Bug with IRL alerts?

July 4, 2012 8:51 AM

Bug? At last night's meetup in Hollywood, multiple attendees remarked that they did not get an IRL alert even though they've enabled it and have (sometimes) gotten alerts in the past. (More than half of the attendees showed because I memailed them about it.)
posted by dobbs to Bugs at 8:51 AM (52 comments total)

Did you only make the meetup properly a go yesterday? Alerts go out at the midnight (local time? server time? Matt or pb would know) after a meetup moves into "planned" phase, so if there's very short turnaround the possibility exists that they'd not get sent at all.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:55 AM on July 4, 2012

The IRL.
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 8:57 AM on July 4, 2012

Wasn't this one listed as taking place in Hollywood, FL for a little bit before it was corrected? Maybe that has something to do with it.
posted by Kosh at 9:00 AM on July 4, 2012

MetaFilter: I may be drunk, but that doesn't negate the fact that I urinated 3 feet from Warren Beatty.
posted by hippybear at 9:04 AM on July 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

cortex, no, I made the meetup a Go the day I posted it (last week).

Kosh, I don't recall that being the case. It was originally listed as taking place on the day that I posted it but Matt fixed that about 5 minutes after me posting it. (And made me aware that I could have done that myself!) Perhaps that's relevant ... ?
posted by dobbs at 9:05 AM on July 4, 2012

I am now imagining a few very confused mefites in Fort Lauderdale, if only to amuse myself.

I'm guessing Matt or pb can put together a more concrete theory of what happened when they get a chance, yeah.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:08 AM on July 4, 2012

I did not get an alert, and I had it in my mind that it was on Thursday for some reason. Very sorry I wasn't there.
posted by fake at 9:13 AM on July 4, 2012

We haven't left yet, fake. I'm posting this from inside M&F!

Kidding. We left. I'm posting this from home.
posted by dobbs at 9:18 AM on July 4, 2012

I didn't get an alert either, and I usually do.
posted by ApathyGirl at 9:21 AM on July 4, 2012

Alerts go out once at midnight on the day it is first posted. If the location was wrong at that time the alerts wouldn't have gone out to the intended location.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:35 AM on July 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

On the opposite hand, there's currently planning going on for a San Diego meetup (in association with Comic Con) that I got an alert for, but nothing is showing up on the MetaTalk sidebar.
posted by LionIndex at 9:36 AM on July 4, 2012

I didn't get an alert at all, and I usually get alerts for anything within 100 miles of LA.
posted by klangklangston at 9:48 AM on July 4, 2012

It depends, how are you at dancing?
posted by arcticseal at 11:13 AM on July 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

I got the notice that there was a meetup in Hollywood, FL at a place whose name I didn't recognize. The timing was really bad for me so I didn't make any effort to find anything else out.

So. Hmmm. The Internet is weird, and I would have been pretty confused if I'd had time to go.
posted by bilabial at 11:18 AM on July 4, 2012

Hmm.

Okay, well this FL thing baffles me so I went to IRL just now and tried to create a new event trying to duplicate the steps I took before.

When I entered the address for M&F it *defaulted* to FL when I left CA out.

So, it looks like it was all my fault and there is no bug. Or, I AM the bug. :(

Apologies to all in LA who missed out on cocktails and an opportunity to pee while standing beside Warren Beatty. I will try to do better next time--and yes, that includes me bringing Warren with me to future meetups and making him stand in the restroom while we meet.
posted by dobbs at 11:48 AM on July 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

This is the first I'm hearing of this meetup. I live a couple blocks away, and would have been there in a heartbeat instead of reading this insipid teen breakup novel all night. D'oh!
posted by carsonb at 11:49 AM on July 4, 2012

So, it looks like it was all my fault and there is no bug. Or, I AM the bug. :(

and then dobbs was a zombie
posted by adamdschneider at 12:20 PM on July 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

:(
posted by Justinian at 12:57 PM on July 4, 2012

I wonder if the problem was in trying to use Hollywood (CA) as a location in the first place... maybe only Los Angeles is recognized as the city (since Hollywood is technically a neighborhood)?

We were chatting last night about getting together at Farmers Market one evening soon while dobbs is still in town, so there's definitely still a chance of a replay of Mefites getting to regale each other with tales of celebrities at urinals. (I wish I'd had the sense to go to the ladies room last night while Annette Bening was in there. I totally would've been all, "hey! You're the Columbia Pictures torch lady!")
posted by scody at 1:01 PM on July 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

so there's definitely still a chance of a replay of Mefites getting to regale each other with tales of celebrities at urinals

I peed next to Ewan McGreggor!
posted by The Whelk at 1:11 PM on July 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

> I AM the bug.

I am the bug
I am the bug
I am the bug
I am the bug
Bug in the, bug in the meetup
posted by languagehat at 2:42 PM on July 4, 2012 [5 favorites]

LionIndex - I got an alert for San Diego, and I see it on the IRL page, though it's listed in the "Most active" list not in "Proposed" list.
posted by artlung at 2:46 PM on July 4, 2012

Warren Beatty and Annette Bening are MeFites? o.O
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 2:59 PM on July 4, 2012

Well they're not working so much these days, they need somethng to fill the hours.
posted by The Whelk at 3:01 PM on July 4, 2012

LionIndex - I got an alert for San Diego, and I see it on the IRL page, though it's listed in the "Most active" list not in "Proposed" list.

Yeah, it's just not on the sidebar of MetaTalk, like most other(?) meetups seem to be.
posted by LionIndex at 3:25 PM on July 4, 2012

Only IRL events in the Meetup category show up in the MetaTalk sidebar, and the Comic Con event is in the Exhibition category.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:16 PM on July 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: I may be drunk, but that doesn't negate the fact that I urinated 3 feet from Warren Beatty.

He's so vain, he probably thought that pee was about him...
posted by jonmc at 4:56 PM on July 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

(I wish I'd had the sense to go to the ladies room last night while Annette Bening was in there. I totally would've been all, "hey! You're the Columbia Pictures torch lady!")
You would be wrong.
posted by unliteral at 5:32 PM on July 4, 2012

You would be wrong.

yes, I know. I just thought it would be funnier than saying "hey! You're Annette Bening!" Which I wouldn't do, anyway, having mastered the vague I-know-you're-a-celebrity-but-I'm-going-to-pretend-I-don't-recognize-you-even-though-we-both-know-I-do gaze that you're required to prove that you can do once you move to Los Angeles. This is true. There's a committee and everything. If you can't do it, they won't let you get your driver's license.
posted by scody at 6:16 PM on July 4, 2012

The other half didn't show up because you memailed them about it. Hi-yooooo!

(j/k, I love you, dobbsy)
posted by Eideteker at 7:27 PM on July 4, 2012

I was so bummed. I got an IRL notice, and was PSYCHED! I've never been able to make a meetup. However, unlike Hollywood FL, the OTHER Hollywood is more than 100 miles from my Florida residence.
posted by theplotchickens at 4:38 AM on July 5, 2012

adamdschneider: "So, it looks like it was all my fault and there is no bug. Or, I AM the bug. :(

and then dobbs was a zombie"

Oh man, that's the first thing I thought of.
posted by Deathalicious at 7:59 AM on July 5, 2012

I peed next to Willem Defoe at the knitting factory in NYC sometime in the late 90s. I was sooo tempted to say "listen up little girl and you'll hear a big sound comin' down from Bobby Peru" but then I thought that might be creepy.
posted by gorbichov at 12:18 PM on July 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Dafoe, of course.
posted by gorbichov at 12:19 PM on July 5, 2012

Sometimes you're the windshield
Sometimes you're the bug
Sometimes it all comes together, baby
Sometimes you're a fool in love
Sometimes you're the Louisville slugger
Sometimes you're the ball
Sometimes it all comes together, baby
Sometimes you're gonna lose it all
posted by terrapin at 2:43 PM on July 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

We got pissed as farts and I nearly missed my plane. Good times.

I think you'll find that Sherman Hemsley was on The Jeffersons.
posted by elsietheeel at 3:25 PM on July 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

"Did you only make the meetup properly a go yesterday? Alerts go out at the midnight (local time? server time? Matt or pb would know) after a meetup moves into 'planned' phase, so if there's very short turnaround the possibility exists that they'd not get sent at all."

I totally didn't know that this functionality exists.

Having moved to Kansas City a month ago, I made an IRL post about the possibility of a meetup. Only a few people responded and they mentioned that it had been difficult to plan a successful meetup in the past. I asked if people thought we ought to memail people in the area, or if that would be too intrusive. But no one had anything to say about that. As there was only four of us who'd responded to the thread (including me, the poster) and I waited until it fell off the sidebar, I sort of thought that the only choices were to plan an event with a likely maxmimun of attendees being four and a likely minimum being one or zero, or not follow-up on it. I haven't followed up on it.

But I would have if I'd known that making it a "go" would send out memails to area mefites.

That said, I'm very curious about whether that actually helps very much. At past meetups (not the one in this post, obviously) have many people attended who only knew about it because of a memail?

And what are other strategies for getting people to attend? I'm a bit frustrated because KC is a pretty big city, although perhaps not particularly one that's mefi-friendly. But, you know, just having moved here, I'd really like to get out and meet people and a mefi meetup seemed like a great way to do that. I'd really like some ideas about how to plan a successful, well-attended meetup. (Should I make a MeTa post asking about this particularly?)
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:04 PM on July 5, 2012

Alerts go out at the midnight (local time? server time? Matt or pb would know) after a meetup moves into 'planned' phase...

Sorry I didn't correct this earlier, this isn't accurate. Alerts go out on the first day a meetup is posted no matter what the status of the meetup is. Alerts go out for proposed meetups. There's no other alert when something changes status. It's just a one-time alert the day an event is posted.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:19 PM on July 5, 2012

"Alerts go out for proposed meetups."

They do?
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:21 PM on July 5, 2012

They do?

Absolutely.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:23 PM on July 5, 2012

Positively.
posted by The Whelk at 4:37 PM on July 5, 2012

Well, I didn't get an alert for the ABQ meetup I attended in April, proposed or confirmed.

So you're saying that KC mefites were sent alerts when I posted that proposed meetup for KC? I didn't get one for that, either, though I suppose you may have set it up so that the poster doesn't get one.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:50 PM on July 5, 2012

Ah, I see that I'd not enabled the IRL notifications in my profile options. I can't imagine that I'd disenabled it, so it looks like it's opt-in? I imagine that few people do this. I didn't even do it.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 5:14 PM on July 5, 2012

It's opt-in, yeah. People do it. We're very careful about how much we contact people and you have to get to a certain level of using the site before you want to meet others in real life. I think it's good as opt-in rather than out.
posted by pb (staff) at 5:33 PM on July 5, 2012

That seems right to me. I just think that many of the people who would prefer to opt-in, haven't, because they don't know about it. I mean, I'm a pretty hard-core long-time (with a hiatus) user and I had no clue. I've edited my profile and added things to it and such, but as I'd never paid any attention to IRL (and it post-dates my previous membership) enabling that or not apparently had never made any impression on me at all.

Although, I guess this is how everyone learns about this kind of thing. Or they pay closer attention to profile options.

It's hard to imagine that many mefites end up enabling that, though. Do they? If they don't, it can't end up being that useful.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:32 PM on July 5, 2012

I think you'll find it once you either start thinking about other MeFites in your geographic area or start visiting IRL. The front page of IRL still has our introductory blurb about IRL alerts as the first item in the sidebar. In Preferences, when you set or change your geographic location, we offer to sign you up for IRL alerts with a checkbox that is checked by default. And it is one of the standard Contact preferences. I understand how someone could miss it, but I do think IRL alerts are there in several places.

Looks like around 3,000 people have enabled IRL alerts.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:36 PM on July 5, 2012

Oh, right. I have this enabled. I actually had forgotten, and was worried for a little while, since my area hasn't had a meetup in some time, that I just wasn't checking the MeTa sidebar enough... So, uh, thanks for this thread!
posted by limeonaire at 8:17 PM on July 5, 2012

It's probably useful to have meetups on a separate page, but IRL really killed off Los Angeles meetups.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 9:06 PM on July 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

That's something people said at the last meetup, mandy.

Personally, I never check IRL unless I'm in a new town. When I'm home (not travelling), I never think to do it. And though I have alerts turned on, this recent meetup that I initiated is the first I've attended, though I've been a member for more than 10 years.

Though I understand the desire to have IRL as its own section, I wish that there was something else... I dunno, maybe a "IRL in your area" gold star appears next to the memail icon and your username on each page or something?

The thing pretty much everyone agreed on that I talked to about IRL was that they just don't think to check it whereas when we used to plan the meetups in MeTa, they'd see them because responsible members check the grey daily.
posted by dobbs at 12:12 AM on July 6, 2012 [2 favorites]

Part of it is that now when you propose a meetup, you basically are in charge of the thread. Before it was more collaborative. So I am less inclined to post something because then I feel obliged to be the organizer.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 7:13 AM on July 7, 2012

And LA's the size of, like, ten regular cities laid side-by-side, so geographic consensus is hard too. Add to that the general LA flake factor, and you get burned out on organizing meetups where people say they'll show and don't. When more people have responsibility, it means more buy-in.
posted by klangklangston at 2:16 PM on July 7, 2012

But also the subsite problem, yeah.
posted by klangklangston at 2:17 PM on July 7, 2012