@Toby Cryns - Yes, they're clearly evil for wanting to pay the meetup.com fees for you, group all the local meetup groups together to help improve the listings and ability for people to find meetups, grow the local communities, and provide free resources to allow local meetup groups to have better and more interesting meetups and such.

If you don't want to join up, then don't. No huhu. Presenting people with a form they can use to request to join in is hardly overly demanding. They ain't shutting you down or anything.

In the long run, it would be pretty cool if all information regarding WordPress users and user groups and communities and WordCamps and everything else was consolidated, no? It would be pretty cool if people could visit a new area and quickly find people with similar interests and people to work together with and local communities to help with support and such. Getting communities on board with that and using a central space is step 1.