Enabling Notifications for Online Meetups Pony

June 9, 2020 8:11 PM

Activity has pretty much stopped on IRL for obvious reasons, but weirdly, the Tokyo Mefite community has never met nearly as much! We're heading into our 9th straight week of meetups (on Zoom) which is a full on record for us, but leads me to this humble pony request: if the poster of the IRL meetup chooses "online" as the type of meetup, no notification memails get sent, and the meetup doesn't show in the sidebar on MetaTalk. Can we change that?

In a lot of the check-in threads, one of the common themes is the pressure of isolation, and honestly, the Sunday Night Japan Mefite Meet has been a pretty solid help for me, and (I'm assuming) for the other people who come. We're open to all (and Stancyk actually joined us from Ohio once!) but it's really, really easy to miss them as there are no notifications for the online setting, and no mention in the MeTa sidebar. If at all possible, I'd love for my pony to have:

1) an option for sending out notifications for online meetups by either time-zone or region. I get that adding a potentially spamable notification isn't maybe the greatest thing, but it would be nice to have some sort of way to get memails to people who might be interested in that.

2) placing online IRL meetups in the MeTa sidebar. This would definitely increase visibility somewhat, but then it also runs MeTa being a part of the site that maybe people don't visit as much (though maybe that's changed?).

Ideally, my pony would have both of these things, a lustrous mane, and fire breath, but I guess I'd settle for the getting added to the upcoming cue.

In discussions with some of the Japan Mefites, we've talked a bit about how this might be a good time to raise the IRL profile a bit, especially in regards to online meetups. As it stands, advice from the mods has been to not tag it as online, but with various folks taking up the posting duties, that doesn't always happen, and it would be a help if the process was a little clearer or easier to use. Obvious there's a ton of things going on, and priorities don't always mesh, but honestly, I think this is sort of a timely thing, and could increase the overall user experience.

posted by Ghidorah to Feature Requests at 8:11 PM (11 comments total)

Heya! So this is something frimble has been looking at reworking, since, yeah, the new "online" variant for IRL meetup posts was originally conceived as a sort of location-independent thing for which location-based notifications wouldn't make sense.

I don't know a timeline on that and frimble can probably provide a better picture of it when they're next available to check in, but it's something that feels like it'd make sense to support and we've talked about figuring out a good solution to.

The MetaTalk sidebar bit I think is tied to the same bit of coding; we can probably get it changed so that online meetups show there, it's just an exception case that needs to be actively handled.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:14 PM on June 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

This is a lovely pony, one I will feed apples, for I want very much to partake in a Zoom meetup if more happen!
posted by Kitchen Witch at 8:16 PM on June 9, 2020 [5 favorites]

While you're tinkering over there, I have another request related to our Tokyo meetups. A number of our meetups have been showing up as being held in Chiyoda City, Japan, while others are listed as Tokyo. There is no Chiyoda City Japan - Chiyoda is a ward of Tokyo, and the term is mainly used by the post office and the tax office - I've never heard anyone say they're "going to Chiyoda" in conversation.

I know the Google Maps API works in mysterious ways, but if there's any way to get proposed Tokyo meetups to actually say they're in Tokyo that would be great.
posted by Umami Dearest at 10:03 PM on June 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Oh, please for me too if you'd be willing to admit an Indonesia based MeFite occasionally.
posted by frumiousb at 6:46 AM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I would love to see another NYC crafting meetup online...i made a scarf. And some masks.
posted by sexyrobot at 11:17 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

I admire your very handsome pony!
posted by bleep at 11:34 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

I would love this. I’ve been itching to meet new people and all the better if they were MeFites in the UK Northwest that I might actually have a beer with one day!
posted by iamkimiam at 3:02 PM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

Would it make sense to have an option to do online meetings that aren't location specific? Since activity is so low- I wanted to post one but figured no one would even check IRL section anymore and it didn't make sense to limit it to just my city. There's no option to let the location be open.
posted by xarnop at 6:46 AM on June 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am in favor of

- enabling online meetups to somehow ping the same regional people
- somehow letting users know about this and then being able to expand (or shrink) their gepgraphic circle if they do/do not like this
- MeTa sidebar update to accommodate this.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 11:25 AM on June 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Would it make sense to have an option to do online meetings that aren't location specific? … There's no option to let the location be open.

Isn't this how it already works? When I posted Tokyo Online Meetup #9, I set it as online and didn't set any location.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 1:19 AM on June 12, 2020

Also would like this pony, especially as a member of the Tokyo meetup group!

The email notifications help me remember there's a meetup, even if they're weekly. D'oh.
posted by lesser weasel at 1:40 AM on June 15, 2020