“Maybe” attendance and removing a sign-up
Some users have asked for a third attendance option. In addition to “IN” and “OUT”, it would be nice to tell that you might be coming — in other words, “maybe”.
We did have a “maybe” option in the very first versions of the web sign-up, but after long consideration we removed it because we agreed the feature wasn’t useful enough. That isn’t entirely obvious, since many teams have one or two players who can’t commit to practice until the last moment. There are many reasons for this, from work schedules and calendar chaos to people who only show up “maybe”.
Our reasoning went roughly like this: a “maybe” sign-up means (1) the player is aware of the event and (2) is considering participating. On Playerlineup.com you can see a player’s last visit by moving the mouse over their name on the team page, so you can infer whether they are aware of the event. Also, since the player is part of the team, by default they are “maybe” attending team events. If the roster has 15 athletes, those marked IN are certainly coming, those marked OUT are certainly not coming, and the rest are “maybe” — regardless of whether the system has a “maybe” option or not. If I were a math teacher, I’d now draw a square on the board and say with a smile: “Quod erat demonstrandum.”
We have considered allowing players to cancel their sign-up for a short time, but that would be confusing in the user interface. Therefore, only managers can remove sign-ups (on the event’s own page).
Tip: Many teams use “Sign up all players” on the event page to mark everyone IN at once. Then each player must change themselves to OUT if they can’t make it to practice. This reduces uncertainty and increases commitment.