The problem of attention could easily be solved. No need to have a seperate 'Meetup' section. Use the discussion section, but just have a single thread and put all the meetup areas together in the title. So that instead of the current way, which is:
Meetup : Frankfurt
Meetup : Moscow, Now 2 Sigma More Awesome
Meetup : November Meetup (Second of Two)
Meetup : Durham NC/Triangle Area Meetup: Productive Other-Optimization
Meetup : Meetup Bolder CO
We'd just have:
Meetups: Frankfurt, Moscow, Atlanta, Durham NC, Boulder CO
Then the details of each individual meetup could be written down in the comments. This way would probably get even more attention, because of the reduced clutter.
Isn't that kind of what the OP is proposing?
Six out of the last 10 posts are about single meetups. And I care about none of them.
I will look into whipping together some kind of bot that periodically posts threads like the open thread or a meetup thread. Voice your opinion in the comments if you do not want me to do that.
That is all.