new meetup policy: promote posts only with first-time meetups
I propose for comment the following alteration of the LW meetup promotion policy:
* The weekly meetup roundup will contain, in its title, only the names of cities which have not previously had an LW meetup, or which have not had an LW meetup in the last year.
* On occasions where no such name appears in the title, the meetup roundup post will still appear in Main but will not be Promoted.
* Cities having a first-time meetup, or where a new meetup is being started by a new organizer after a hiatus, should have additional info about that meetup and its organizer appearing in a prominent, top-of-post position in the roundup post.
This is intended to make it easier for new meetups to gain attention, by requiring hopeful LWers awaiting a new meetup in their area to pay attention to a smaller number of promoted posts and a smaller number of cities appearing in the titles of Main posts.
I find the weekly meetup roundups to be mostly noise, and wish they were not promoted. I don’t think they really serve much purpose that isn’t already served by the meetup posts in discussion and the nearest meetups tab.
I do like the idea of major meetup news getting promoted when it exists.
The other recurring metastuff in main (quotes threads, for example) are also annoying, and should (IMO) be in discussion.
They serve some purpose: I think a lot of places with regular meetups don’t post them to the site, and I don’t know of another good way to find out about them. (Perhaps the wiki page should be linked more prominantly?)
I also think that if we’re not going to include meetups that are not new in the meetup roundups, we should be employing another method to call more attention to them for the sake of newer members.
At the very least, the “only new meetups posted” policy should be clearly advertised with each post, lest a newbie think that the advertized meetups are all that are taking place.
Although it would take more effort to implement, the solution I think would be most effective would be to have separate Main, Discussion, and Meetups sections for the site.
Note, the idea isn’t to post only new meetups, but
only new meetups appear in the title, and
if there are no new meetups, the post is still made, but it isn’t promoted.
A meetups section would be mostly noise for almost everyone, so I wouldn’t expect many people to watch it.
I suspect the “Nearest Meetups” part of the sidebar and the map are sufficient for newer members, provided the meetups in question are posted.
I like this change, with one small change:
This is a sensible policy for first-time recurring meetups, but first-time meetups should be as low activation energy as possible: we want people to start off with “I’m going to go to Coffeeshop X and read Thinking, Fast and Slow from time A to time B; if any other LW fans are in city Y, come and we’ll meet up!”, rather than posting info about themselves (and then wondering if their info influenced the lack of interest).
+1
At the first LW meetup I attended (which was the first in its country), one of the participants mentioned that they didn’t check LW updates much because it was “mostly meetups”, and, if memory serves, ended up finding the announcement relevant to them mostly by chance. This policy might have helped.
I support (almost) any change in policy whose effect is to reduce the amount of time taken, when seeing what’s new on LW, to skip past all the meetup stuff.
If a meetup post’s title contains a list of cities that isn’t a complete list of cities whose meetups it describes, the title should be written in such a way that it doesn’t give the impression that it is a complete list.
If someone is looking for information about meetups in Fooville, at present they can scan for posts with “meetups” and “Fooville” in the title. After the proposed change, what will those people do?
I support this policy.