On Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:38:07 +0000, WereSpielChequers wrote:
Ive been attending London Meetups for over three years, and
anecdotally Id say there was a high correlation between repeat or
even
regular attendance at meetups and editor retention. Of course it is
possible there are some editors who spot us, leave the pub and stop
editing..... I also think that the "typical wiki career = 18 months"
myth that was quoted a few years ago is long gone.
What I dont know is whether meetups are more attractive to the older
editors who have settled on editing as a hobby and have a very high
retention rate and less attractive to the younger editors with their
shorter retention rate. Though obviously pub based meetups do exclude
those who are clearly below the legal drinking age.
As for advertising meetups in ways unlikely to reach newer editors,
nowadays all UK meetups are advertised on peoples watchlists via geo
lookup. So we get a mix, and some of the editors we get are quite
new.
But Id agree back in the days when it was only advertised on Meta and
invitations to people with London userboxes the London Meetup was far
more cliquey. In some of my first meetups I was in minority as being
a
non-admin, nowadays most attendees are not admins.
WSC
At least from my impression, Wiki meetups are also used for those who
want to establish themselves in the community and use their real life
connections to get more editors voting for them or supporting them in
certain situations. As an example, this does not seem to be a
coincidence that four highly successful RFAs this year on English
Wikipedia came right after Wikimania, whereas we were generally
struggling this year with reasonably good editors having their RFA
rejected.
I know users who did not manage to pass an RFA with many comments of
the type "I do not know this guy". Then they started to show up at the
meetups, and the second RFA was successfull.
As an anecdotal case, I know a highly successful Russian Wikipedia
editor who used a wikimeetup to physically assault another editor she
disagreed with. She was fully supported by the organizers and apologized
barely a year later.
Cheers
Yaroslav
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