Turf insider May 2023

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Turf insider June 2023 »

Round winners – April 2023 (Round #154)

Congratulations to the winners of round April 2023: kurrep from Kalmar turfed home his first Gold, Drylaw13 from Scotland added a third Silver to his medal row and gerald_flus.rc from Berlin took his second Bronze. Well done mates!

Upcoming events

If you are organizing an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com a couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into Turf Insider :)

Bonanza 2023 in Umeå

We are fast closing in on the Turf event of the year: Bonanza 2023 in Umeå, the most northerly Bonanza ever! This year's Bonanza is organized by Turf Västerbotten on the 20th of May with events in two classes, a Bonanza banquet and lots of other fun activites. Sign up for the Bonanza 2023 can be found HERE. See you in Umeå in May! :)

Turf Event at Eurocon 2023 in Uppsala, Sweden 10th of June

Is it possible to tempt book-loving SF-nerds with Turf? We are sure going to try with a small open Turf Event in Uppsala in co-operation with the European SF-congress "Konflikt". The goal is to spread Turf and offer an undemanding sight-seeing of Uppsala by foot during 45 min. Join our small SF-themed event at 12.30 pm in central Uppsala! The winner will get a trophy made by BirgittaS. The meeting place is outside the Universitetshuset in Uppsala where EUROCON 2023 is being held. The organizers will be there from 12 pm to explain Turf and after the Event the prize ceremony will take place there as well.

Luleå2023 in Luleå, Sweden 10th of June

The event Luleå2023 will be a three-hour event consisting of three different types of turfing: Bike, walk/run, and swim. The zones made for biking will be on roads easily accessible by bike, the zones for running will be in forests on paths difficult to bike on, and the zones for swimming will be in the water. After the big event, there will be a smaller event called NorrlandClassic 1, which will be the first in (hopefully) a series of events in small and big towns in northern Sweden. Read more about it HERE.

Gbg Open in Göteborg, Sweden 1st of July

Turf Göteborg will host the 10th in a row Gbg Open in Göteborg this year. Information about the event will be found HERE closer to the event.

ABOA Turf in Turku, Finland 5th of August, 2023

Have you made travel plans for the first Open Event outside of Sweden yet, I have :)

The Turku turfers have been planning an event for many years, and it has finally come to fruition. How about visiting Finland this summer? Read more about it HERE.

Turf Awards 2022

The voting for Turf Awards 2022 is closed and the results will be announced during the Bonanza banquet and later on turfgame.com.

Turf Clubs/Associations

A new section in Turf Insider for Club News and Club introductions. We have many Turf Associations around the Turf world. This is a space where they can get their news heard. Write to insider@turfgame.com if you have any Club news you want to see here :)

Knoblauch from Turf Östergötland has written about the association she belongs to.

“Turf Östergötland started in 2019 and currently has 50 members. On the first Tuesday or Wednesday of the new round, we have a get-together in a pub, switching between Linköping and Norrköping. All turfers are invited to hang out, talk about Turf and have a good time.

We have also arranged various events, including Östgöta Open, an annual open event where everyone are welcome to participate. Next time will be on October 7th; stay tuned for more info on our website (in Swedish), https://www.turfostergotland.se.

There are other activities as well, including taking hard to reach zones together – for example, paddling to a zone in the river Stångån in an inflatable canoe, followed by a nice fika. All upcoming activities, other information and updates will also be posted on our website.”

Making Turf Work!

Nothing much in the world works smoothly without the efforts of a group of volunteers. And Turf is no exception to that. The group of unpaid volunteers that keep Turf running are known as the ‘Turf Crew’ (you sometimes see turfers in black tops with a gold ‘C’ on them in the app). Crew do everything from keeping the IT lights on to setting zones to managing issues, dealing with abuse and much else in between, all of it in their spare time. We thought it could be helpful to cover a few topics that Turf Crew get asked about regularly or are important to keep everyone on the same page and set aside a few myths!

• Zone Setting/Making – focus is given on countries where there is lots of activity, mainly Scandanavia and the UK, although World zones are set where there are likely to be lots of Turfers, for example in New York City. We don’t set zones for anyone’s specific holiday destination to keep their 5-zones-a-day streak, so please don’t ask!

• Zones in the UK – we hear a lot about differences between the number of zones and zone density and zone allocation in the UK vs Sweden. To be clear, both the UK and Sweden have zone quotas and get a limited number of zones in each period. There will always be differences between places in terms of number of zones or pph or zone density or numbers of turfers – this is all part of the enriching experience of Turf! Zones quotas are primarily based on number of inhabitants in a certain area, not on active turfers.

• Suggestions – we see a lot of frustration because new zone suggestions have been made and not acted on – we aren’t automatically notified of new suggestions! Rest assured that Turf Crew can see these when they make zones but there are lots and lots of suggestions (some better than others!) and there are limits on how many zones are made. Zone suggestions are anonymous and sometimes zones are created years after a suggestion was made. When suggesting a zone, make it a good size (25x25 m is the ideal zone size), not on car roads or private property and somewhere you think other turfers would like to go – it is more likely to be accepted that way. You might also want to add some thoughts on the Turf Forum (forum.turfgame.com/index) in the appropriate place.

• How to turf – we see complaints about things like e-bikes and car turfing. Neither is against the rules although we appreciate that different turfers have different views on these topics. We would normally try to set zones that can’t be easily taken by car (so called ”car-turfing”) but this isn’t possible for every zone. Armpitting is OK too but sometimes not that easy and again different people have different views on it! Turfing is part of everyday life for many of us and like everyday life, we need to be kind and courteous to others – for example respecting laws of the roads and private property. Turf Crew don’t generally enforce these laws, that is a matter for local authorities and we encourage everyone to turf in a safe and legal manner.

• Issues – if there's something wrong with a zone, especially the location, Turf has an issue system where any turfer can report what is wrong with it and suggest a solution (issues.turfgame.com). The issue page is slow, so please please please be patient when submitting an issue, or there will be 2 or more reports made.
  • Issues can also be about things that are wrong with the application in any number of categories. Some issues are easy to fix, others nearly impossible. Some issues are out of the hands of Crew and has more to do with your phone and its mechanics. All issues are reviewed by Turf Crew members as soon as they have time. After zone making, issues are the thing zone makers in Crew spend the most time on.

• Abuse – we’ve recently seen quite a few cases of ‘Abuse’. This is, for example, where rules are broken or people are perhaps offensive in the chat or where they have set a username that is generally offensive. Reports of abuse can be made to abuse@turfgame.com and they will be picked up by a Crew member and acted on. We’ve even seen recent cases where members of Turf Crew have themselves received abuse when trying to manage abuse reports – emotions do run high sometimes but this is really not acceptable and is somewhat disappointing!
  • There are various sanctions that Turf Crew can apply for abuse – from deleting parts of the chat (happens a lot when school children get access to the game for the first time), to having a word with the offending turfer to being temporaroly or permanently banned from the chat function of the Turf app. A common form of abuse is ‘gps-spoofing’ where people ‘turf by computer’ and take zones without actually being in the zone – where is the fun in that?! This will almost certainly be a ban and account deletion.
  • The number of abuse incidents remains very small in relation to the number of turfers, let’s please try to keep it this way and respect all other turfers even if their objectives conflict with yours sometimes! Just a few of the things that keep Turf Crew occupied every round. Happy turfing!

Greeting from Minnesota

And finally a greeting from some Minnesotan turfers. They took part of local celebration that the ”30 days of biking” challange was done for 2023. Say hello to kelih, WBLSynapser and MNswedie from Minnesota!

A few words from kelih about the picture:

”Many Minnesota, U.S.A Turf Game players also participate in an international challenge called 30 Days of Biking (https://30daysofbiking.com/). 30 Days of Biking is a pledge to ride your bike every day in April and share your adventures online with the hashtag #30daysofbiking. The 30 Days of Biking challenge began in Minnesota, so many bike riders here participate.

Three Turfers attended a Minneapolis group ride on May 1 to celebrate the end of the challenge, and we split off the main group to take a few crowdy zones along the Mississippi River before catching up with the group again.

Turf Game and 30 Days of Biking go well together! If you have never tried the 30 Days of Biking challenge before, why not join us in April 2024?”

The zone with the three happy turfers is the 35W Bridge Memorial. The 13 pillars represent the 13 people who died when the bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River on August 1, 2007, and the names of the survivors are etched into the wall.

Turf Picture of the Month

This month's Turf Picture is of the zone PohjoisLautta taken by RogerThat999. Thanks to everyone who sent in your Turf pictures, keep 'em coming :)

For next Turf Insider we would like to see pictures relating to the Bonanza-feeling of "togetherness". The pictures does not have to be from the Bonanza, so this is as usual open to all turfers :) If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com Please include your Turf nick for recognition!

Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing!

//Munin with a lot of help from kjtindall