Meetup City Finder
Data
city comparison visualisation
SHOW HN2016
How HN took it
3 positive, 7 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 9 critical, out of 21 comments about the project. Thread score -0.23.
Idea: 2 for, 3 againstPerformance: 0 for, 5 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Cool idea and nice UI
From 1 comment
This is cool and a nice idea / UI, but it seems to bubble up populations centers. Needs to normalize for population somehow. (https://xkcd.com/1138/)
erex78 on HN
Surfaces regional cities with strong groups
From 1 comment
Very cool. I haven't looked at what Meetup has available for an API but I've rarely ever seen its data used as a way to find out about a city, even though it's a great way to…
danso on HN
Objections
Biased toward large population centres; needs normalising
From 2 comments
This is cool and a nice idea / UI, but it seems to bubble up populations centers. Needs to normalize for population somehow. (https://xkcd.com/1138/)
erex78 on HNUsually (taken from erf/error based on sample size), something grows proportional to the square root of the sample size. If using raw sample sizes, you can apply a square root to…
baccheion on HN
Meetup is a poor data source for interest-based questions
From 1 comment
I think meetup.com is a fairly poor data source for these kind of questions - even if the data was normalized. Interested in Coffee? Seattle is better then NY, but is way less…
timothycrosley on HN
Results skew toward US cities
From 1 comment
Doesn't work very well for people who don't want to live in the US. For every topic there are exponentially more American meetup groups so even if I insert tons of topics related…
lumberjack on HN
Some topics return no results or wrong results
From 2 comments
Agreed - the results don't make much sense. And some topics don't even show up. "Startup" or "Startups" doesn't get any results, even tho there are many such Meetups. The results…
rexreed on HNIf I put in anything mah jong related it removes all the previous topics and resets the page. I've tried with 'mahjongg' and 'mah jong'. Though 'mahjong' seems ok, it just…
angryostrich on HN
Requests
Normalise by population or percentage of city engaged
From 2 comments
I agree with erex78. The former measurement doesn't tell me much; I already know what cities have the most people. The latter measurement better indicates the probability of a…
theli0nheart on HNYou could have a toggle where you divide by the overall population of each city. So basically let the user switch between percentage and absolute. Another ranking to consider is…
erex78 on HN
Fix slow loading and browser compatibility
From 2 comments
I can't tell if this is getting hammered right now or I'm not using it correctly. I put a topic in and nothing happens... It did work for one topic after a while, but I'm not…
arcticfox on HNIn my case, Mac El Cap, FireFox will briefly load a topic and immediate reset the page. Safari appears as a giant no-op.
dbcurtis on HN
Boost rare interests in ranking
From 1 comment
Usually (taken from erf/error based on sample size), something grows proportional to the square root of the sample size. If using raw sample sizes, you can apply a square root to…
baccheion on HN
Questions
Was the data scraped or taken from the API
From 1 comment
Cool! I've used meetup to meet people while traveling and it's gone really well. I've thought about making a tool for that. Did you scrape meetup, use their api, or is there a…
cheriot on HN
Alternatives named
Eventbrite
From 1 comment
Very cool. I haven't looked at what Meetup has available for an API but I've rarely ever seen its data used as a way to find out about a city, even though it's a great way to…
danso on HN