Decide when to make a calendar (and when to follow one instead)

Status: placeholder. This guide will be written after launch.

Before spinning up a calendar, the first question worth asking is whether you should. The neighborhood association already runs one. The music venue does too. The regional climate-action group has been at it for years. Sometimes the right move is to follow theirs and repost what fits — not to create a parallel calendar of your own.

The same question comes up internally. Most calendar owners only need one calendar of their own; categories handle the subdivision between, say, workdays and concerts and quarterly meetings. A second calendar earns its keep when it's run by a different team, serves a different audience, or represents a different community altogether.

This guide will cover both halves of that decision.

Planned scope

• When to follow an existing calendar instead of creating one
• The "don't run a calendar for an org you aren't part of" guideline, and why
• When you genuinely do need multiple calendars of your own
• Why categories usually do the work of "multiple calendars" for a single community
• How to wind down or merge a calendar if you decide later you didn't need it