1A number, where your site only has an adjective
Today the page says “spaces are limited”, and the Monday class says it is “currently full” — in prose, written by hand, true until it isn’t. Here it is a live count that changes as people join and leave. The capacity itself is our guess, because you have never published one; staff need to confirm the real number before this goes anywhere near a real class.
2It sells a place in the class, not a seat on one date
Book once and the place is yours every week — no rebooking, no dated ticket. This is the shape Eventbrite cannot sell and the reason the programme fell back to email in the first place. Everything else in this drawer is detail; this is the thing.
3The waiting list has a position, and it moves itself
Today it is “please email events@duncanplace.org to be added to the waiting list”— a list in an inbox, in somebody’s head. Here a person joins and is told they are number three. When somebody gives up a place, the top of the list is emailed automatically, at any hour, with nobody remembering to check.
4A queue that is ambiguous is not a queue
We raced eight people at one free place. The first version handed out positions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7 — two people told they were fifth, nobody sixth. It was fixed before it ever ran (the ordering is now sequence-backed, not clock-backed). Worth knowing because that is the class of mistake an email list makes quietly, every week, and nobody ever finds out.
5Nobody pays to stand in a queue
A prepaid block asks for payment only when there is an actual place. Join a waiting list and you pay nothing, because you have nothing yet. Obvious when said out loud, and precisely the sort of thing a generic ticketing tool gets wrong.
6The eligibility question is yours, not ours
Chair Yoga asks people to confirm they can attend weekly; Laughter asks that they live locally in Leith or nearby. Both are conditions you already apply by hand when the email arrives. Here it is a tick on the form, so the answer is recorded with the booking rather than remembered from a conversation.
7Giving up a place needs no account
No login, no password, no “create an account to manage your booking”. The confirmation email carries one link that releases the place. That matters more than it sounds: the waiting list only works if leaving is as easy as joining, and the person dropping out at 9pm on a Sunday is the one who makes it move.
8We ask for as little as we can get away with
Email is “to confirm the place and nothing else”. Access needs are “seen only by the class leader, and deleted after the session”. Phone is optional. That is not decoration on the form — a community class roster is personal data, and the least you hold is the least you have to protect, explain and eventually delete.
9The inbox and the phone still work
events@duncanplace.org and the phone number stay on this page, deliberately. This is for the people who would rather not ring — not a replacement for the ones who would. Any class can go back to email-only by changing one field.
10Every person on this page is invented
The participants are fictional and their addresses use example.com, which is reserved precisely so it can never reach a real inbox. The card is a test number and nothing is charged. Real names go in only after the privacy notice, retention schedule and processor agreement — a first task, not an afterthought, because handling people’s data properly is half of what is being shown here.
