Meh. Most likely, significantly less people would look at that section (“because hey, meetups in my area are rare”), so more people would miss meetup notices.
In effect, the current system forces people to see meetup announcements whether they want to or not, which is rude but good for meetup participation.
I would be more in favour of a place in the options where you could put select for which areas you want to show/hide meetups, with a default showing all of them (savvy users who know where to find the option would be less likely to be unaware of meetups they could attend).
Or, since we’re working off the reddit codebase (though a fork from quite a few years ago), this could be implemented by having a subreddit per geographical region, and an option for only subscribing to some subreddits (which would default to “all”).
(I’m not very fond of fragmenting the site though, and all these solutions seem pretty dev-intensive)
The problem of attention could easily be solved. No need to have a seperate ‘Meetup’ section. Use the discussion section, but just have a single thread and put all the meetup areas together in the title. So that instead of the current way, which is:
Meetup : Frankfurt
Meetup : Moscow, Now 2 Sigma More Awesome
Meetup : November Meetup (Second of Two)
Meetup : Durham NC/Triangle Area Meetup: Productive Other-Optimization
Meetup : Meetup Bolder CO
We’d just have:
Meetups: Frankfurt, Moscow, Atlanta, Durham NC, Boulder CO
Then the details of each individual meetup could be written down in the comments. This way would probably get even more attention, because of the reduced clutter.
It does need new code. For aggregate threads to work, meetup organizers have to coordinate with whoever is posting them. I don’t think that will happen without automation.
If my suggestion were to be adopted, I hereby volunteer to coordinate the meetup threads; it’s worth it if only to get the annoying and distracting meetup posts out of Discussion.
the current system forces people to see meetup announcements whether they want to or not, which is rude but good for meetup participation.
Except that my eyes automatically glide over anything that says Meetup: X, which is not an uncommon method of dealing with frequent distractions (also see: internet ads. Some people need to block them, others like me literally don’t notice them most of the time)
Well, currently, the sidebar displays “recent posts” and “recent discussion.” If it also displayed “recent meetups” separately, people would continue to get notice of meetups without them cluttering the discussion section.
Concerns about programming effort and fragmenting the site still apply.
Meh. Most likely, significantly less people would look at that section (“because hey, meetups in my area are rare”), so more people would miss meetup notices.
In effect, the current system forces people to see meetup announcements whether they want to or not, which is rude but good for meetup participation.
I would be more in favour of a place in the options where you could put select for which areas you want to show/hide meetups, with a default showing all of them (savvy users who know where to find the option would be less likely to be unaware of meetups they could attend).
Or, since we’re working off the reddit codebase (though a fork from quite a few years ago), this could be implemented by having a subreddit per geographical region, and an option for only subscribing to some subreddits (which would default to “all”).
(I’m not very fond of fragmenting the site though, and all these solutions seem pretty dev-intensive)
The problem of attention could easily be solved. No need to have a seperate ‘Meetup’ section. Use the discussion section, but just have a single thread and put all the meetup areas together in the title. So that instead of the current way, which is:
We’d just have:
Then the details of each individual meetup could be written down in the comments. This way would probably get even more attention, because of the reduced clutter.
Isn’t that kind of what the OP is proposing?
Yes, with the inclusion of all the locations in the title itself so as to prevent potential attendees from missing out.
This also has the advantage of needing no new code.
It does need new code. For aggregate threads to work, meetup organizers have to coordinate with whoever is posting them. I don’t think that will happen without automation.
If my suggestion were to be adopted, I hereby volunteer to coordinate the meetup threads; it’s worth it if only to get the annoying and distracting meetup posts out of Discussion.
It doesn’t need to change the site code, and that’s dicier than just someone cooking up a bot.
As far as forcing people to see meetup notices I think the “NEAREST MEETUPS” sidebar does that job quite well.
I tend to not notice it. Perhaps it needs a larger font.
Except that my eyes automatically glide over anything that says Meetup: X, which is not an uncommon method of dealing with frequent distractions (also see: internet ads. Some people need to block them, others like me literally don’t notice them most of the time)
Well, currently, the sidebar displays “recent posts” and “recent discussion.” If it also displayed “recent meetups” separately, people would continue to get notice of meetups without them cluttering the discussion section.
Concerns about programming effort and fragmenting the site still apply.
It already displays “nearest meetups”? (Maybe you need to have your location set in order to see that section.)