There has to be a better way to allocate tickets

[mcshed]

12 minutes ago, Sasperella said:

she thought a ballet would be better

My Plié isn't up to that.

[pahqman]

Mine tutu

[uscore]

I still maintain that, from the festival's perspective, being shit with computers might not be the preferred way to weedle out potential attendees.

I get that the system works well for a lot of us, so we're quite defensive about any changes.  But I can see why the festival would be constantly monitoring and considering new ways to distribute the tickets.

[Crazyfool01]

1 hour ago, mcshed said:

My Plié isn't up to that.

my piles aren't up to it !!  

[DeanoL]

On 10/14/2019 at 9:49 AM, Havors said:

It may have been mentioned before but..... the registrations should be authenticated... i.e. you submit a pic of photo ID or some other verification system. Then in most cases everyone has only one registration.... 

Then from there use the same system they have for the ballot they just done where you reg number can only be inputted once... prior to the sale going live (like a pre-sale set up) then at 9am boom you start smashing refresh to get on the payment page.. still have that luck element but you dont have a million extra devices and connections spamming the servers. 

So basically whomever in your group has the best connection they enter the 6 people details prior to 9am... then when it goes live you start refreshing. 

Having a group of 4 where all 4 people are trying for tickets having 4x the chance of a group of 4 when only one bothers to get up is an intentional part of the system.

There's probably a way to make it a bit less frustrating, and feel a bit more fair, but it'd require loads of work for actually very little benefit. As someone who has suffered a lot with stress and anxiety in the real world, I find the idea of anyone getting "stressed" over having to refresh a page for half an hour a bit quaint. 

Still, what you could do is build the architecture for a ballot, where people enter in groups. But then at 9am the "ballot" page goes live, you log in before that and get told the first ballot is at 9.02 for say 3000 tickets, click to enter your registration. Everyone that clicks gets entered (for groups, either they're only entered if everyone clicks - fairer - or one entry for each person who clicks - replicating the current system)  and everyone is told if they succeeded or not. If you didn't, next ballot is at 9.04 for another 3000 tickets. Repeat for an hour. 

 

[Hugh Jass]

2 hours ago, Sasperella said:

I was chatting to a friend last night who asked me how I got tickets, saying she'd tried for so many years and never got anywhere.... And then I asked her how many times she was refreshing and she said "whenever the page crashes". So she was only ever refreshing the connections that were fucked and leaving the good ones to manual refresh....

A bit later in the chat she was said she thought a ballet would be better as currently it wasn't fair for people who hadn't been before. I pointed out that simple things like "refresh!" aren't exactly secret and all anyone has to do it Google it!

What’s fair about this?

 

[Zoo Music Girl]

Can I ask what the accepted wisdom is for what to do if each page refresh takes an age? What I mean is every time you manually refresh, it takes about a minute for it to actually process. There's no point in keep manually refreshing at this point as it's still attempting the first refresh. This was the position I was in for the Sunday sale, tried shutting browser and starting again. Occasionally I'd get the holding page, then refresh, then maybe it would go to another holding page after a long wait, maybe it would crash. There's not a lot you can do in that instance so I find it really frustrating that the answer is just "keep refreshing" when this happens as you actually can't. Thursday sale was fine in that I had a page to refresh, but the above scenario has definitely happened to me on previous years as well. 

[Havors]

17 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Having a group of 4 where all 4 people are trying for tickets having 4x the chance of a group of 4 when only one bothers to get up is an intentional part of the system.

There's probably a way to make it a bit less frustrating, and feel a bit more fair, but it'd require loads of work for actually very little benefit. As someone who has suffered a lot with stress and anxiety in the real world, I find the idea of anyone getting "stressed" over having to refresh a page for half an hour a bit quaint. 

Still, what you could do is build the architecture for a ballot, where people enter in groups. But then at 9am the "ballot" page goes live, you log in before that and get told the first ballot is at 9.02 for say 3000 tickets, click to enter your registration. Everyone that clicks gets entered (for groups, either they're only entered if everyone clicks - fairer - or one entry for each person who clicks - replicating the current system)  and everyone is told if they succeeded or not. If you didn't, next ballot is at 9.04 for another 3000 tickets. Repeat for an hour. 

 

Your logic/probability is flawed there i think?? ...  the more people that try means more people are trying and thus is no different to 1 person trying with a lot less people to fight against...

What having only one person try for the group means is the server is not flooded and payment pages won't crash and unnecessary bullshit wont happen. So everyone has a fair chance. 

A ballot as you suggest would run into problems with the number of people in a groups not dividing by the amount of tickets..... for example 599 groups of 5 and 1 group of 6 does not fit 3000 tickets... ballots can only be done on an individual basis without all kinds of nonsense rigmarole. 

My suggestion keeps things similar to how they are now which is about as fair as it can be in all honesty but alleviates the bullshit of supposedly 2.4 million people spamming a server... 

[Quark]

22 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

Can I ask what the accepted wisdom is for what to do if each page refresh takes an age? What I mean is every time you manually refresh, it takes about a minute for it to actually process. There's no point in keep manually refreshing at this point as it's still attempting the first refresh. This was the position I was in for the Sunday sale, tried shutting browser and starting again. Occasionally I'd get the holding page, then refresh, then maybe it would go to another holding page after a long wait, maybe it would crash. There's not a lot you can do in that instance so I find it really frustrating that the answer is just "keep refreshing" when this happens as you actually can't. Thursday sale was fine in that I had a page to refresh, but the above scenario has definitely happened to me on previous years as well. 

I refresh approx every 3 secs as I cycle through 3 devices.  If I come back to one and it's still spinning out I manually stop the load, then refresh again. I'd say 75% of the time that got it back on track.

For one laptop (on my WiFi) that kept failing to get anywhere, I changed its connection from WiFi to phone tethering and that then started picking up.

FWIW, and this is purely anecdotal from my own experiences, I always seem to have better luck when resisting the urge to absolutely hammer F5 and insteda take a slightly more measured approach.

[UEF]

27 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

Can I ask what the accepted wisdom is for what to do if each page refresh takes an age? What I mean is every time you manually refresh, it takes about a minute for it to actually process. There's no point in keep manually refreshing at this point as it's still attempting the first refresh. This was the position I was in for the Sunday sale, tried shutting browser and starting again. Occasionally I'd get the holding page, then refresh, then maybe it would go to another holding page after a long wait, maybe it would crash. There's not a lot you can do in that instance so I find it really frustrating that the answer is just "keep refreshing" when this happens as you actually can't. Thursday sale was fine in that I had a page to refresh, but the above scenario has definitely happened to me on previous years as well. 

 

Ir once you're in the process of paying - you press submit and nothing happens. Do you wait it out, or cancel and resubmit? I did that, and it got through (after a lot of cancels and subsequent submits) 

[Garrett_Salas]

44 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

Can I ask what the accepted wisdom is for what to do if each page refresh takes an age? What I mean is every time you manually refresh, it takes about a minute for it to actually process. There's no point in keep manually refreshing at this point as it's still attempting the first refresh. This was the position I was in for the Sunday sale, tried shutting browser and starting again. Occasionally I'd get the holding page, then refresh, then maybe it would go to another holding page after a long wait, maybe it would crash. There's not a lot you can do in that instance so I find it really frustrating that the answer is just "keep refreshing" when this happens as you actually can't. Thursday sale was fine in that I had a page to refresh, but the above scenario has definitely happened to me on previous years as well. 

A similar thing happened to me, but I didn't even get a holding page. Every time I would refresh it would take a minute or two and then die, so constantly refreshing wasn't even an option. I keep on reading that this is a cookie issue - that I kept on getting sent to a dead server, but I was regularly opening on a new browser / using incognito mode and it was exactly the same. I'm pretty sure for one reason or another I was doomed, but still not exactly sure if there was something I could have done to give me a shot (luckily someone else did manage to get me a ticket).

EDIT: Being very much computer illiterate, I tried a quick google and came up with this

Something I've observed is that Chrome incognito does have at least some access to your cookies and browser history if you are signed into Chrome. Noticed this once when debugging a webapp. I suggest either using "Guest" account for Chrome or logging out of your Chrome account (assuming you ever logged in) before going incognito.

(https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33620706/what-does-chromes-incognito-mode-do-exactly)

So could be a potential explanation for the incognito mode not solving anything, not so much trying out different browsers though. 

Edited October 16, 2019 by Garrett_Salas

[DeanoL]

1 hour ago, Havors said:

Your logic/probability is flawed there i think?? ...  the more people that try means more people are trying and thus is no different to 1 person trying with a lot less people to fight against...

The difference would be it would limit it to one device per person. Which should be sufficient to deal with the load issue. One device per group would be overkill.

As I said at the top, my working assumption is that having a better chance of getting tickets if everyone in your group tries is an intentional or at least desirable part of the system, so I'm looking at ways to maintain that while eliminating the actual drawbacks raised here:

• frustration caused by servers overloading and not serving the holding page
• frustration caused by crashes at payment stage or later
• perception of unfairness or bias towards those with "faster connections" 

Note - none of these actually make the system unfair. Either I get a ticket or don't, my chances don't change. But obviously it feels worse if I get through to the booking page then crash out as I was "close". Of course, "close" means absolutely nothing as having a ticket or not is a simple binary state.

The change you want to make is, frankly, another change to how tickets are distributed (making it easier for large groups to get tickets and to get tickets for other people) dressed up as a fix for server overload issues.

[Zoo Music Girl]

Thanks guys! I'm actually none the wiser. My partner was on a wired connection in the same house and he had a holding page he could consistently refresh but my three devices on the Wi-Fi were all bollocks. Ah well. 

[gooner1990]

My only big gripe is getting through to either reg/payment page only for it to crash.

i agree that it would be good that if See tickets could sort it out so that once you’re through to the reg page then nothing will go wrong (Crash) from there on in.

if you don’t get through at all then fair enough, but it’s like someone dangling a ticket in your face then taking it away when you get halfway through only for the system to fail. 

[Havors]

21 hours ago, DeanoL said:

The difference would be it would limit it to one device per person. Which should be sufficient to deal with the load issue. One device per group would be overkill.

As I said at the top, my working assumption is that having a better chance of getting tickets if everyone in your group tries is an intentional or at least desirable part of the system, so I'm looking at ways to maintain that while eliminating the actual drawbacks raised here:

• frustration caused by servers overloading and not serving the holding page
• frustration caused by crashes at payment stage or later
• perception of unfairness or bias towards those with "faster connections" 

Note - none of these actually make the system unfair. Either I get a ticket or don't, my chances don't change. But obviously it feels worse if I get through to the booking page then crash out as I was "close". Of course, "close" means absolutely nothing as having a ticket or not is a simple binary state.

The change you want to make is, frankly, another change to how tickets are distributed (making it easier for large groups to get tickets and to get tickets for other people) dressed up as a fix for server overload issues.

Your working assumption is wrong. If you think having 4 people try for 4 tickets while 400,000 people try to connect to a server in total is a better chance of getting through than 1 person trying for 4 tickets while 100,000 people trying, then there is no point continuing this discussion. 

With registration validated/authenticated my system is exactly the same as it is now except you don't have servers being overloaded. It's not hard to grasp. 

It is not dressed up as anything, it does not make it easier for large groups as you cant have large groups trying... 

There is no change to ticket distribution at all. See tickets already have the means in place... if you entered the ballot then you will have seen that a registration could only be entered once. 

You are either purposefully straw manning me, or you just don't comprehend what I am saying. 

Anyway all this is futile.... See Tickets and the festival are not going to change anything. They are selling out and thats all they need. 

 

[DeanoL]

4 hours ago, Havors said:

Your working assumption is wrong. If you think having 4 people try for 4 tickets while 400,000 people try to connect to a server in total is a better chance of getting through than 1 person trying for 4 tickets while 100,000 people trying, then there is no point continuing this discussion. 

You're missing my point. 4 people are not always trying for four tickets.

Under the current system: if you have a group of 4 people and one of them is trying for tickets, you have a quarter of the chance of a group of 4 people where they are all trying for a ticket. This is a hugely common situation. A lot of groups/people are not that organised and leave the ticket buying to a single person or two people. Hell, I've been in groups before where it turns out that one person slept in or forgot. It happens. The current system is designed to reward that: does everyone in your group want to go so much that they ensure they're able to try for tickets? Congrats, you up your chances.

Under your system, only one person has to try for each group. Only one person can try for each group. So those groups where half of them don't bother? They've got the same odds as a group where everyone would try if they could. 

You're basing your assumptions on the idea that the current system always sees everyone in the group trying for a ticket. That's really not the case. Tickets are a finite resource. For every other person that gets a ticket, your chance of getting a ticket goes down. So yes, if you increase the chances for groups where only one person in four is trying for a ticket, you decrease the chances for groups where all four people are trying. I can do a worked example if you want?

That part of my assumption is completely correct and it's just maths - you can't argue with that. What I *am* assuming is that the current system working this way is intended. That the festival want to reward groups where everyone is trying over groups where they're not. I don't know for certain that's the case, but suspect it is.

(If you're still struggling to understand, try to picture how your system would work if it was by registration, so everyone in the group could try, but with only one device per registration number. How would that change it?)

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

On 10/16/2019 at 11:28 AM, uscore said:

I still maintain that, from the festival's perspective, being shit with computers might not be the preferred way to weedle out potential attendees.

I get that the system works well for a lot of us, so we're quite defensive about any changes.  But I can see why the festival would be constantly monitoring and considering new ways to distribute the tickets.

The first home computer went on sale in 1975. The internet became available to the masses in 1991. 

[uscore]

35 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

The first home computer went on sale in 1975. The internet became available to the masses in 1991. 

 

we've had cars for over 100 years and my missus still can't reverse park.  What's your point?

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

57 minutes ago, uscore said:

 

we've had cars for over 100 years and my missus still can't reverse park.  What's your point?

But she can drive though? She passed her test? She may not be Lewis Hamilton, but she can actually operate a car? You don’t need to be a computer programmer to buy Glastonbury tickets, you need to know how to turn a computer on and find a web address. Computers are household items, like TVs and microwaves, realistically how many people that want Glastonbury tickets (that aren’t actually disabled and have other means to apply for tickets anyway) are that computer illiterate it’s beyond them?

[D-Low]

23 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

But she can drive though? She passed her test? She may not be Lewis Hamilton, but she can actually operate a car? You don’t need to be a computer programmer to buy Glastonbury tickets, you need to know how to turn a computer on and find a web address. Computers are household items, like TVs and microwaves, realistically how many people that want Glastonbury tickets (that aren’t actually disabled and have other means to apply for tickets anyway) are that computer illiterate it’s beyond them?

My point exactly. All I done this year was press f5 on one browser. I had one open in Chrome on auto fresh and one on firefox that I pressed f5. Got through on firefox. You stick your head in to the tips and tricks thread and your mind will be blown the theories and so called tips everyone is coming out with. At the end of the day it means nothing.

[Crazyfool01]

21 minutes ago, D-Low said:

My point exactly. All I done this year was press f5 on one browser. I had one open in Chrome on auto fresh and one on firefox that I pressed f5. Got through on firefox. You stick your head in to the tips and tricks thread and your mind will be blown the theories and so called tips everyone is coming out with. At the end of the day it means nothing.

but probably creates a bit of internet traffic too  

[MrZigster]

 A work colleague of mine has told me that a recent Daily Telegraph article stated that the odds of getting a ticket were 17 to 1. No idea how they got to that figure. Said colleague has promised to try and dig it out for me.

Personally, since 2010 I have failed every other year (that is: Got one, didn't, got one, didn't...). Same computer, same landline. It's all luck.

[Rubber Soldier]

How is this thread still going? The system is fine and as fair as it possibly can be. 

[incident]

1 hour ago, MrZigster said:

 A work colleague of mine has told me that a recent Daily Telegraph article stated that the odds of getting a ticket were 17 to 1. No idea how they got to that figure. Said colleague has promised to try and dig it out for me.

They almost certainly got the number by taking the number of registrations quoted by the festival (2.4 million), and dividing it by the number of tickets available (up to 142k depending on whether the festival chose to use the allowed increase).

So not a safe number at all.

[Ragingbunion93]

What if there was a preliminary page before the sale that allowed you to enter your registration details before being redirected into the ticket queue? Surely that would weed out those who are serious from the mindless drones taking up valuable bandwidth? My only concern is that it may benefit larger groups, who would be able to book more tickets in a shorter amount of time.