radius89

Thanks for the constructive feedback - I've addressed a bunch of stuff this week already but still some feedback including yours to go through!

> Also, the website has strong "vibe coded ui" vibes. I have no idea if that's the case or not, but the colors, the cards, the "x people online" pill, all just scream llm-ism, which makes me less likely to trust it.

It's likely my colour preference and the fact that tailwind is the CSS framework of choice for vibe coded UI's these days. Dark mode is likely also contributing to that feel but I'll be adding a light mode at some point as well.

> would like if the member map defaulted to my location

> Profile should have an edit button versus totally separate pages for profile and edit profile

> Custom social links would be nice, would love to have my github there

Great suggestions; consider these done (soon!).

I do need to fix the open in sidebar button - problem is the users are paginated to avoid loading them all at once so if they're not in the loaded list, this issue happens - need to find a better way around this. Thanks for flagging though!

Btw, anything in particular you'd like to see in a self-hosted version? Would you be using it for an individual group, or want to host multiple groups?

The Pro tier for organisers is all I have planned at the moment, for large groups or organisers who want more features. No plans for any ads.

An actual good idea! I'm keeping a note of this, thanks!

Not yet! I'm very interested in both, though - something I'm looking into. Stay tuned!

Thanks! Yeah that's on the horizon! I'm fondly reminded of the old vBulletin-style reputation squares [1] when I think of this - might be interesting to add something like that.

[1] https://www.theadminzone.com/resources/post-reputation-in-po...

Yeah, I've had a bunch of recruitment agencies and similar companies try to create groups - I'm mostly managing to flag those and keep them down with a combination of auto/manual moderation.

Regarding the messages - that's one reason I've opted not to have user-to-user DMs. You can DM organisers of a group, but all messaging outside that is public (on activities and groups for example).

> works really, really well with LLMs!

..and humans too! But yes, completely agree - if you stick with Rails' conventions, at least!

Thanks for the report! Should be fixed now :)

> I signed up and immediately pinned me in the UK

Thanks for the feedback! Did you by any chance set your location to London on sign-up? If you check the groups and activities page filter there are 5-100km distance filters.

Thanks! Yes, that's planned- a reputation score of some sort would be fairly easy to add, I think.

> but don’t use Facebook or discord because of the login wall and unprofessional vibes

Just to clarify, your improvement on the login wall is the suggestion you made earlier to allow forms to be filled out before login/sign-up, right? I've done this for groups [1] and activities [2].

[1] https://radius.to/groups/new

[2] https://radius.to/activities/new

Damn. Go start something :) - https://radius.to/activities/new

Thanks for the great feedback - much of which I agree with! If you think the UI is bad now, you should have seen it in 2024 :)

For context, I think many of the decisions I've taken have been due to a lack of activity to surface. I completely agree that there needs to be an /events page, but it doesn't make sense with the low volume of events right now (IMO, at least).

Fair points on the landing and groups page - I've tried to address some of those issues tonight.

> you could have a + button with a modal to draft it and only hit me with the login wall when I try to post.

Not something I'd considered, to be honest! I usually get annoyed when I fill out a form only to find I need to sign up to finish the process - maybe others prefer that? I've gone and added that for groups and activities (well, when my CI finishes). Events are dependent on a group (for now at least), so that's a task for tomorrow, I think. Thanks for this suggestion!

Yeah, early days still - mostly choosing to surface everything on the main feed until we have enough users/groups/events to be able to have city-specific pages, etc.

You can still filter by nearby, category, etc though!

Thank you! :)

Mostly due to the cold start/dead platform problem - I do plan on listing them more prominently but the critical mass isn't quite there yet, hence the focus on activities for now!

I'll add that to the list of use cases!

Fair enough - appreciate the feedback either way :)

What would make it “it” for you? Is there a specific feature(s) you think is missing?

> Seeing the activity flow made this click for me. I like that someone can just say “I’m cycling next week,” let people join, and figure out the time afterwards instead of creating a fully formed event upfront.

Thank you! Nice to hear this makes sense to someone other than myself :)

> Curious which has been the better wedge so far: bringing existing groups and their members over, or creating new local connections through individual activity posts?

I'll have to get back to you on that hah! I've only launched the activities this week, so we shall see!

> The problem with this is not technology- its the lack of interesting meetups i want to join in my city

Maybe! Or maybe there's more going on than you know about? A meetup I regularly attend now existed in my city for 9 years before I found out about it - they just had no good way to advertise themselves easily.

> Eg meetup at least has critical mass of users and meetups

It definitely does. That's part of why I've made the Activity [1] feature - to give individual users something useful to do even before we have that critical mass of established groups.

[1] https://radius.to/documentation/activities/post-an-activity

Are you on mobile? Click the filter and the "Nearby" button at the top under the location section :)

Thanks for the feedback! I see you did manage to post your activity in the end - nice.

The sign-up form only asks for name, email, password and a pre-filled location - there's some quick "Interests" selection after that, but I felt it was fairly easy/quick to fill out. Maybe I could move that out of the sign-up.

Which part specifically felt too complicated? I'll revisit it and see if there's anything else I can shave off or make it smoother!

> social media addiction people are already mentally statured

Yeah, I don't disagree! In a way, I'm trying to combat that by facilitating people actually getting together in the real world, through events, activities and shared interests. I've deliberately not allowed free-form text posts or DMs between users, so it doesn't just turn into another social media feed.

> why would someone switch from direct communication (WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups..etc)

Yup, I think it depends on the size and nature of the group. A meetup between friends probably doesn't need a web presence at all, and WhatsApp would be perfectly adequate.

For larger clubs or public groups that want to attract new people, though, there's value in having somewhere discoverable with proper event pages, recurring events, RSVPs, waitlists, calendars, etc., so that's who this is for.

Thanks very much!

So I think Luma is mostly focused on beautiful event pages (which they do well) and event calendars rather than the community/group itself being the core unit. In that way, we're more of a competitor to Meetup.com. I don't think a local cycling club would use Luma to organise a weekly cycle, for example.

Compared with Meetup, I'm trying to keep Radius a bit simpler and more flexible for organisers. Pricing is a flat £12/month for Pro groups, and things like our Events API [1], embeddable event widgets [2], calendar subscriptions, guest RSVPs and waitlists are all available for free groups as well.

There's also the Activities [3] feature I mentioned - not super applicable to you if you're an organiser but regular users might find it useful. You don't need to create or run a group at all and can just say "I'm going cycling Saturday, anyone want to join?" and see who nearby is interested. AFAIK, I don't think Meetup or Luma etc have anything like this.

[1] https://radius.to/documentation/api-reference/create-events

[2] https://radius.to/documentation/organizer-tools/embed-widget

[3] https://radius.to/documentation/activities/post-an-activity

https://radius.to/ - a Meetup.com alternative of sorts - with fairer organiser pricing for smaller groups. I posted a Show HN [1] here a while back, got tons of great feedback, and have been slowly improving it since, with little marketing. Planning a re-launch here soon.

Recently shipped lightweight events called activities, to allow people to meet each other more easily through things they're doing - i.e. "John is going for a cycle tomorrow".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40717398

Working on https://radius.to/ - a Meetup.com alternative of sorts - with fairer organiser pricing for smaller groups.

I posted a Show HN [1] here a while back, got tons of great feedback, and have been slowly improving it since, with no real marketing. Another Show HN is probably (definitely) overdue!

Current focus is shipping a "Meet people doing X" feature - i.e. "I'm going for a cycle today in Richmond Park - who wants to join" (independent from groups) so I'm excited for that. There are some UI examples of how that will look on the landing page.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40717398

Still working on https://radius.to/ - a Meetup.com alternative of sorts - with fairer organiser pricing for smaller groups.

I posted a Show HN [1] here a while back, got tons of great feedback, and have been slowly improving it since, with no real marketing. Another Show HN is probably overdue!

More recently, I've been working on adding features around meeting individuals/smaller impromptu groups over activities you're doing - i.e. "I'm going for a cycle today - who wants to join", so I'm excited to see how that goes. There are some UI examples from that on the landing page.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40717398

Hey! Wow, I knew about OpenTechCalendar but somehow hadn't realised (or likely forgot) how close to home it was! I'll definitely reach out for a chat at some point.

And thanks for the tips - I completely agree on the point about data being held hostage, and on the openness of data - it's one of the more frequent complaints about Meetup. I've recently added an API for event creation, so it won't be hard to add another endpoint for listings (at the moment, we just have an embeddable widget [1] showing your next 3 events).

ICAL is a brilliant suggestion - I've had a few requests for that already, and it's especially interesting in the context of opentechcalendar. I'm very interested in ActivityPub and all things fediverse as well - figuring out how to integrate these ideas into the platform is one of the next items on my TODO list.

[1] https://radius.to/blog/embed-events-widget-website