User talk:Mike Peel/Wikimeet survey

London perspective

I have been a regular at the London meetup for some years, have organised many London meetups as well as during my two years at WMUK quite a few other London events.

We have had many discussions about potentially moving from the Penderel's Oak on the second Sunday. However it has several things going for it:

1. It is quiet enough to hear people
2. We can always get a table (we use a pub in an area with lots of offices and few tourists, so it is much busier on other days of the week than it is on a Sunday)
3. The furniture is sufficiently flexible that we can expand to over 20 on a busy session and then contract back to half a dozen later in the day.
4. Unlike in a cafe we have never been asked to settle up and move on when there are lots of people nursing near empty pints.
5. They have several good real ales at prices that are "reasonable for London"
6. It is in a reasonably central location that works for people coming from a wide catchment area.
7. It is easy to organise events there - unlike a smaller pub or a cafe you don't need to book or reserve anything.
8. It is wheelchair friendly
9. They have reasonably priced food that works for both vegetarians and omnivores.

London attracts a larger crowd than most meetups, and though we have many regulars and irregulars who come several times a year we also have a steady flow of newbies and visitors from elsewhere, we have lost some regulars either through leaving the UK or for other reasons, but the quote "they haven't done well at attracting new regular attendees" definitely does not apply to us.

Fabian, Roberta Wedge, Johnbod, John Cummings and others have organised many other London events on different days of the week and different themes. We have established that you can get a successful themed mid week event using the WMUK office such as with Fabian's Wikidata events, and you can hold editathons on any day though Saturday is probably best. I'd add that a meetup is a great place to get out a laptop and show someone how to do something that can be taught in five or ten minutes, and I'd add that to the survey as one of the benefits of meetups (not as important a benefit as cross training existing editors is at editathons, but it can also take place at meetups). Many if not most London meetups will at some point involve one or more such one to one training sessions on PCs; I'm sure that every London meetup is used by several people to get advice on wiki based queries such as over copyright or other Wiki arcana. More complex things need more time, and dare I say a different sort of venue.

On the issue of inclusivity, yes the London meetup has a gender ratio that reflects that of the community. I'm not convinced that is because of our choice of venue, not least because there are other organisations that use the same venue and have a very different gender ratio. Many of the regulars at the London meetup have given up Saturdays and evenings of their own time to train at gender outreach editathons, so I'd hope if and when we find a solution to the community's gender imbalance the London meetup would find its gender ratio changing to reflect that. ϢereSpielChequers 12:50, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: Thanks for the comments, and sorry for the delay in replying to them! I've made a few tweaks based on these, is there anything else you think needs changing before the survey runs? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:30, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Mike,

The first point I raised above was "quiet enough to hear people" - could you add that as an option in "What requirements should a meetup venue meet?"? From long discussions in the London meetup about potential moves, I'm not the only person for whom that is a dealbreaker.

can you change nation wide to UK wide in "[check] nation-wide"?

The disability question doesn't specify whether you actually need those things or you think those things are important. I don't remember ever getting someone come to The Oak in a wheelchair, but I would be uncomfortable relocating to a place that was less wheelchair friendly. ϢereSpielChequers 13:07, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: Thanks! 1 & 2 are done. On 3, should we change that to "What accessibility requirements do you need a meetup venue to meet?", or some other phrase, or should we leave it ambiguous to also get responses from people that think these requirements are important? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 13:46, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

It depends what information you want. Asking people what accessibility requirements they have would give you data if you were thinking of making tradeoffs between different requirements. But would we be happy to make such tradeoffs? ϢereSpielChequers 20:03, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

OK, I'm just going to remove this question: wheelchair/hearing loop requirements are more about law than opinion. I've moved the "Child friendly venue" entry to the general requirements point. Diff at [1]. Thanks! Mike Peel (talk) 20:14, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Questions

The age bands are odd - over 66 is a much bigger band than any of the others.

Reasonably priced real ale, a decent vegetarian option and wifi are basics that you will find important to some people.

Rather than ask where people are and how far they would travel I suggest asking which of a list of city centres they would consider attending an event at - Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, London etc.

The opportunity to ask questions of other editors and to be shown how to use various tools and shortcuts is worth raising. ϢereSpielChequers

@WereSpielChequers: Thanks for the comments! In reply to your questions:

1. I tried to split up the age bands to see how many interested people are under the age of majority; how many are retirement-age; and how many fall under each decade bracket in between. How would you suggest defining them instead?
2. That's true. I've expanded the requirements question(s) to cover these; does this look OK, and are there any more requirements we should be asking about?
3. Hmm, I'm not so sure about this one. I'm not sure that meetups should always take place in city centres: they could take place in the countryside, e.g. half-way between two cities, or where there are groups of editors in a rural region...
4. Good points. I was hoping to have covered these under 'What activities would you like to experience at a wikimeet' already, but I've tweaked the answers accordingly - could they be improved further?

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Thoughts

Mike, the draft seems geared to those who already attend, not those who don't. You should have, as well as the "how many wikimeets" question:

• Have you ever been to a wikimeet?
• If not, what has prevented you or put you off? -list of options
• if yes/low number, then what has prevented you or put you off from returning? -list of options

• Thinking of the last Wikimeet you attended, how would you rate it for (five option boxes: very bad to excellent) the following:
  • location (easy to find, comfortable, cheap)
  • welcoming, friendly, inclusive
  • interesting talk
  • enjoyable

- and more along those lines. By the way, I'd use "meetup" as the alternative/preferable term. Johnbod (talk) 14:34, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Have a look also at the results of the meetup questions asked during the survey we carried out at the end of 2013 (it's a shame there wasn't a followup of the same scale). One thing that strikes me is that we need diversity of events - Katherine Bavage and I were having discussions about a "wiki after work" event on a weekeday evening in London. Someone else I was chatting to suggested that we hold a second London meetup, on the opposite fortnight, in a non-alcoholic child-friendly venue.

However, as someone who has been to wikimeets in many parts of the country (although not yet the Northwest) the key thing that drives attendence is regularity and publicity. If something is known to be every second sunday for example, you will get people turning up on the day they can make rather than not making it at all because they had a clash the one weekend a year. An option that we considered for the meets in the run up to Wikimania, but never got round to doing, was to advertise meetups in the local area as an informal way to meet experienced Wikipedians who can answer queries you have and give you a quick introduction. Local "whats on" type pages for example. Thryduulf (talk) 14:44, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I was going to start a 2nd London meetup on mid-week evenings for years, & really someone should do it. Commuters, especially longish-range ones, have commitments at weekends, or just don't fancy hauling themselves into town again. Johnbod (talk) 14:59, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

We did several evening events at Conway Hall and then at the WMUK office, some editathons and some training events. I don't think we cracked the problem of engaging with a different group of editors, most regulars who came were people we either see at editathons or the London meetups. I think it works for training events, but my impression is that those of our editors who work full time in central London are also the editors who don't have the spare time to get more deeply involved on Wiki. A weekend event works for more people, including those who work elsewhere in the south East and not in central London. ϢereSpielChequers 16:30, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

You need time to build up an audience I think, & editathons are a very different animal. The weekend works for some people, but in general central London out of office hours is crammed full of people doing non-work things, except for Sundays! Johnbod (talk) 17:49, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, we really need to distinguish between editathons, training events and meetups - they're three separate animals and what works for one does not necessarily work for the others -

• Editathons have the primary purposes of adding or improving content on one or more projects, people will likely learn things along the way
• Training events are principally about teaching, significant content work on the day is a bonus.
• Meetups are social events, teaching, learning and editing may happen but it may not. Thryduulf (talk) 22:08, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

• ↑ That. I'll (very) occasionally pop in to meetups if I'm in the area, particularly if the "attending" list includes someone I'm interested in meeting in the flesh or someone I haven't spoken to for a while and would like to see again. I would rather eat my own shoe than attend an "editathon", and I imagine many if not most of the "core" editor base feel the same way; for the casual editors who would like to find out more about Wikipedia, I suspect the reverse is true as they'd be happy to attend an event aimed at newcomers at which they won't feel out of place, but would be put off attending a meetup as they'd be concerned about looking foolish or making a cultural faux pas. ‑ iridescent 12:43, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

@Johnbod: Thanks for the suggestions - I've added the ones about wikimeet attendance to the list. I'm not so sure about asking people to rate the last wikimeet - that would probably depend quite heavily on which wikimeet they had previously attended, so I'm not sure it would actually provide us with a useful answer... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:39, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Finding the Wikipedians

We should probably have a question about finding the wikimedians in the pub etc. I normally have a Laptop up so the wiki label on the lid is facing the door, and we usually are at a table fairly close to the door other meetups include photos of the regulars. Having ways for new people to find us is probably one of the best steps we can make to avoid these events being cliquey. ϢereSpielChequers 21:37, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this is a problem that a survey question could help answer. I think most wikimeets nowadays have a WMUK banner on the table, or have people wearing Wikimedia-related T-shirts, or are otherwise locatable. People who are trying to find a wikimeet would look for those things, or would ask around in order to find the group. Or are you meaning, we should be trying to include people that came to the meeting location for another reason? Either way, what kind of question were you thinking of here? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:43, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Katie sent me one of these. I include that pic on all Oxford meetup pages, see for example m:Meetup/Oxford/32#How to spot us. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:12, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I also have one of these. This seems to be part of the next step beyond the survey, rather than something that needs to be asked about as part of the survey. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:22, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I was thinking it might be useful to ask potential or very occasional attendees which methods they preferred. ϢereSpielChequers 22:58, 23 August 2015 (UTC)