The deadline to cancel without penalty is 9am day-of. In reality people will cancel at all different times, but for this exercise of designing out enough of the stampede conditions, let's say the first cancellation occurs at 8:55am day-of. So now it sends the "you won" email -- maybe the recipient even knew they were at the top of the waitlist so they can anticipate this. They've only got 5 minutes of cancellation window themselves! There is no way of giving another 12-24 hours RSVP time.
Now here's where it gets interesting: this means a rational no-bot human ought to ignore the whole system until 9am day-of, at which point the greedy "just in case" reservations have all been canceled, so all reservations are real people, and the ridiculousness of the system has led enough people to find alternative transportation that plenty of spots are available for easy taking, right? If no-show penalties are enforced properly.
I was out there in early March and this consumed me for a few weeks leading up to it, but it was fun.
Now here's where it gets interesting: this means a rational no-bot human ought to ignore the whole system until 9am day-of, at which point the greedy "just in case" reservations have all been canceled, so all reservations are real people, and the ridiculousness of the system has led enough people to find alternative transportation that plenty of spots are available for easy taking, right? If no-show penalties are enforced properly.
I was out there in early March and this consumed me for a few weeks leading up to it, but it was fun.