I just saw this -- a year-and-a-half later -- and thought it might still be of some interest:

January 30, 2006
From "Peter S." (formerly of Meetup staff, I believe)

Folks-

As we look for ways to celebrate your successes, we're exploring the idea of a "5-Star Meetup Groups" page

So as to know how complicated it would have to be, I had Rachel dig up some data. We currently have 78 Meetup Groups that 1) have a 5-star rating, and 2) have had at least 25 ratings in the last 3 months.

(I decided to look at groups with 25 ratings over 3 months to eliminate those groups that may only have 3 or 4 members and lots of events and could somewhat "stuff" the ballot box over the last 3 months. Ultimately we may use some other criteria that this.)

...

North Texas Objectivist Society with 30 ratings that average 4.87 stars!

...

See: http://www.meetup.com...

At the time, we had made the list at about #73 from the top of the list. At the time Meetup had about 9,000 groups, so we were rated in the top 1%.

By going to our "Welcome" page and rolling the mouse pointer over the "rating stars," we can see that we currently have 59 recent ratings by our members with an average of 4.92 out of 5 stars, so since the report from a year-and-a-half ago, we have increased the number of member responses to the Meetup surveys after our events and our average rating.

Taking a moment to rate our events is another small thing we can do to help promote NTOS and our activities to people who may be considering whether to join us.

For whatever reason, I don't think Meetup followed through with the idea to publicize such group rankings based on its ratings, so I do not know how we currently stack up against other groups. (Some members of meetup do try to monitor various statistics about Meetup, but in just a few minutes of searching I did not find anything further regarding group rankings.)

If there is ever anything you think we could do to improve NTOS, please let me have your feedback. Some things I cannot change, of course, but we have tried many suggestions put forth by our members, and those that seem to work, we will repeat!

-- Todd