensive thank you list.

[MrDys]

Regarding auctions, I think it would really help if it were on a secondary website and not necessarily conducted in chat. I'm not saying ebay, but something else where people can see what all is up for auction and a place that would better handle bids/fake bids/last-minute snipes that turn into gripes. The idea for a secondary chat for just auctions is a fine one, but I think that the weirdness of IRC in general is a barrier to possible bidders (some of whom could step to Doc Oct). Even knowing how to manage IRC, I still had problems sometimes getting +v, and if I were willing and trying to bid on something and I was held up by something as dumb as not being voiced, I would be frustrated with the set up.

[Evil Jim]

I agree a secondary channel during auctions would be a good idea. I don't mind if the crew has to ignore the main chat for a while if it will make things easier for them.

[Graham]

We have some ideas to fix the few things that did go pear-shaped with auctions, but watching them was a lot of fun for many people in the chat, so that's up for debate.

[Arius]

I'm telling ya, a !bid command that makes bids bold and red. If the crew uses a custom IRC client for it, it could work.

[Genghis Ares]

Then people have to remember to use it, and over 5+ days of constantly reminding people not to fake bid, repeat other bids and suggesting stupid referential numbers as bids. As well as asking the same Star Trek Vs. Star Wars question 57 times, plus asking about Octopimp's e-check, etc. No rule is going to be enforced for longer than an hour, let alone 10 minutes.

[Machalllewis]

Hey.

I'm not sure if this has already been posted but this has about 15 vids from throughout DB this year. I hadn't seen the Like a Bus vid before so I am sufficiently appoint.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Belnoroth

[Genghis Ares]

The Green Eggs and Ham rendition was so awesome, I'm glad it actually got recorded.

[Digital Dolphin]

I'm telling ya, a !bid command that makes bids bold and red. If the crew uses a custom IRC client for it, it could work.

That solves the problem of visibility, but it doesn't fix the problem of tons and tons of chatting dialogue that pushes it off the screen before it can be viewed properly.

I think we need to assume that viewership and chatter will increase again in the 4th year.

[Dubious_wolf]

This is the first time I've seen DBfH and it was easily the best thing ever and a great way to procrastinate/entertain myself. The best part for me was the grand entrance of Octopimp, on I guess it was Monday night. Truely he was and will be a force to be feared. I plan on saving my pocket change and donating my pocket change next year. This is such a great event you HAVE to host it again next year.

EDIT: I have an interesting idea. What if we start like a pledge type thread in the forum. Call it Bus Fair for Hope.
Basically you pledge to save up your pocket change over the next year and donate that to DBfH. I'm new on the forum so I don't really know how to go about getting that set up.... So uh help?

[2stepz]

Can I make a recommendation for some of the smaller ticket items? (i.e. smaller craft-along items) Would it be possible/feasible to have items like that go on a webpage for silent bids, so that those of us who are working 12 hour days away from the web can still participate?

I don't mind the big ticket items going up for live bid... that's just fun. I wonder however, if it would be prudent to pre-screen bidders somehow... so only "real" bids come through.

[Chemistring]

I was wondering if a blog auction would work, since illuviel already set up a blog for the craft-along (even though it didn't get used this year). Has anyone seen this in action? It would be nice to open up the field for potential bidders, and maybe cut down on some of the panic and bid padding.

Let the crew choose the items they want to auction on air, and have some for the blog too.

eBay is another option since Child's Play is a registered charity, but I don't think payment can be routed through Desert Bus.

[Master Gunner]

They can still take the selling price off of all the ebay auctions and manually add them to the donation total though.

[Chemistring]

True, but we're trying to save the crew some work, not add to it, especially if playing with totals will crash the HUD.

[Master Gunner]

They shouldn't have to play with the hud. The way Paul has explained it, after the Desert Bus website captures the donation total from the ChipIn RSS feed, it writes it to a text file, which is then loaded every time someone loads desertbus.org, and is also read by the HUD. So one way to do it would be to have a second text file that they can manually modify with the ebay totals. Now all that needs to be done to have that displayed automatically is modify the algorithm that captures and writes the ChipIn total to read in and add the total from the second file before writing to the text file that everybody else sees.

So before the donation total updated this way:
ChipIn donation total updates -> desertbus.org grabs that total once per minute -> total written to a text file -> text file pushed out to the HUD, and every time someone loads desertbus.org

Under the way I described above:
ChipIn donation total updates -> desertbus.org grabs that total once per minute -> desertbus.org reads in second text file -> amounts added -> total written to a text file -> text file pushed out to the HUD, and every time someone loads desertbus.org

[Chemistring]

Ah, I see. This? Is why I play with sticks and string. And poisonous chemicals...that sometimes catch on fire.

Thanks for the info, though. It means that eBay might be a viable option for at least some of the auctions, especially if we wanted to run some in the days before Desert Bus. Just in case something like Op: Kill James pops up again...

[Metcarfre]

I know people love the idea of scheduled/offsite auctions, but you have to remember sometimes auctions on the smaller items are used to keep the tempo and interest of the chat et al. going. The crew gets tired of just singing songs and answering "who would win in a fight" questions.

[Genghis Ares]

There weren't that many "who would win in a fight" questions from what I saw. However, there were a ton of general "this or that" questions.

[Chemistring]

Yeah, a lot of the suggestions are going to have to wait until we know a) what the crew has planned, and b) how many craft-along and other donated items are up for auction next year. Keeping the tempo up is good, turning Desert Bus into the Shopping Channel isn't.

[epocalypse]

Yeah, a lot of the suggestions are going to have to wait until we know a) what the crew has planned, and b) how many craft-along and other donated items are up for auction next year. Keeping the tempo up is good, turning Desert Bus into the Shopping Channel isn't.

agreed. and turning it into ebay would be right out.

[Machalllewis]

I'd just like to point out that the LRR crew are now mentioned on the Caramelldansen wikipedia page. It made me chuckle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caramelldansen

[CtMolloy]

haha. That's great!