Launch for Thursday June 18th, 2009

Other online-only social networks have similar functionality, but we think that due to our focus on real world face-to-face interaction, this functionality is even more powerful here on Meetup. What better way is there to see who goes to the Meetups and to tie together the online and offline?

Hope you all have fun with it!

What about the Meetup members who have elected to keep their profiles anonymous by NOT having any personal photos online? Someone takes a picture at an event, posts it, tags it, and then the privacy-seeking member finds their image available, identifying them?

Many events would be held in private venues, where there is no "but you're in public on the street" argument.
If they don't know the pic was taken, and only find out days later that it's on their profile, I can see MANY opportunities for problems! Likely just P.O.'d members, but who knows?

If an event is held at my home, and someone takes a secret photo, and this happens... am I going to be liable for any legal action that a litigious member might take, if I don't ask everyone to sign a waiver when they first walk in the door?

Think of the 'worst-case-scenarios' - stalker, violent ex, etc... whose responsibility is it if anything happens as a direct result of unwanted identification?

Does Meetup have any general advice to deal with legal situations that might come up?


Suggestion:
Can there be a feature that perhaps allows a member to select a Privacy option, so that their name does NOT come up on the tagging feature, so they can't be linked? Or, so that their photos are never permitted?


The other side of the coin:
Personally, I love the idea, and will tag my own pics throughout our 80 albums.
...however, I have, 6 hours later, still not received a notification email of the pics I tagged of myself. Is self-tagging an exception, or is there a delay?

Is there a way to (or a future improvement to) zoom down the tagged area? I just did some, where multiple tags overlap, and as a result, many of them won't identify via the cursor position - I have to click on the names at the right side.

In a large group* photo, one will have to reduce that zoom area to accurately use this feature - it's got to be a minor technical correction to allow zooming in, or a resizable selection area.
*in a large group photo, presumably everyone is saying 'cheese' and knows the pic is being taken!

Can Organizers turn the "tag" feature OFF for their groups??

Thanks,
~Pamela~

Sorry, but I think it is a horrible idea. I hate tagging. I don't ever tag and I always ask people to "untag" me when I involuntarily get tagged. And I didn't ask Meetup to add this feature.

Just one more ugly step toward absolutely no privacy on the 'net.

Few responses to some of the above issues. I am gonna respond to several posts, so apologies in advance for the terse nature of the responses:

As to privacy concerns:
- Group level privacy still trumps all. If the group is private, this info will also remain private (inside the group).
- Any member who is tagged in a photo will receive an email notification (unless they tagged themselves). You can also see all photos you are tagged in in a specific group by looking at the bottom of the photos tab in your group level profile.
- Any member can un-tag themselves. Once a member is untagged, that member can't be re-tagged in that same photo.

As to the box size for the tag space, it is currently not adjustable in size. It is on our longer term list of enhancements to allow it to resize, but not currently a high priority yet. The tag is tied directly to the point you click on, and we want to see some initial usage before prioritizing this work above other potential projects.

As to disabling for a group, like comments on photos, it is not currently possible to turn off.

As to browser issues, I will get bugs in for these, though one note on Firefox 2.* ... while we try to make work, we officially do not support 2.* of FF.

I am sure I missed something, but think I got most of the issues raised in the above thread.

Thank you for your detailed response to our questions, Greg.

I would like to reiterate a request for group ORGANIZERS to also have the OPTION to - subscribed or unsubscribed - to get email alerts when members upload, tag and/or comment on ALL photos uploaded to their group.


PHOTOS/TAGS/COMMENTS posted on MY group (mine in the sense that I Organize, design, AND pay for the site) ARE my business, and as Organizer I should be notified about them ... in addition to being able to edit/moderate them, if need be.

My members rely on me to provide an enjoyable & safe site for our group, and if material is being posted that I am unaware of, it is very hard and extremely time consuming to moderate.

I would rather catch something inappropriate BEFORE it offends members in my group ... not have them be offended first, and then email me a complaint about it.

Thanks,
~Pamela~

Pamela,

Seems perfectly reasonable. I will add that to our queue as a future enhancement.

As to privacy concerns:
- Group level privacy still trumps all. If the group is private, this info will also remain private (inside the group).
- Any member who is tagged in a photo will receive an email notification (unless they tagged themselves). You can also see all photos you are tagged in in a specific group by looking at the bottom of the photos tab in your group level profile.
- Any member can un-tag themselves. Once a member is untagged, that member can't be re-tagged in that same photo.

I'm glad to see that these privacy concerns were addressed. Thank you for explaining them.

Pamela,

Seems perfectly reasonable. I will add that to our queue as a future enhancement.

Thank you, Greg. I will be looking forward to it's deployment.

~Pamela~

This just happened in a group I belong to and from what I understand there were a lot of emails going back and forth. There is no mailing list for that group.

Seems somebody tagged another person's pic and instead of tagging the member's name, it was a very rude and uncalled for name.

Meetup should make it, so that members are allowed to tag ONLY pics the posted and/or give approval of tags to the person who posted the pics.

This just happened in a group I belong to and from what I understand there were a lot of emails going back and forth. There is no mailing list for that group.

Seems somebody tagged another person's pic and instead of tagging the member's name, it was a very rude and uncalled for name.

Meetup should make it, so that members are allowed to tag ONLY pics the posted and/or give approval of tags to the person who posted the pics.

Oh, good grief. Well, I guess whoever did that would get the boot? Organizers definitely need an email to know when something like that has happened, to give us evidence when we need to kick people out for doing something like that.