[Baypiggies] Contact info at Meetup regarding http://www.meetup.com/BayPIGgies/ problem

[Karen Dalton]

All,


If you want to regain control of the Meetup, the previous organizer(s) 
need to contact Nicole and her team on the Trust and Safety team at 
Meetup at abuse at meetup.com.


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This chain of events was really unfortunate.

Personally, I am highly dependent on Meetup to learn about different 
software development talks going on in the Bay Area. One of the amazing 
things about the Bay Area is it is such a rich environment for learning, 
exchange of information, and networking...but without a unified resource 
like Meetup is is really hard to find them.

I posted on a thread on the Meetup page discussion board (no longer 
accessible to me because I haven't paid the fee: 
http://www.meetup.com/BayPIGgies/messages/boards/thread/49464471) before 
everyone got thrown out that I was concerned that the Meetup was going 
to charge $20 per person per year...and at that time there were ~1200 
people on the group. It seemed like an enormous amount of money that 
needed to be collected. Some reasons on the listed on Meetup for the 
group "needing" those funds were to essentially reimburse the 
coordinator (?!).  I was removed from the group because I didn't pay the 
fee.

I know that many individuals in the community likewise use Meetup to 
find opportunities to learn, and while some groups do charge a fee for 
teaching events I knew that Baypiggies did not. There was no explanation 
for the sudden change from free to not-free, and others seem to be 
bothered by it. I knew that other people trying to just learn about 
Python could be being duped into what seemed like a scam...especially 
after all the talk on the mailing list.... and it made me mad that 
people would be abusing good-hearted developers who wanted to learn and 
connect...especially newbies in the community.

I took the initiative to reach out to Meetup to see what next steps 
might be (hopefully this didn't step on anyone's toes but I wanted to 
alert Meetup about possible fraudulent activity [the group's display 
name changed this week but still included the same casing BayPIGgies as 
if it were part of the original group])...basically because I didn't 
want people's money to be stolen by unscrupulous people misrepresenting 
an association when there are so many great resources around. Although 
Silicon Valley is seemingly an area of great wealth, the cost of living 
is quite high and there are people in the impossibly expensive Silicon 
Valley for whom $20 (possibly misspent) can  make the difference whether 
or not they can eat (students, early startup coders, etc etc). Honestly. 
If someone wanted to start a new Python group that would be fine to 
me... but to ask 1200 people to suddenly give $20 without consent from 
the group seems unsavory at best.


The reply from Meetup:

"Hello Karen,

My name is Nicole and I work on the Trust and Safety team here at 
Meetup. Thank you for taking the time to write in. I would be happy to 
look into this further; however, we need to hear directly from the 
previous organizer of the Meetup.

If you can have them reach out to my team directly at abuse at meetup.com 
we'll be able to conduct a limited inquiry and take the appropriate action.

Thank you again for bringing this to our attention.

Sincerely,
Nicole
Trust and Safety Specialist
Meetup HQ"


Again, my sincere apologies if obtaining this info regarding next steps 
stepped on anyone's toes ...but hopeful the Meetup group once again can 
be a resource for sharing Baypiggies events again.

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-Karen

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