It's SOOOOOOOO simple: why can't Meetup allow GROUP ORGANIZERS TO DECIDE WHAT THEY WANT?!?!?

When you're setting up your group, you either allow or don't allow the "maybe" function. Or ask your membership to vote on the idea.

It's completely LUDICROUS that those organizers who like, have always liked, and/or would like the "maybe" option have to be denied the OPTION OF RUNNING THEIR GROUP THE WAY THEY WANT TO!

Remember the old saying, "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"?

Valerie:
(1) please delete your duplicate post -- you need to "refresh" the page to see any post -- or wait a few minutes for it to appear.
(2) "no" RSVP's are NOT on their way out -- we fought long and hard to keep them AND add the comment feature back in, although we lost the battle to return "maybe's." In both cases, the simple matter would be for the organizer to have the OPTION of turning this function on or off, instead of allowing either a vocal minority or a dictatorial majority to decide what's best for everyone.

Valerie, a huge, long protracted debate waged for many months, starting back in Dec. 2010. (One link to one thread = http://www.meetup.com/boards/view/viewthread?thread=10167277)

While there were many of us who favored having the "maybe" option, the "powers that be" at Meetup and some very vociferous organizers carried the day. That is, even though all organizers used to be able to disable the "maybe" option for their own groups, the Borg mentality of MU decided that it was not O.K. to allow the minority who liked the "maybe" option to keep it.

What I'm saying here is that you're wasting your time.

Has anybody else realized that the removal of the Maybe option, and Meetup's completely negative "it's not coming back" attitude was because they were already plotting the completely ridiculous change to "count me in" and "no, thanks"? There's no room in this hideous re-design for "maybe" -- there isn't even room to comment within "no" any more! If you haven't already, go vote on the ever-growing "give organizers the ability to restore..." Idea.

I find the removal of RSVP comments really BAD, and I find the "snippets" of their bios COMPLETELY USELESS!!! All I need to do is click on their name to see everything.

MEANWHILE, a request I made to include THEIR LOCATION in the quick-sketch that appears next to their name has been deemed "too difficult" to do. So now, if I want to try and find a car-pool partner, I have to click on each name individually and wait to cycle through to their complete bio to see where they live.

In other words, Meetup connects things THEY think are useful, and REFUSES to connect things WE might find useful. (While they've conveniently shut down the Meetup Forum were we used to be able to discuss things like this. Arghhhhh!

If you're not already part of this discussion over on Meetup itself, read here http://www.meetup.com/boards/thread/28396262/50#90205962, and send a link to THIS UserVoice suggestion to ALL of your members.

Here's my most recent experience with this idiotic feature: "I went to a huge holiday party on Sunday; people come to that whom you don't see at individual events very often. The attendance list of 45 is equal to almost 15% of our membership.

When I got the post-event e-mail and logged in, I first had to put on my sunglasses to stop being annoyed at the HUGE "Good to see you" buttons. Then I scanned down to click the button for three people I actually wanted to say that to -- and found that that's ALL I could do. How ridiculous!

I wound up sending a private e-mail to one old friend in addition to the lame button; one fellow I've known for 30 years sent me a "Good to see you too" reply, and, most uncomfortably, I got a "Good to see you" shout out... from a woman I'd just met! (note, I'm a woman with a boy's name)

What am I supposed to do with this?!? She's relatively new to the group and probably thinks that she has to click the button on everybody; I don't know. If I click back "good to see you too" I think it's idiotic because I barely remember our brief conversation; if I DON'T click her back, will she have hurt feelings?

So, to again repeat the obvious, HEY, THERE, MEETUP HQ!!!!

Stop innovating crappy ideas that we don't need or want, and focus on implementing the things we DO want -- just check out the top vote-getters on this site -- some of which have been "under review" for almost four months!!!

Dear "Some Are.".. I just noticed your idea here which certainly runs in the same vein as the other one we're both keen on (link below), so I'll add my available votes to this action.
http://meetup.uservoice.com/forums/37079-ideas-and-suggestions-for-meetup/suggestions/1069281-create-an-option-to-partition-my-groups-into-two

Denbo, Tory: THANK YOU! And PLEASE ADD VOTES!

And ASK OTHERS TO DO SO -- votes are THE ONLY THING THAT GETS THINGS DONE HERE (like last time -- even though it did take a long time to sway Meetup).

When 30 people are signed up for an event, I used to be able to scan down the pictures and easily recognize faces or avatars of people I know. Now, the thumbnails are WAY TOO SMALL, and they're on the right side of the column where our brains do NOT logically scan them easily. PLEASE RESTORE THE OLD LOOK IN THIS SECTION OF THE EVENT PAGE.

Tamalamdingdong: could you please post a LINK to the "completed" UserVoice segment? That way, we could post over there (Ideas stay active forever) that there is a "new" Idea HERE and ask people to bring their votes over (or re-vote, whatever).

Given all the kicking and screaming about how "hard" it is to go back to the old meetup, and given all the time and effort it's taking MU to fix even a small portion of the un-wanted changes (like taking away comment box regarding "no's" and making our thumbnail pictures way too small), I still sit here and wonder why these people didn't role out a beta version, or go back to the old version and make small changes one at a time, or, heaven forbid "JUST GIVE ORGANIZERS THE ABILITY TO RESTORE THE OLD FORMAT" as in, like, oh, what is the word, A DEMOCRACY, or, what's that other thing, oh yeah, A PRODUCT FOR WHICH THE USERS ARE PAYING!

I'm quite dissatisfied with about twenty of the changes, but I'll comment on just one at a time: since removal of the "maybe" option, when we want to let the organizer know that we're interested but can't come to an event (AND we don't want to throw off RSVP's by posting "yes" with a comment that it's really a "maybe") WE NEED THE OPTION OF POSTING A COMMENT ALONG WITH "NO" RSVP's. This is especially important when changing a "yes" to a "no."

Big Tent, Ning, GroupSpaces -- all await you with open arms!
GAME PLAN SET OUT: [quote from comment #2703]
"...I am not just going to drop my groups when my renewal comes up.
First, I am going to re-create my meetup groups on other sites,
then solicit the current meetup membership to move with us,
THEN MAKE THE GROUPS PRIVATE AND DELETE ALL CONTENT ON MEETUP, and
FINALLY, WE WILL DELETE THE ENTIRE MEMBERSHIP ....so that none of our hard work ....(the work of the assistants & myself that have made those groups flourish) can be misappropriated by someone snapping up the group just because the current organizer left."[/quote]

A few people hit the "post" key three times (PLEAS STOP!) and a few trolls keep repeating nasty gibes. I SUGGEST that THIS POST get REPEATED OFTEN:
[quote from comment #2703] "...I am not just going to drop my groups when my renewal comes up. First, I am going to re-create my meetup groups on other sites, then solicit the current meetup membership to move with us, then make the groups private and delete all content on meetup, and finally we will delete the entire membership ....so that none of our hard work ....(the work of the assistants & myself that have made those groups flourish) can be misappropriated by someone snapping up the group just because the current organizer left."[/quote]
Look at the original fifteen hours and ten pages before this one.

There are a few trolls who just keep repeating nasty gibes. I suggest THIS post gets repeated every few pages: [quote from comment #2703]
."..I am not just going to drop my groups when my renewal comes up. First, I am going to re-create my meetup groups on other sites, then solicit the current meetup membership to move with us, then make the groups private and delete all content on meetup, and finally we will delete the entire membership ....so that none of our hard work ....(the work of the assistants & myself that have made those groups flourish) can be misappropriated by someone snapping up the group just because the current organizer left."[/quote]

I am a member of 26 meetups. One of the best things about the previous format was the charm of each individual event page. Many organizers put quite a bit of effort into making their pages unique. Not only is the Googlemaps pix a serious threat to some event organizers' privacy, the old link to "directions" worked just fine, and the individuality of each event has been completely lost. I once again must observe: why does Meetup persist in repeatedly fixing things which were not broken?

About a week ago, I had some time to investigate miscellaneous groups to which other people belong. Sometimes I find real "treasures" this way.

What a BIG DISAPPOINTMENT it is, however, when I click on a link to what sounds like a nice "group" only to find that it's really just an advertisement for a dance-studio, or a yoga-studio, or a dog-sitter, or an insurance agent, etc. etc.

May I suggest, as a quick fix, that you add a button on every meetup group's home page (maybe right up in the right-hand corner, next to the facebook/twitter logos) that says something like "report Terms of Service commercial use Violation."

Hey, MEETUP!!!!! This has been "under review" FOR EIGHT MONTHS!!!!! While you've been messing (literally) around with the look of Meetup, fixing things not broken, and taking things away (like our RSVP comment lines), you continue to IGNORE THINGS WE'VE BEEN ASKING FOR FOR YEARS!

PS TO MIKE (from back in February): I belong to 24 groups, and I've been part of another 20 or so off and on over the past five years, and I've NEVER, ever had a group organizer refuse to allow me to join a group because I have my memberships hidden. THERE ARE NO, REPEAT, NO Meetup groups "just for creeps", that's one thing Meetup does well. What has been said here over and over is that some of us have religious or political groups that we like to keep hidden because it's frankly none-of-your business.

For instance, I was part of a civic group which was working on the local airport management plan. There were seven of us going to many boring meetings, spending lots of time on studying the history, economic impact, and social relevance of the airport outside of our town. Everything was going fine until it became apparent that one of the three "top" members of our group was a staunch, pro-Bush Republican. Unfortunately, that led her to feel completely isolated from the rest of us, because nobody trusted her judgment anymore.

I know that some fellow members of some of the groups to which I belong are completely at the other end of the ideological spectrum in their religious beliefs, but, while I certainly wouldn't want to get into an discussion with them about, say, the death penalty or gay marriage, there's nothing about my or their beliefs which prevents us from both belonging to a group which plays board games!a

SupperClub, you are completely missing ALL of the main points here.

1. It's not for YOU to decide what my meetup memberships are an expression of. Some are very personal and private (like my political and/or religious affiliation), while others are simply interests (such as German conversation or going to comedy clubs).

While it would be nice for people who share my political views to know that I also like to go contra-dancing, it ISN'T necessary for people with whom I converse solely because we both speak German to know what my religious views are.

The way MU is set up now, I have only the "choice" of showing all or nothing, and this is NOT what "meetup" should be about.

2. If I had "emotional problems" and found a support group within Meetup, or if I were a "closeted" gay person, why should I have to hide ALL of my OTHER interests from people, just because this hypothetical me would like to be able to hang out with people who like going to live theatre or sharing gardening tips? People DON'T have to have anything else in common in order to enjoy a group outing and a nice dinner afterward!

3. I don't think that people who belong to "extreme political or religious" groups would bother to publicize their groups on Meetup in the first place. If they did chose to do so, their members would probably already know each other and want to reach out solely to people who shared their views. I doubt if such "extremists" would care one way or the other to meet people to go play mini-golf or go on a walk with their dogs.

Again, constructing a hypothetical me, say, a member of some obscure religious sect, I wouldn't have to "get along" with other people in a meetup OUTSIDE OF THAT MEETUP, if all we were doing was getting together once a month to car-pool to museums all over the region as a group!
______________________

Once again, I'll repeat that Meetup should give people choices, not this all or nothing straight-jacket. Given that they've instituted programming that allows you to filter other members of groups to which you belong BY COMMON INTERESTS, it should be an EXTREMELY SIMPLE BIT OF PROGRAMMING to allow people to click a box marked "not for public profile" when joining a group.

And, another REPEAT: FOLKS WHO'VE POSTED POSITIVE COMMENTS HERE (1) put your votes where your mouth is, and (2) post your comments with a link to this suggestion on the message board of the "private" groups to which you belong.

I see that two other topics (one of which LotB started) have been submerged into this topic. With the votes thus combined, this request is now up to sixth in popularity.

Please, if you belong to a group which espouses a particular political or religious belief, post a comment on your message board with a link to this suggestion. Also, if you know someone gregarious who's in one of your groups and who none-the-less has their interests and group affiliations hidden, e-mail them directly and ask for their support in this initiative.

My feelings have not change in the nearly two years since this topic was started as "Create an option to "partition" my groups into two sets: one others can see I belong to, one private." That is...

I have found some very interesting groups I would never have thought to join just by looking at what other groups other people within my own meetups belong to. However, I have my own group-affiliations set at private, and so do a lot of other people within certain groups, because it's just plain nobody's business what my personal beliefs are.

Folks, if you took your votes from here and put them over here:
http://meetup.uservoice.com/forums/37079-ideas-and-suggestions-for-meetup/suggestions/1069281-create-an-option-to-partition-my-groups-into-two
this idea would vault up into 25th place!!!!!

Dear Anonymous: What you do is to click on the NUMBER below the "vote" icon -- (it will say either 1, 2, or 3 depending on how many you contributed). The box which appears will allow you to change your vote to 0, 1, 2 or 3. The reason you're not seeing this option is that you have not voted (i.e., your silhouette shows no number in the lower left-hand corner; just posting a comment does not constitute "voting").

Quick PS to Debbie: (regarding your post "...I recently had someone join who had a greeting on their home page from a person who had themselves in garters ...." I'm fairly sure that Meetup has ways to REPORT abusive and/or obscene content posted on their site -- I hope you reported this individual, because such a picture would not be appropriate in ANY PUBLIC area.

Dear "Some" -- just a quick FYI: you DON'T have to delete your comments or your posts in order to move your votes. All you have to do is click on the "vote" button, and "un-vote", thus freeing up your votes for the other thread. ALSO, EVERYBODY: PLEASE DELETE DUPLICATE POSTS CAUSED BY MEETUP USING AN OUTDATED VERSION OF USERVOICE, this causes your posts to only appear after you have "reloaded" the page.

Dear "Some are Private, Some are Not:" Please note that this topic was started a long time ago -- please join forces on the link below -- and "our" idea will hop up by twenty-five ranking-notches. (Yes, I know it's sad that UserVoice makes it virtually impossible to search topics like a "real" forum would.)
http://meetup.uservoice.com/forums/37079-ideas-and-suggestions-for-meetup/suggestions/1069281-create-an-option-to-partition-my-groups-into-two
Voters: Please bring your votes and comments along to the already-established idea (which got caught up in the awful battles over Meetup's "new look").

Dear Anonymous: thank you for your vote. Please hit the "delete" button on the three extra posts cluttering up the thread. (HINT: You have to click "refresh" in order for your post to appear, or navigate away and come back.)

This issue is flaring up again, so I'm going to "bump" this Idea and hope it starts getting votes and attention. Read here:
http://www.meetup.com/boards/thread/15948422

Now that the whole Tsunami-sized issue of the "new look" has finally settled down, I'd like for MU to start addressing issues that members really WOULD like to see changed. NON-COSMETIC, actually issues like this one!

Dear Peter -- thank you for the "bump" -- if you have any votes to spend, please help out here, and ask others who may share out concerns to vote too. Thank you!

Thank you for supporting our idea. If you belong to the same type of belief-oriented group(s) as we I do, perhaps you would like to post a link to this idea on your group's message board and urge your members to vote. Also, there are five groups with similar ideals in our metro area. If you have similar "sister" MU groups in your area, please share this idea with them as well. We did this and the votes here tripled. Again, thanks!

I totally agree. I have found some very interesting groups I would never have thought to join just by looking at what other groups other people within my own meetups belong to. However, I have my own group-affiliations set at private, and so do a lot of other people within certain groups because it's just plain nobody's business what my personal beliefs are.

Clive: Please take your comments over to THE NEW !!! BATTLE about this:
http://meetup.uservoice.com/forums/37079-ideas-and-suggestions-for-meetup/suggestions/2065461-please-re-remove-the-facebook-prompt-again
You'll note that THIS ISSUE IS MARKED "COMPLETED" -- and we're re-fighting this battle again. Please go to the link above and put your votes there -- as well as asking others who HATE THE FACEBORG INTRUSION to vote there as well. Plus, there is a lively debate going on here in the Organizer's Forum --
http://www.meetup.com/boards/thread/13617071/0 -- with 72 comments, largely against the Facebook window.

I belong to 26 groups. It took a minimum of 25 minutes here and there to go into each one and turn off the Farcebook pop-up. I joined three new groups during the past month and forgot to manually go in an un-click the two annoyance options, so was startled when I RSVP'd to one and got that pop-up. Again, WE NEED A GLOBAL OPTION PAGE where one can set all preferences ONCE, with the ability to CHANGE these options within groups if one wants to. (Just like I can turn on the "reminder" e-mails when I RSVP for an event IF IT CHOOSE TO. Do we have to start a whole 'nother UserVoice segment to get this done properly?

Hi, Matt! After the long battle regarding the "too many e-mails" subject, that annoyance was added to the e-mail settings so that it could be opted-out-of. I've joined a few new groups since then, and I've noted that this opt-out is NOT part of the original sign-up; instead, one has to go in and do it on a separate page. I'm going to ask again that these two opt-outs be made part of the initial sign-up/profile page, instead of requiring an additional step when joining a new group. Or, a GLOBAL OPT OUT would be nice..... But, I realize that that's probably too much to ask. Again, thank you for fixing this -- even though I can't resist saying that it shouldn't have taken so long.

Thank you, Mark! I had noticed that this was not the case a few months back on another item completed. I'm glad this feature has been up-graded/updated. And thank you for being pro-active on this site: your positive energy is most welcome!

I got a question for multi-group meetup-ers: I belong to an average of 20 groups, and about one or two go defunct every six months. I've had FOUR GROUPS go defunct in the last month. Is this coincidence? Anybody else notice the same trend?

Did you read the universal e-mail from "Scott Heiferman, Co-Founder" at "Meetup HQ" (with the Subject line "Check out new ways to find Meetups")? The part that caught my attention was: "Every day, I'm surprised (& thrilled) to see all the ways that Meetups affect people's lives. Together, we're "using the internet to get off the internet"
How about if we all start sending e-mails to Mr. Heiferman at support@meetup.com and let him know how "thrilled" we all are at his employees' inability to stop annoying us?

Aubrey -- you seem to have missed the point that a whole lot of us AREN'T ON FACEBOOK AT ALL! And that the problem is that Meetup is ramming Faceborg down our collective throats without our permission. NEW INSULT:
Have any of you noticed that there are now MORE UNWANTED POP-UPS related to Farcebook? Now they're popping up on top of my page advertising MORE crap I'm not interested in!

Dr. Quin... I'm rather the opposite: if an e-mail really upsets me, I hang onto it in a special folder for possible future use. And... I've got this cute little "wastebasket" on my desktop which keeps things I've deleted -- I occasionally can find things there. If you deleted it from your computer, it may also still be "out there in the cloud" on your server? (Just thinking out loud). Of course, another alternative would be for you to post the e-mail address of where you wrote HQ and maybe we can all write them and all get the same "we're not doing squat" reply back.

Dear Lord P...
Remember when our complaints could be inputed over on a "regular" Meetup Forum? Well, there may or may not be a $ incentive for Meetup to have foist Farcebook on us, but, I can tell you exactly why they've saddled us with User"voice" -- click on the name of a poster within a meetup forum, and you get to their bio, you get to see what group they belong to, and you can e-mail them directly. Click on the name of a poster here at UV -- and you get nothing except a list of their pet peeves. In other words, Meetup has successfully cut us off from speaking directly to each other WITHIN Meetup. You're definitely too young to know (unless you happen to be a history major), but big business has always busted unions by making it either illegal or impossible for "underlings/workers/organizers" to speak with each other.

Scott, there is a very good reason that Joshua closed off the forum topic: The forum is organized so that active/recent topics keep popping up to the top of the list WHERE EVERYBODY CAN SEE THE TITLE AND GET IN ON THE DEBATE! It's soooo much quieter for the overlords when a subject can get relegated over here, where comments which run to more than ten lines require a click on "more" to get read in their entirety. Also, to quote myself from the forum... if "past is prologue", it will take Meetup many months (if not years) of people complaining and re-re-re-repeating this issue until they deign to understand that what WE want is more important than what they think is important.

Hey there, Lord Perception and others: I just realized with a giant thud why meetup's masters changed the way we complain about things from the old "board" format to this User"voice"crap: we can't communicate with each other directly like we can on the meetup board!!!!

For instance, if I wanted to e-mail you about the ACTUAL ALREADY-EXISTING ALTERNATIVE TO MEETUP, I can't -- simply because your "profile" on Uservoice goes nowhere: it isn't really a profile, it's just your name, period. If you had posted your comments on the meetup site, I would actually arrive at your meetup profile and your contact information.
Sneaky, eh?

I even wrote a direct complaint via the Help forum. This pop-up comes up even though I have ALL POP-UPS DISABLED ON MY BROWSER!!! Thus, Meetup is over-riding my personal computer preferences. This is totally un-acceptable AND ONLY CAME ABOUT BECAUSE MEETUP CONSISTENTLY ADDS WHAT SHOULD BE OPTIONS AS REQUISITES INSTEAD OF ALLOWING US "OPTIONS" -- as in, opt in IF you want it.