TenFi = MeetMe

July 22, 2009 6:41 AM

Ten.Metafilter.Com = Meetup.Metafilter.Com

After all the wonderful work that Matt and pb did creating the anniversary subsite, it seems a shame to let it all lapse. It seems like it would be trivially easy* to clone it in a more permanent fashion, with the same city-subsite function where we could plan parties and barhops using the google maps integration while chatting, sharing photos, and maybe subscribing to specific twitter hashtags.

*Sufficiently advanced html is indistinguishable from magic to primitive natives like me. Are we at Web ∞.0 yet?

posted by anotherpanacea to Feature Requests at 6:41 AM (57 comments total)

As someone who didn't get to participate in 10th festivities due to scheduling conflicts, but loves the shenanigans of regular meetups and their threads, I will put $10 on this pony to win.
posted by SpiffyRob at 7:04 AM on July 22, 2009

I don't know where we are in terms of planning this out, but, yeah, that's something we've been actively hoping to do.

The ten architecture came out great thanks to a lot of work by Matt and pb and some good live-testing feedback from folks using it for the run-up to last weekend, and it really does seem to solve handily some of the existing problems with normal meetup functionality, so using it for meetups in general (with some tweaking, sure) would be great.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:11 AM on July 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

MeetMe? I like the idea.

Combine this with a few more "social" features (turn-ons, pancake topping preference, cliantrosexuality, pro/anti-declawing, etc..), and we could have MeatMe too.
posted by bonehead at 7:13 AM on July 22, 2009 [4 favorites]

cliantrosexuality

More like cliantro-serversexuality, amirite?
posted by lukemeister at 7:26 AM on July 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

I do wonder if just having a sidebar of upcoming meetups in MetaTalk is enough to attract people.
posted by smackfu at 7:27 AM on July 22, 2009

Ten.Metafilter.Com = Meetup.Metafilter.Com

That's not an anagram at all.
posted by sambosambo at 7:30 AM on July 22, 2009 [7 favorites]

Meetafilter
posted by sleevener at 7:30 AM on July 22, 2009 [9 favorites]

gah, I was just going to post this very idea. The ten interface is so shiny and happy, and it has MAPS. Mmmm, maps.

smackfu: perhaps keep the "ten" link in the top bar but switch the text to "meetups"? Then it's noticeable across the site.
posted by desjardins at 7:32 AM on July 22, 2009

I would like this very much. I often go a couple of weeks without wandering into MeTa, and notice I've missed yet another London meet. This would be splendid, especially if there were RSS feeds for each city, or maybe country.
posted by Happy Dave at 7:33 AM on July 22, 2009

Also, if we can plug in our zipcodes and see jobs near us, why can't we do the same with meetups? Can this be a persistent cookie so that an upcoming nearby meetup shows up somewhere on our front page? (say, where the "mefi anniversary" text was)
posted by desjardins at 7:34 AM on July 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

And to build ponies on ponies, if you do things based on ZIP code, please let us specify the radius. Some people don't live that close to any meetups.
posted by smackfu at 7:45 AM on July 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

Also, if we can plug in our zipcodes and see jobs near us, why can't we do the same with meetups?

Historically, the "location" of a meetup has just been a free-form text field with no geocoding tied to it. You can't currently search for a nearby meetup in part because the current meetup system doesn't know where anything is.

Implementation details for the possibility of this changing with the new architecture aren't really my deal, but it certainly moves into the realm of possibility at least which is nice.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:52 AM on July 22, 2009

pb will probably have it live before I finish typing thi
posted by pjern at 8:30 AM on July 22, 2009 [4 favorites]

Yep, this came up several times over the last few months and we always decided to table the discussion until after the Tenth Anniversary parties. I'm guessing we'll do something with the Ten code + meetups, but I'm not sure what that would look like. It wouldn't even necessarily have to be its own subsite. I'm hesitant to move all meetup-related planning, discussion, and debriefing away from MetaTalk to its own subsite because sometimes those are the only positive threads around here. But having more maps, attending lists, and social features would help and a subsite would give us plenty of room for those features.

So I think hashing ideas in this thread is a great start, and we'll need to let them percolate for a while before we make decisions.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:32 AM on July 22, 2009

if you do things based on ZIP code, please let us specify the radius.

Perhaps it should be limited to # of meetups (say, nearest 3) without specifying radius, so they'll still show up even if they're 200 miles away, and you can decide whether you want to make a weekend out of it.
posted by desjardins at 8:38 AM on July 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

That's not an anagram at all.

No, but:

ten.metafilter.com = Time For Cattlemen..
meetup.metafilter.com = A[n] Imperfect Mule Totem..
posted by SpiffyRob at 8:39 AM on July 22, 2009 [4 favorites]

I am offended at the suggestion that any of my mule totems are less than perfect.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:58 AM on July 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

Say, has anyone seen that donkey-themed carved pole that I left lying around here? You can't miss it. It was a little broken on one end where I dropped it. I need to find it before the cowboys get here at five.
posted by Jofus at 8:59 AM on July 22, 2009

This is a good idea. And, I like cilantro. But I don't get sexy with it.
posted by adamrice at 9:06 AM on July 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

pb: I'm hesitant to move all meetup-related planning, discussion, and debriefing away from MetaTalk to its own subsite because sometimes those are the only positive threads around here. But having more maps, attending lists, and social features would help and a subsite would give us plenty of room for those features.

I'd like to see meetups stay in MetaTalk, and I strongly believe that too many social features can actually make communities less open and healthy, counterintuitive though that sounds. I'd never endorse making big changes to accommodate social features.

However, I do think it would be neat if people could view meetups in their area, as suggested above. Maybe a cross between the customized FP sidebar and My Ask, so that people could set geographic and tag preferences?
posted by zennie at 9:09 AM on July 22, 2009

I'm hesitant to move all meetup-related planning, discussion, and debriefing away from MetaTalk to its own subsite because sometimes those are the only positive threads around here.

You could have new meetup threads appear in both places (like podcast threads) -- presumably you didn't do that for the 10 subsite because there were so many of them, but that probably wouldn't be an issue any more.
posted by advil at 9:33 AM on July 22, 2009

Too many subsites divide our attention too much. I vote getting rid of MetaTalk, Music, Projects, and AskMe.

If the only having the frontpage was good enough for 1999, it's good enough for 2009!
posted by blue_beetle at 9:34 AM on July 22, 2009

I'd like to see meetups stay in MetaTalk, and I strongly believe that too many social features can actually make communities less open and healthy, counterintuitive though that sounds. I'd never endorse making big changes to accommodate social features.

Yeah, except this is technical enabling of an existing tendency (and longstanding) among Mefi members to meet in real life, using an arcitecture already built, rather than, I dunno, trying to clone Facebook inside Mefi. I'd like to meet more merited and hang out more, and this would make that easier, which makes it a zillion times more desirable than yer average 'social web' feature du jour.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:47 AM on July 22, 2009

How about a tab on the MetaTalk page? So all meetup threads look normal, except you add extra geographical information. This would show up in a "Meetup Maps" tab on the MeTa frontpage, containing basically the meetup sidebar information and the Google map.
posted by spiderskull at 10:18 AM on July 22, 2009

Goddamn - "meet more members", not "meet more merited". Goddamn autocomplete.
posted by Happy Dave at 10:25 AM on July 22, 2009

I'm with zennie. It's hard enough getting people to check MetaTalk for upcoming meetups: I can't imagine breaking them out to somewhere else entirely would improve things.
posted by eamondaly at 10:36 AM on July 22, 2009

I stroke this pony's mane and tell her in soothing tones that she's a good girl.
posted by desuetude at 10:47 AM on July 22, 2009

I dunno, I think a lot of people who might be interested in attending a meetup in, say, Buttfuck Nowhere, USA, don't regularly look at the shouty flameout pony request free-for-all that in MetaTalk on the off-chance that a close-by meetup is happening soon. I think there are a lot of Ask users who may not feel in-crowdy enough to frequent MetaTalk but would be interested in grabbing a beer with folks. Because of this I'd be in favor of the idea floated above of the site finding, say, a pending meetup X miles (or km) from your location and putting a note in your sidebar or on the top of the page like the 10 thing was or whathaveyou to alert the more casual user.

On another note, I would be in favor of meetup threads not showing up on MetaTalk, if for no other reason than I don't know that the mods need to keep receiving METATALK THREAD ALERT emails only to find out that folks in Albequerque want to hang out.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:57 AM on July 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

You could probably maintain the exact structure of ten.metafilter.com, but include optional crossposting of Ten (retitled to meetup, of course) threads in Metatalk. Etiquette guiding when crossposting is appropriate, and when it should be avoided.

When I say crossposting.. Just list the thread in both places. On the server side, the Ten infrastructure would be used, but the exact thread would slot into Metatalk just like any other Metatalk thread.

Also, we'll need to get rid of that horrible white background. I'm thinking purple.
posted by Chuckles at 11:29 AM on July 22, 2009

Ten.Metafilter.Com = Frantic Meet Motel
Ten.Metafilter.Com = Matt Emcee, Flirt On!
Ten.Metafilter.Com = Trite Fecal Moment.
Ten.Metafilter.Com = Romantic Left Meet
Ten.Metafilter.Com = A Tilt Free Comment
Ten.Metafilter.Com = Meet Fan Litter.com
Ten.Metafilter.Com = Matt Left More Nice
posted by blenderfish at 11:32 AM on July 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

I do think having upcoming meetups near you show up on your frontpage sidebar is a smashing idea.
posted by adamdschneider at 11:39 AM on July 22, 2009

Happy Dave: Yeah, except this is technical enabling of an existing tendency (and longstanding) among Mefi members to meet in real life, using an arcitecture already built, rather than, I dunno, trying to clone Facebook inside Mefi. I'd like to meet more members and hang out more, and this would make that easier, which makes it a zillion times more desirable than yer average 'social web' feature du jour.

I'm not saying anyone's trying to turn MeFi into Facebook; I just wanted to hold up my Proceed With Caution sign regarding overhauls in the name of community togetherness. There's real value to having relationships evolve organically. It's healthy in the long run. (Based on his actions, mathowie seems to understand that, but I'm not sure most people do.)

A majority of successful online communities have people who meet in real life. I've never been part of one that didn't. MeFi just happens to be large enough that there are enough members near each other for regular meetups. Just could use a little tweaking so meetups are visible to interested people.
posted by zennie at 11:40 AM on July 22, 2009

I think I prefer "Trite Fecal Moment". Really shows the feel of this place.
posted by vernondalhart at 11:42 AM on July 22, 2009

Or just keep the upcoming/recent meetups sidebar in MeTa the way it is. *poof* Crossposting.

Slight improvement: add "in progress" as a category for those not already set in stone so that people are aware of the planning stages.
posted by desuetude at 11:44 AM on July 22, 2009

Ten.Metafilter.Com = Matt Emcee, Flirt On!

Well that's just awesome.
posted by SpiffyRob at 11:49 AM on July 22, 2009

desjardins: "Also, if we can plug in our zipcodes and see jobs near us, why can't we do the same with meetups? "

Please don't do this with meetups. For a very, very practical reason: not all of us have ZIP codes. Or postcodes. Or any other kind of mail addressing/geocoding codes.

Seriously: Ireland. No postcodes outside of Dublin.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:50 PM on July 22, 2009

Well it doesn't acutally use ZIP codes now, it uses lat/long, so don't worry.
posted by smackfu at 1:01 PM on July 22, 2009

Yes please! I'd love to see our 10th meetup to turn into an ongoing thing.
posted by octothorpe at 1:08 PM on July 22, 2009

I really liked the map; it'd be cool to keep that around. And some sort of notification or other way to learn about upcoming meetups in an area would be cool, too.

I don't really have an opinion on whether it should be a separate sub-site (e.g. "meetup.metafilter.com") or just stay on Talk; my gut is that keeping it on Talk makes people more likely to see them, and there are already quite a few sub-sites. If there's a way to massage the map and notification/geocoding feature into Talk, that'd be optimal, I think.

Perhaps, when a user goes to post to Talk and chooses "Gathering" as a category, you could have fields appear that would allow for a geocoded location, and would then include that post in a sidebar or notify people in the area of it.

Not a trivial pony (draft horse?) but it would be a really nice addition.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:34 PM on July 22, 2009

I think Meetups would work better as an element of MetaTalk. I just imagined a map of your selected vicinity at the top of Meetups sidebar, with Google Maps icons on the recent and future meetups, and I smiled. That way, the functionality of the all-inclusive side-bar is there should you be traveling and you haven't updated your location coordinates, but you can have a visual reminder of events in your area.

Also, the ten.mefi interface would get annoying to be the only interface available. Twitter can be fun and all, but as the predominant middle column, it seems too twitter-focused. Remove this section, and I don't think there would be enough updated information to make the page interesting.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:31 PM on July 22, 2009

I'm hesitant to move all meetup-related planning, discussion, and debriefing away from MetaTalk to its own subsite because sometimes those are the only positive threads around here.

I like what others have suggested; leave the meetups here along with all the darkness, but have them also appear by themselves on the meetup subsite. Make it so that when the "MetaFilter gatherings" tag is selected, it automagically links it to both locations. This way people can continue to use metatalk exactly as they always have, but can use the subsite as a filter to only see the parties.

Maybe have the tag choice also generate a location selection so that when people post the meetup, it automatically appends the map.
posted by quin at 3:47 PM on July 22, 2009

Maybe this is old hat to everyone else, but I just discovered you can filter MetaTalk by category, to just see meetup-related posts:
http://metatalk.metafilter.com/meetups

No map, but it satisfies some of the demand for a quasi-separate meetup site.
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:59 PM on July 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

This one even has a map and a clever name: http://metatalk.metafilter.com/metup.mefi
posted by smackfu at 5:02 PM on July 22, 2009

Could the new iteration have Favorites?
posted by Sys Rq at 5:49 PM on July 22, 2009

Also, the ten.mefi interface would get annoying to be the only interface available. Twitter can be fun and all, but as the predominant middle column, it seems too twitter-focused.

Wha... Twitter? Holy smokes, I hadn't even seen the mefi10-updated page! That's actually pretty freakin' cool.
posted by zennie at 6:41 PM on July 22, 2009

Why not have meet-up planning happen as usual in MetaTalk, but when a time/date is decided, instead of just side-barring it, it also gets a meet.metafilter.com page? Then you get your maps and live-blogging and photo collection and everything over there. Seems like a win-win.
posted by team lowkey at 7:14 PM on July 22, 2009

if in MetaTalk and category == gathering:
    with MeTa post:
        display map at the top
        display attending/maybe bar on the side

do the rest as before
posted by mathlete at 7:15 PM on July 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

I can never choose between a good anagram and a good homophone, so...

Metafilter.com = Meatfilter.com
posted by Ryvar at 10:45 PM on July 22, 2009

MeatLifter? (with bonus anagrams halfway through.. oh, the recursivelicousness...)
posted by blenderfish at 11:27 PM on July 22, 2009

I so second having nearby meetups show up on the front page.
posted by spiderskull at 11:52 PM on July 22, 2009

Metafilter.com = Meatfilter.com

metafilter.com = Omit Camel? Fret!

And be careful, because this next one will bring you through the looking glass:

metafilter.com = Flatter Commie.

A call to lavish your commie of choice with praise, or an advertisement for a thinner commie than average? I report, you decide.
posted by SpiffyRob at 4:54 AM on July 23, 2009

metafilter.com = Omit Camel? Fret!

I knew we should have rewritten it in Perl.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:30 AM on July 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

metafilter.com = flea trim comet
metafilter.com = emo marc felt it

ten.metafilter.com = train me to cleft me
posted by Sys Rq at 8:47 AM on July 23, 2009

I knew we should have rewritten it in Perl.

I've got derby this weekend, but I'm free next Saturday afternoon. I'll do it then.
posted by eamondaly at 9:37 AM on July 23, 2009

10.metafilter.com worked not because of the shiny maps, but because it created a process out of settling upon the meeting place. I know everyone thinks that they're perfect at planning, and, hey, look at New York, but groups of people with opposing minor goals that interfere with the master goal need buttons to press. Trust me.

It's like those ISO procedures that outline the steps needed to follow to create a desired outcome, but with beer.

As an improvement, I would recommend storing a "meetup king" flag in the Database to create someone who has authority over the planning stages.
posted by sleslie at 10:00 AM on July 23, 2009

or queen.
posted by sleslie at 10:00 AM on July 23, 2009

Meetup Tzar?
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:46 PM on July 23, 2009