All the things on my list would need to be done to make that seemingly small change work!
That’s essentially the Competition vs Jam distinction though 
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I think the Other event might be more a matter of a when, because could we consider these a jam? They’re not really conferences or meetings (imo)
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I’d say both those (the IF Showcase 2024 and the IF Demo Fair in 2011) are definitely Jams. They are non-competitive events with games as their output
I’m not dead against jamming Jams into a category with Competitions. At the start I couldn’t see the point of separating out Jams myself. I just think we should wait till all the events are in the events database. Then it’ll be easier to change and we can be more sure we’re making the right change or changes.
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The former is clearly a jam, going by the description. The latter also has a similar format and restrictions, so should also fall under the jam category. For the 2023 Short Games Showcase, that one could be called a competition since it does feature rankings and awards.
Edit:
That is a wise move. With more event data, it will be easier for us to classify.
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ParserComp2015 had voting.
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Oops. That wasn’t a good example then! Sorry!
It was one of these
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You could have five categories:
- Comps
- Jams
- Conference/Meeting
- Award Shows/Popular Choice Awards
- Hybrid/Other
This would allow folks to categorize things that are clearly one category or the other in their proper spots (which I believe has some value as I’ll expound on below) while still having a category that fits edge-cases. For example, if Narrascope were to hold a
4-hour Speed-IF session based on a required theme released at the beginning of the session, is that a Conference with Jam inside? A Jam sandwich? 2 separate concurrent events? Neither? As we move forward, hybrid and edge cases will increase. Simply making a category for them seems prudent.
As for lumping jams and comps together. I believe that unwise. There are specific cultural differences between unambiguous Comps and Jams that go deeper than “is this a timed event.” Moreso than I realized. Helping with TALJ and SeedComp has been an educational experience. In a classic Jam, there are unspoken expectations. It isn’t unusual for teams of people, who have never before met, to spontaneously form, each bringing a specific skillset to the table. While you do see multi-author submissions to Comps, typically these folks are often prior friends, or even engaged or married. There are exceptions, but this “Im a Tank looking for Healer to raid such-and-such Dungeon! Anyone available?” mentality is waaaayyy more common and tacitly encouraged by the Jam scene. Point in case, folks wandering into this year’s TALJ expressed some confusion about our lack of a “#Teams” channel on our Discord. We quickly addressed it, but it is interesting that most Jam related Discords already have that as a matter of course. There’s also a cultural difference when it comes to “pre-built assets.” Most Jams take place in the Visual game space, which increases the work needed for any individual piece. Artwork, Music, Sound FX, Coding, Writing, UI design, etc. Even folks who go it alone must then lean heavily on these pre-built assets to complete a minimally viable product (mvp) within a Jams timeframe, snagging free-use Art, Music, Sound FX, even coding templates, etc. in the process. While not necessarily unacceptable in the Comp-space, especially if the assets are correctly attributed and credited, this is certainly more uncommon. With the longer time-frames, Comp entrants are more likely to create more of the project by hand.
This isn’t a good or bad thing, either is completely valid, just a cultural difference. There are more than that, certainly, but those are a couple that come to mind right away. These differences are sorta boiled away with a reductive “has a time limit” mentality, or by lumping the categories together. I understand that categorizing is often reductive by nature, but perhaps @bg had it right in their joke above:
With the last three tongue-in-cheek categories rolled into Hybrid/Other.
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Ahh, this is good to know! That is… a lot haha.
That works for me!
I’ll plan to starting chipping away at moving existing events into the database.
I feel like “jam” implies games newly created for that event, though—whereas these two are showcases of games people already made/were already working on. So if “other” existed, I would be inclined to put them there rather than in Jams.
From what I’ve seen, though, IF-specific jams tend not to operate like general game jams—i.e., people don’t tend to team up, and there’s no expectation that the games will have visuals or sound. So I don’t know if the distinction matters that much in the IF space.
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(Also, @moderators, feel free to merge this thread with the one mentioned above—I started a new thread before I knew there was an existing one on the same topic.)
That was my thinking too.
I’d be tempted to put the Short Game Showcase in there too, if it didn’t have the voting component.
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How easy would it be to add the “minicomps” category to that page? That’s one subcategory that I know has a lot in it.
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Another question… Looking at this list of date classifications for the Events infobox, I wondered if we might add “games released”? I’m not sure how relevant it is to recent events, but some older jam-type events would have everyone send their games to the organizer, and then the organizer would make them public on a certain day. So while there wouldn’t be any voting or results, there would be one more relevant date after “submissions due”. I could use “event ends” for that, but I think it’d be nice to have a specific category for it since all the others are so specific.
Registration begins
Registration ends
Submissions begin
Submissions due
Voting begins
Voting ends
Results announced
Event begins
Event ends
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Done!
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I asked for your post to get its own topic, and the way the moderators did it was to create an empty reply as a new topic as if from me here: Add “Games released” date to IFWiki’s event database. Let’s discuss this aspect of things over there.
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Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said ‘give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’.
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@Jonathan, could you add these categories to the page as well? Apparently most of these events are only in their specific comp category, and not in the overall Competitions category.
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Yeah, I’ve done the IFComp yesterday, even though they were not in the Event category.
Also aside from a few which I didn’t know how to categorise (especially the events ones), the listed Events and Competition are more or less done.
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I’ve added about 100 to the event database
But dang… everytime we do a bunch, more appear on the list 
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Just thought of something too (because of going through the events)
Should we separate Awards (only) Events from Competitions? Bc while there’s only the XYZZY and the IFDB now (afaik), there used to be a bunch of different ones (the Premio Avventura dell’Anno, Premios Hispanos, and so on).
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