This sounds like mostly an issue of bad user communication and expectations setting. Most meetups are communities, not someone's personal fiefdom or mailing list. If the organizer disappears, the community should be empowered to keep the group running. But meetups could have been created for all kinds of reasons and it would be pretty horrifying to be able to purchase Dave's family BDSM group.
Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
21–30 of 129 posts
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#22> meetup.com thinking our meetups would be destroyed at some point That seems naive, you created a meetup on a free platform that is built to bring users together. You are just the initiator, you don't own the community.
> free platform
It's not a free platform. It's $15 to $24/month, depending on the location of the group owner.
https://help.meetup.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001620472-Organ...
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#23It used to be possible to delete a group: https://support.google.com/developergroups/answer/7378020?hl...
I did it myself a few times. However, maybe that is not possible anymore?
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#24not to anyone willing to pay then, right? only in cases where the organizer has gone awol
Yes, if it is abandoned (notice that word in the title), the meet-up is available to anyone willing to pay
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#25This sounds like mostly an issue of bad user communication and expectations setting. Most meetups are communities, not someone's personal fiefdom or mailing list. If the organizer disappears, the community should be empowered to keep the group running. But meetups could have been created for all kinds of reasons and it would be pretty horrifying to be able to purchase Dave's family BDSM group.
It's not a miscommunication, it's a crass monetization.
At the very least, Meetup should require existing members to opt-in to the transfer.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#26This is by design and it happened to the HN Paris meetups I co-organized a decade ago. The new owner was a sales person and completely ruined it by spamming the list and creating new events that were just a cover for sponsored talks/hackathons :(
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#27They've been doing this forever, and this is a core concept in meetup
It doesn't require payment. It's free to any of your old members.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#28They have been doing this since at least 2009, which turned me off on using the site for organizing. My advice is to strip out everything that belongs to you or you paid for if you are uncomfortable with a stranger using your previous efforts without input from you.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#29> meetup.com thinking our meetups would be destroyed at some point That seems naive, you created a meetup on a free platform that is built to bring users together. You are just the initiator, you don't own the community.
Creating a Group on Meetup is not free: https://help.meetup.com/hc/en-us/sections/360000203492-Organ...
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#30I am a multiple meetup organizer and owner on meetup.com and I find it actually great that the meetup can stay alive if the organizer stop to pay. Your communities are not owned by you. Also, they don't give subscribers infos but just "an access" to send them email communication to the list, not the "list" with email list etc...
Maybe they're moving their community to a new platform. Christ, controlling a meetup group is not where running a community ends.
In that case it’s a moot point, but on the other hand we have had so many past examples of community “owners” shutting down their community out of spite. The community needs to be able to control their own destiny with or without the founder.