New in March (2007)

Please make an option for the organizer's email address to be private. I have not used it to send messages up to this point and I feel like I am being forced to do so.

I know some of my members won't even receive an email from my personal address or it will be filtered out. As I said we have an event this weekend and they are starting to ask questions and make arrangements since they have yet to receive my final email on the event. This is causing a lot of problems. Just make 'hide email' an option. Please.

Thanks
Amy

Gah. ANother annoying change.

The "page links" (eg "prev 1 2 3 4 5 next") used to be at the top and the bottom of a thread. Now it's just at the bottom.

So, I'm looking at the list of threads, and I Guess that I need to go to page 4, based on what I remember. But I guess wrong, I can see that the first post on page 4 is new, so there was likely at least one on page 3 I need to check. Before, I could just click on the p3 link, or the prev, and I'd be there. But now I have to scroll to the bottom.

It's a Pain, and yet another Unnecessary change.

Meetup: Maddening End-users by Effecting Transformation Unnecessarily and Poorly.

Please make an option for the organizer's email address to be private. I have not used it to send messages up to this point and I feel like I am being forced to do so.

I know some of my members won't even receive an email from my personal address or it will be filtered out. As I said we have an event this weekend and they are starting to ask questions and make arrangements since they have yet to receive my final email on the event. This is causing a lot of problems. Just make 'hide email' an option. Please.

Thanks
Amy

I agree. I purposely always clicked "hide my email." To avoid my address book going out to a group of people that I don't fully know, and taking into account that not everyone is as diligent about not sharing addresses in their address book.

I have an event this week that I would like to solidify plans, but have the message sitting on my screen for the last two days after noticing the "your email address will be displayed." I can't understand why meetup would simply not make this an option to hide as before.

Others have suggested that one create another email for the meetup group, but I organize two groups - one knitting and one for entrepreneurs ... who might just question my yarntherapy@ ..... email choice for this supposed serious business women. I do have designated emails for the groups that I share with some of my members, so perhaps meetup could make it easier/possible for organizers to designate secondary emails for the email lists without it interfering with the "account" email on file for meetup ... gosh I think I've now confused myself so I think I'll end this post here :-)

PS - Is there currently a way to send emails in the "old" manner?

PS - Is there currently a way to send emails in the "old" manner?

No. Meetup don't seem to understand that adding functionality should not be at the expense of losing other useful functionality. Same thing happened when they went to calendars.

I have an event this week that I would like to solidify plans, but have the message sitting on my screen for the last two days after noticing the "your email address will be displayed." I can't understand why meetup would simply not make this an option to hide as before.

Same here. I finally typed up my email on the only form available to confirm plans for this Saturday's meetup and just kept looking at that "your email address will be displayed" message. It just doesn't feel right. So I copied and pasted into word. It's saved for later in hopes that the "hide your email" feature will return. And I'm not sure what I will do should this not be fixed...send no email at all and hope for the best? That doesn't feel right either.

Some members I haven't met and don't know what they would do with my address. And I am sure there are other organizer's that have members that join with no profile, no communication, nothing. I definitely don't want then to have my email, which has my full name by the way.

All of you in favor of the option to make an email address private, I found this on another discussion, a reply written by a staff member.

Forgive me that I don't know how to link discussions, but if you go to the main page Discuss Meetup.com, link is at the top of this page under the New in March title. Then choose the first option of Help and Technical Assistance for using Meetup.com. It?s the thread titled How can I opt out of receiving emails from mailing lists? Relevant information starts in the middle of pg 1 to the end of pg 2. Meetup claims only 5% of organizers chose to hide their email so the following seems to be their solution:

I hear you. I've brought this up to the product team for future consideration. At this time, there aren't plans to reinstate the ability to privatize the address for group correspondence, and I'm sorry to hear that this has caused you problems in the past.

I understand your not wanting to share your email address with certain people on the site. Again, if you are using one-to-one email or denying a person membership in your group, you can keep your address private in these cases (by checking the appropriate box).

Many Organizers choose to set up a special address for Meetup mail (like Gmail, Yahoo!, Juno or Hotmail) and that generally works out well. Is this an option you would consider?

Andrea

I really don?t see what the big deal is. If this option is still available when you send one-on-one email then why can?t it be done for the group as well?

Since I do have an important event this weekend I will copy and paste all one-on-one email and hope that meetup fixes this soon, or I will feel forced to look into other options.

Geeez, I paid for this (6 months), shouldn?t I get what I want or more importantly what I thought I was paying for.

I'm new to Meetup as an organizer (have been a group member since last fall) and I agree with the comments above re: being able to hide your email address. This is important to me EVEN THOUGH I have a dedicated email address that I use for things like message boards and meetup.com.

My other concern, from a group management perspective is the "Meetup Pride" link - this allows ANY member to post 'official' signage for the group and enter whatever text they would like to represent the group!! This screams of potential for mis-information (inadvertently or on purpose, should someone decide that they are at odds with the group). This would make a lot more sense to me if the organizers were able to create a static file and allow the users to download them - which was available to the group before, using the "Files" feature!

Maybe I'm being a bit cynical, but it makes me nervous to have my name on a group as an organizer when I don't know all of the members individually, and can't be sure that they will represent the group in a way that the organizers would agree with.

ETA: I just also realized that ANY member can add their email address/contact info to a tear-off flyer or business card, encouraging potential new members to contact THEM instead of the organizers! Does this make sense to anyone else?! As an organizer, I want potential new members to contact ME to get the correct information about the group - not another member, who may not provide accurate information or respond in a way that encourages someone to join!! This "upgrade" just doesn't make sense to me.

Timothy wrote:

PS - Is there currently a way to send emails in the "old" manner?

No. Meetup don't seem to understand that adding functionality should not be at the expense of losing other useful functionality. Same thing happened when they went to calendars.

I think Timothy sums it up the best.

I have spent a lot of time investing in building a group via Meetup, and I am concerned that Meetup is not adding functionalities but moving away from original functionality, and also making the site more difficult to use for members.

I was just about to send out an e-mail announcement to our group, but I can't without divulging my e-mail address to people I do not know. I will have to set up and work through a dummy account via g-mail or something, which will be a pain in the ...

I am becoming increasingly concerned that I am investing my energies building a local group that is at the at the mercy of Meetup as it continues to make changes to its operating structure in unexpected ways to something that is worse than it was a mere six months ago. For example, it looks like the message boards are now in the process of being phased out.

By the way, why is this message board still here? Shouldn't this be an e-mail list instead? That is what Meetup is recommending that we do for our separate group message boards.

-- Todd

By the way, why is this message board still here? Shouldn't this be an e-mail list instead? That is what Meetup is recommending that we do for our separate group message boards.

I sincerely hope that THIS statement is not true. The MB is the bread & butter of several of my groups and without them, the groups would not be as successful as they currently are. We use the MB to get to know one another and obtain advice.

Also, when I post an event, the option to post on the message board wasn't there? Am I just missing something? I'd like to have this back because a lot of my members delete the emails, but check the boards and get their event info there.

I'm constantly clicking "track this discussion" now because that is the spot on the page that I used to go to in order to return to the message board. I don't like this change. I LOVE the "check spelling" button though!