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