Updates from December

Making someone an AO for the purposes of posting and organising events would be perfectly workable if only we could stipulate the functions and responsibilities of individual organisers. As it is, if you allow someone to post, host and control events, you also let them approve and decline members, , you allow them similar control over the message board as the organiser, and you allow them a high level of control over many opther aspects of the group.

We have asked for the kind of control that would make the meetup suggestion of making them assistants into a sensible one, but we have not been given this control, yet meetup is suggesting that we hand over full assistant organiser abilities to those who are only needing to post and organise events.

The 'rank' of event host has been a request for a long time. Now we have even more need for it than we had in the past, and still have not been given it. Please raise the priority of the change that would allow us a more detailed and configurable control over the power of individual assistant organisers. It is already showing 'on the radar' because it is in the popular suggestions list. Now it is glowing brighter, or at least it would be on a working radar.

Len
Edit: Damned typos. Sorry late at night after social event.

Agreed! Members often suggest events or offer to host something that none of the organizers are able to attend. You're implying that we should discourage this activity (having additional opportunities to meet with members of the group), which seems to contradict the whole spirit of a meetup group. If I make someone a "temporary" AO, she has all the "powers" of an actual AO, which means she can edit more than just the meetup she is hosting. Since the AO names are listed, this would be extremely confusing to all members and a ridiculous amount of additional work for me to keep up with adding and removing members as AOs. If the designate organizer feature can't be user-friendly, then can we please have the option of turning this feature off so we're not stuck with it?

I'm of a different mind on this.

While I can see it's advantages, I prefer to have someone I trust enough to raise to AO status run events.

We made the mistake of setting up an event for a member recently and she didn't even bother to check if the venue was open (they were closed for a private party)

I received so many calls & text messages from irate members plus the event ended up being rated a 1 which could have brought my group down if my other events hadn't worked out well.

I have decided that if a non organizer wants to host an event and myself or an AO are not able to assist we can either post it as a note on the calender or as a message board thread so it doesn't diminish the great work my team puts into the group.

Steve

Just because this is your preference, doesn't mean that other groups don't have a good track record doing exactly that. Giving the rest of us the option won't make a difference to you, so why bother replying how you don't like to do it? That is not what's up to discussion here at this board, but features that are now in place instead, not methods of organizing. Why don't you organize your group and let the rest of us organize ours? We all know what works and what doesn't for each of our groups.

Is anyone else having a problem posting a shout. The post button doesn't seem to work. I've had problems on several profiles not being able to post back shouts.

Thank you for putting the comments back next to the response reply.

Am I the only one who wants the old format back still?

I don't like the "new & improved" tiny photos on the respone page. I liked the larger ones on the old format much better.

I don't like the talk about this event feature at all. That's what the comments were for and this new "improvement" just clutters up the page and apparently make it neccessary to make the response photos smaller. We have lots of new single people coming to our events and they want to be able to see who's coming without having to click on each respone.

It would be great if there were a feature where I could turn off the "tak about this event" feature and get the old reply format back.

I still don't like the shouts feature either. I found the friends feature to be far more relevant. The shouts seem more like spam. Some stranger who I never met puts a "welcome" shout on my profile ? I just feel spamed.

I read a suggestion somewhere else new "improvements" should be tested by users/organizers first and I think that is a great idea. I know it's hard to please everyone but you could avoid some of the most obvious disasters.

Lastly, has anyone else tried to have more than three groups and discovered how hard it is to do this? You have to pay more, (not a problem) and set up a separate email account so you can't have all of your groups on one profile. Yes, they make it hard to give them more money.

Agreed!

The 'rank' of event host has been a request for a long time. Now we have even more need for it than we had in the past, and still have not been given it. Please raise the priority of the change that would allow us a more detailed and configurable control over the power of individual assistant organisers. It is already showing 'on the radar' because it is in the popular suggestions list. Now it is glowing brighter, or at least it would be on a working radar.

Agreed! Members often suggest events or offer to host something that none of the organizers are able to attend. You're implying that we should discourage this activity (having additional opportunities to meet with members of the group), which seems to contradict the whole spirit of a meetup group. If I make someone a "temporary" AO, she has all the "powers" of an actual AO, which means she can edit more than just the meetup she is hosting. Since the AO names are listed, this would be extremely confusing to all members and a ridiculous amount of additional work for me to keep up with adding and removing members as AOs. If the designate organizer feature can't be user-friendly, then can we please have the option of turning this feature off so we're not stuck with it?

I'm of a different mind on this.

While I can see it's advantages, I prefer to have someone I trust enough to raise to AO status run events.

We made the mistake of setting up an event for a member recently and she didn't even bother to check if the venue was open (they were closed for a private party)

I received so many calls & text messages from irate members plus the event ended up being rated a 1 which could have brought my group down if my other events hadn't worked out well.

I have decided that if a non organizer wants to host an event and myself or an AO are not able to assist we can either post it as a note on the calender or as a message board thread so it doesn't diminish the great work my team puts into the group.

Steve

Please note that I'm not suggesting everyone run their group the way mine is run. If the ability to designate other members as the host were implemented, this would not take away from your ability to only have an organizer be responsible for meetings. You could simply only choose an organizer every time. However, this would allow me and many others the option to have other members host events that an organizer is unable to attend. The current set-up implies that an organizer will always be present. I'd rather not have the organizer name show up at all than leave the false impression that the organizer will be there.

Carla

I never said it shouldn't be implemented.
Only that I had a bad experience with a non AO running an event and wouldn't do it myself.

The idea behind these boards is to share our experiences both good and bad to hopefully help each other.

How is pointing out a possible problem with doing something going to hurt anyone.
If you know something would work in your group you do it.
If you don't know if it would work, don't you want to hear both sides before risking your group?

Steve

Just because this is your preference, doesn't mean that other groups don't have a good track record doing exactly that. Giving the rest of us the option won't make a difference to you, so why bother replying how you don't like to do it? That is not what's up to discussion here at this board, but features that are now in place instead, not methods of organizing. Why don't you organize your group and let the rest of us organize ours? We all know what works and what doesn't for each of our groups.

Carla

I never said it shouldn't be implemented.
Only that I had a bad experience with a non AO running an event and wouldn't do it myself.

The idea behind these boards is to share our experiences both good and bad to hopefully help each other.

How is pointing out a possible problem with doing something going to hurt anyone.
If you know something would work in your group you do it.
If you don't know if it would work, don't you want to hear both sides before risking your group?

Steve

Just because this is your preference, doesn't mean that other groups don't have a good track record doing exactly that. Giving the rest of us the option won't make a difference to you, so why bother replying how you don't like to do it? That is not what's up to discussion here at this board, but features that are now in place instead, not methods of organizing. Why don't you organize your group and let the rest of us organize ours? We all know what works and what doesn't for each of our groups.

Because this discussion is under "new features" and not "organizer tips" or general discussion. If the option is available to the rest of us it won't change a bit the way you manage your group, you can just keep choosing another organizer instead of "other." However, the option NOT being available to the many of us that need it, directly interfere with how our group works and the success of our events.

Jumped in late here and I'm not sure if this has been addressed. I have soon meet ups that include an image but it is getting cut off or only displaying half the image. Is there a fix for this or have I lost this ability?

Thanks to anyone that can answer....

Regarding Estimated No. of Attendees: why does it show as zero after an event? Everyone who rsvp'd yes showed up at the event, and some of us have rated the event, but the Estimated no. of Attendees still shows as "0"

Yikes both of my groups have had meetups since the updates and both show 0 zero attendance when you can see that several members rated and posted comments. I even went in and rated the event myself and added a count to see if maybe members were just missing it at the top of the list but when I finished and went back it still said zero .
Are we the only 2 who have noticed this? I haven't check the other boards but will go check now.