Tons of famous Wikipedians will be there.

I think part of the reason is the "Unlimited Soda Pop".

I wish I could go, but I have prior commitments to have my toenails clipped and I'm also dropping off our accumulated plastic grocery bags into one of those recycling barrels at the supermarket.

I could have bummed a ride with Sageross, too.

They'd have loved to see you there Greg. Just imagine the welcome you'd get!

(PS Why is this in bureaucracy?)

Wow, an all-star line-up! Miss Clin, Mr. Brad, Mr. Randy (not the one from Boise), Dan "How I Won the War" Rosenthal and (pause for the kodo drum pounding) the two-and-only Kat Walsh!



Wow, Pizza Buffet! In a great food town like DC, this is the best they can come up with? In honor of the kid in Africa, they should be dining out at this super Washington establishment!



I live less than hour from Sage -- I should stop by his house to borrow some beer.


Oh, WTF -- let's crash the party! We know where it is and we know what these characters look like. Come on, if Tareq and Michaele Salahi can do it, why can't we?

All if favor of crashing the party, raise your hoofs!

Even if I lived next door I wouldn't go. I don't care what other wikipedians are like in real life, and neither do I have any desire to meet them. I only care about what they're like when I come across them editing. not eating and drinking.

Pseudonymously offering to provide a ride is probably a good way of obtaining private time in a situation in which you exercise a high degree of control with people who are too young to have a drivers license. A more prudent project might be concerned about that.

I probably shouldn't have laughed out loud when I read that, but I have to admit that I did. Not because I think you're wrong, but because I think you're right.

Going to an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet with Gmaxwell, CydeWeyes and JamesF sounds like a real hoot!

I've been invited to attend many meetups before, but never managed to get round to going to one. Not sure if I really want to as it is.

Oh, come on -- this is WikiBureaucracy at its best, in the national capital of bureaucracy, no less!

Anyone else notice the irony of visiting the Library of Congress? Jimbo's Wikia is supposed to be "the rest of the library"! I wonder if there's a Yu-Gi-Oh! section in the LOC?

Oh, come on -- an "Animal House" style food fight with the Wiki elite? Really, who wouldn't want to give a Moe Howard-worthy pie toss to some of these people?

I see Carol Moore is there; I know her from Libertarian Party conventions going way back before Wikipedia existed.

There was supposedly going to be a Miami meetup this past weekend, but it never managed to get together.

Well I'm going to the London meetup on the 17th

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/London/29

I'm sure I'll get a resounding welcome.

Hey, I'll go if you do... I imagine the pair of us turning up would be the Wikipedia equivalent of a strippagram at a Requiem Mass.

I think it could be quite a constructive meeting - people find it quite difficult to be the loonies they appear to be on line in person.

It could also be an interesting bit of research because having made that comment, there are signs that the corrosion of common sense that occurs online does seem to leak into the real world.

What exactly do you mean by that?




http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?titl...4&oldid=1782411

The food looks great, however.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:London_meetup_10.JPG

Lots of things

However, the main point is that most normal people are far more reasonable in person than in email so you should be able to have constructive discussions about things that trouble you and be heard - it is quite difficult to reproduce a pile-on like on Wikipedia in real life.

Most Wikipedians come across as quite odd when you look at the way they conduct themselves - most normal people simply don't get involved once you try going to the admin pages expecting common sense.

Yeah, it's a Wetherspoons which usually does good food.

Do the Wikipedians look great too?

The Wikipedians look lovely.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wik...07-01-02_02.jpg

Yes, there are a lot of great restaurants in DC, so I wonder why they're choosing Uno? I assume because it's near Union Station it makes traveling easier for out-of-town attendees, Uno has lower prices than the more upscale restaurants around the downtown DC and Capital Hill areas, and pizza is a food that most people can eat.

I'm hoping that's sarcasm, otherwise your tastebuds must be severely impaired.

Agreed

I wouldn't have minded turning up to the 17th meeting, but it's a Sunday. Why hold a meet-up on a Sunday, crazy.

Nerd doesn't usually do irony, so I was puzzled by that one. Yes, Wetherspoons is famous for the horrid nosh.

I know the Penderels Oak quite well; it's a generic Weatherspoon shithole but (as with most Weatherspoons) the food is excellent and cheap.


Don't agree at all there. For the price Wetherspoons food is probably the best value in central London; I'd agree with choosing somewhere as cheap as possible for something like this, so as not to make the unemployed/kids/retirees (all over-represented on Wikipedia) feel unwelcome and priced out. Besides, if you're having it in central London and don't want a sit-down restaurant, the choice is pretty much between Wetherspoons and McDonalds.

Ok, for central London you have a point! But there raises another question (and apologies for going way off topic, this is meant to be DC, not London!) - why hold it in central London? Anywhere in London, or just outside, is just as easy to get to.

I can't - it has cheese on it!

I ate at The Monocle once, and also the Capitol City Brewing Company a couple of times - those would probably be the most convenient places to Union Station, at least as far as places I can recommend are concerned. The Monocle would be way too pricey for WP'ers, of course.

(Edit) Oh, and I forgot, some friends once dragged me to the Tune Inn (on PA Ave. SE) - I wasn't impressed, and it's on the other side of the Hill from Union Station, but it was surprisingly cheap for that part of town.

I'm seeing cheap, I'm not seeing excellent. Perhaps it's the Sunday roast with gravy thing I am seeing in the foreground. I can deal with Sunday roast home-cooking style, but at a pub....

Sorry again to be de-railing the DC thread.

Relax, Petey...nothing wrong with de-railing a thread

All I know is that when it comes to setting up a meeting at a restaurant, you have to ask yourself: do you want something that is classy or something that is cheap? If I am going to sit down for a meal with a bunch of silly people, I don't want a silly meal.

If Eva knows the pub well and says the food is excellent, I'm sure it probably is.

Something that is edible would be fine.

I couldn't care less about the quality of the food, but the coffee had damn well better be drinkable.

And the quality of the ale might compensate somewhat for the quality of the company.

But then, you couldn't do alcohol, could you. I mean "think of the children", exposing them to pornography, stalkers and legal culpability may be one thing, but not to ale.

If we ever have a WR meetup in Tokyo, I think I can promise a restaurant with good coffee (the Japanese take their coffee very seriously), fairly good ale (I think the mainstream Japanese beers are overrated, and they're lagers, not ales), and great food that doesn't have cheese on it.

Uno? I ate at Due once, but I really prefer the other Chicago chains. I wish they would open up Giordano's more places, but most people would just complain about the stuffed pizzas.

Seeing as I live a block from Uno's, I probably will make an appearance, but yes, I do wish they had selected a better location palate-wise.

The food at Duo is really nothing like the food at the franchise locations; I don't think they're even under the same ownership anymore. Unfortunately for the poor saps going to the meetup, Duo's better. Then again, Washingtonians have no appreciation for good pizza.

Oh for crissakes.

If any of you fine citizens goes to either of these meetups, please, take photos of the guilty parties, and share them with the rest of us.....

How many Italian-numbered pizzarias did they start before they standardized the franchise name as "Pizzaria Uno" like the name of their first one? If they hadn't done this, then people who ate out at a lot of different branches would get some lessons in how to count in Italian; they'd be somewhere way up in the hundreds by now.

It needs to be somewhere fairly near Euston/Kings Cross/St Pancras, as so many of Wikipedia's UK editors live in the North. Since under Boris's New Covenant the transport network in London and south-east England generally grinds to a halt at 2359 on Saturday and doesn't restart until 0600 on Monday, it limits itself to walking distance of the stations; Camden and Islington places are too noisy for people to talk. I think they chose the right venue under the circumstances.

An interesting demographic I missed. Really?

[edit - we ought to have a separate 'London' thread really] If the King's X thing is the reason, why not Bloomsbury area which is famously studenty and has some good pubs. Or Fitzrovia which is the other side of Tottenham Court Rd and which has the famous Fitzroy Tavern? A long time since I went there but it apparently still has good food. Holborn on a Sunday is the middle of nowhere.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&source...ved=0CAgQnwIwAA

At Cambridge Meetup 3, we did go to a pub with good food (The Free Press). There does seem to be some correlation between good food and real ale.

They have... depends on who you consider to be guilty of course though.

Guilty of liking the food.

[edit] And of crimes against fashion. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wik...07-01-02_02.jpg

Oh hell yes. Look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Greater Manchester#Participants, for instance, and see how many of the "power users" are listed there.

There is a negative correlation between London and good pubs. Sadly.



Suggests a different thread on Wikipedia demographics. What do Wikipedians do? Where do they live? Not that I want to compare the North with the U.S. mid west, heaven forbid, but is there any corresponding inner-outer American division corresponding to the North-South one we see here?

(Although the mid-west is traditionally conservative whereas the left-coast is not, but it is the other way round in Britain).

Two. (I've eaten at both of them)

Pizzeria Uno is actually pretty good by WP corporate article standards(1) but still... that's damning it with faint praise.

1- which are low

That accords with my understanding, which also jives with a WP talkpage comment.

EDIT: looked into this. It seems that the original locations were owned by Ike Sewell (who supposedly invented "Chicago style pizza") until he died in 1990. His widow sold these original properties to the franchising corporation headquartered in Massachusetts by 1992, but the president of this corporation promised not to change the food at the originals, and he has reiterated this promise several times over the years.

Hey, what's the deal here? This came and went with nary a hiccup of attention.

Any embarrassing photos online to share? Any reports from the front on what took place?

Not really, no incriminating photos that I am aware of or interesting table talk.

Phooey! No scandal? No hypocrisy? No pictures of Brad frolicking in the Tidal Basin? Wikipedia is getting to be as dull as Facebook.

I wound up being out of the country that weekend, but I'll be doing a seminar on some BLP issues at the New York conference this Sunday. (Unfortunately, the conference has wound up being scheduled directly opposite the Jets game, so attendance may not be what it should.)