MeetFighters News

Hi everyone!

The last weeks were very busy, with relatively few visible changes. Most of them involved fine-tuning the new photo moderation system, including better and more helpful messages to members who don't yet have a profile photo, displaying the number of photos with moderation pending, etc. Our moderators (we have about 150) have been doing a spectacular job helping classify the ~9000 photos that were uploaded to date. Most new photos get properly classified in a matter of hours, sometimes minutes. Thanks everyone!

In other news, we now have a Portuguese localization of AllFighters, thanks to LanderJJ.

My recent work has been directed to bringing you a distance-based search option. Basically the idea is that you can use Advanced Search to search within a given (say, 100 kilometer / mile) radius of your primary location. This option is, of course, only available to registered members.

Admin out

Before I go into what I have in mind here, let me share a little background information.

As you might have noticed, the photos on AllFighters are moderated. There are multiple reasons for this; first and foremost complying with local laws, that are rather pointlessly try to make the internet "family friendly". Second, it is a matter of choice and direction where I want to take this site; I want a site more about the physical aspect of manly combat than a fantasy realm or simply a dating site. If you want a dating site for guys, I'm sure you know where to find one; this one here is a personals site specialized for fighting.

Simply put, I simply do not want a bunch of pornographic photo thumbnails to appear in the member ticker every time someone opens the site.

Unfortunately, this has lead photo moderation to become the worst point of friction between site administration and a segment of membership. While most of the photos are OK, there are some that are not, and once they are uploaded, we need to deal with them. Dealing with them involves sending a warning to the member, which is not a good experience for either party. And then this goes back and forth and it would seem that some guys just have to upload their extreme crotch closeup photos, no matter the price.

Personally I think the site is being misused because it can be misused; a perfect system is one that doesn't offer a bad option. So, I started thinking about a system that both promotes the site's original goals, mitigates the problems of the previous system, gives people more of what they want AND reduces my daily workload.

So, Where Do We Go From Here?

Here's my latest idea for dealing with photo moderation, modeled after the movie classification system that most people would be familiar with:

1. The process starts when a member uploads a photo.
2. The freshly uploaded photo is "UNCATEGORIZED".
3. A number of veteran members are given the right to categorize photos. They can see the list of "UNCATEGORIZED" photos, and quickly categorize them.

The proposed classifications are:

1. "XXX" (Nudity, obvious sexual act, cock/ball grabbing or S&M.)
2. "Softcore" (A photo that shows a closeup of the crotch, ass, or otherwise lets you make an educated guess as to the endowment of the depicted person. Also photos that depict something that resemble mating more than fighting.)
3. "Clean" (General audience; no nudity or explicit content.)
4. "G with face" (Same as above, but also shows the face of the person)
5. "Gallery" (Drawing, closeup of shirt that shows no personal traits. Also, a photo that shows more than one people where it is unclear which is the profile owner. Also, a photo that is obviously not the profile owner because of a difference in age or build. Also, any photo bearing a logo of a video production company.)
6. "Softcore Gallery" (Both "Gallery" and "Softcore" apply.)

In turn, photos with a given classification can be used in different ways:

(1) can only be shown in gallery

Private photos behave as if they were UNCATegorized

Softcore Callery is same as Gallery, except only registered members can see them.

Have a look at the recent moderations page for a few examples of each category.

There are some benefits to the new system:

• The new "Softcore" category is a middle ground between "moderated" photos and "Clean" photos.
• More people can get involved in photo moderation.
• No more administrator warnings for photo uploads!

Unfortunately the system will have some drawbacks as well:

• A freshly uploaded photo might take a while to be properly categorized, forcing new members to wait a few hours before they can make full use of our site.

So, what do you think?

Today I am closing one of the oldest unsolved entries from the Suggestion Box: it is now possible to search for a specific city or area within a country. For example, you could search for Parisian members only within France. This can, of course, be combined with other search terms, like you could search for guys from Manchester who have access to a ring.

I have made a related change to the advanced search feature: if you select multiple interests, only members who have checked all of them will be shown. It makes more sense this way; compare searching for someone who likes body punches OR is not interested in cyber to searching for likes body punches AND isn't interested in cyber.

I have added a new interest: if you fancy arm wrestling, you can now mark that in your profile.

Another new feature is the Top Members page, which shows the top ten members in six categories: most fans, most favorites, most recommendations written and received, and blocking / blocked by most members. Like the other site statistics, this page updates daily.

Also: the photo list page received a nifty new feature: hovering the mouse over any of the thumbnails will instantly show the larger version of the photo (requires JavaScript).

Last but not least, there is now a limit on the number of times one can suspend his profile; the limit is high (10 times per year) and probably will never affect 99.9% members. This and was introduced to prevent a rare kind of abuse.

This is all the news I have for now. If you enjoy using the site, and been using it for a while, please consider donating to help pay for the costs of maintaining the site!

– Admin out.

Dear members,

There's one major new feature this week: you can now save your search settings and see the results again without having to re-enter your search terms. To save a search all you have to do is name it before you click on "Search", by entering something into a text box above the "Search" button. Thanks to munichsubfight for submitting the idea to the suggestion box!

I am happy to announce that the first iteration of the sockpuppet hunt is now over. There are a few left over, and I have few doubts that some more will come at future times. Consequently I will repeat the hunt every two weeks from now on. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it. Of course, I got a whole bunch of messages in the aftermath, most of them supportive (from regular members), some of them unhappy (from puppet masters). I even got one threat of legal action in the process. (Getting these is part of running a site like this, it's not the first and certainly not the last. One day I will collect them and publish them in a book. Ah, the memories...)

Sadly, the first iteration of the Sockpuppet Hunt has also resulted in one mistake: I have erroneously marked badladuk and biglad69 as sockpuppets. This is not the case, and I apologize to them both, and hope they forgive this incident and will continue to find our site useful to them.

– Admin out.

This post is on a topic that potentially affects us all. It might be a little long, and a bit technical, but I urge you to read it and join the discussion.

Today's post is about a special kind of fake that I call sockpuppets. A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an online community. Simply put, it is a "secondary" (or, in some cases, tertiary) profile created by a member, that poses as a different person. The reasons for creating a sock puppet usually are:

• Adding to the credibility and legitimacy of the master profile by marking it as a past opponent, occasionally with a stellar recommendation, or just mentioning how great they are in correspondence and chat.
• Gathering personal information about other members without giving away any.
• Simply messing with people. One typical form is creating a sock puppet that is far sexier than the average, and using it to "reject" people who have previously rejected the master profile. I guess this is a form of revenge or faux self-validation.
• Cybering, possibly with potential future opponents, to learn more about them.
• (There are probably more. Some fakes' minds are more twisted than others.)

The one thing in common in all these reasons is that they are deceptive and are detrimental to any online community.

The First Incident

The first sock puppet incident on our site happened about a year ago. What made it particularly interesting was the fact that the puppet master was a respected member, with lots of real matches, past opponents, and a long list of recommendations. Still, he felt the need for a sockpuppet, and "they" gave each other glowing recommendations, and the sockpuppet was frequently gushing about how great a guy the other one was. It went so far that the real guy was talking about the sockpuppet in real life conversations. Clearly, it was a lie that went too far, spiraled out of control and took on a life of its own.

I was a bit unsure what to do about it. Granted, I could've closed both accounts, informed everyone who was deceived by the sockpuppet and be done with it. However, since the guy was actually genuine and had many matches, and as such was a "good" member, I decided not to rush it. When I confronted the puppet master, I had three requests:

1. Confess to all the members he has come into contact with using the sock puppet.
2. Post a public apology to our members for your conduct in his blog.
3. Delete the sock puppet account.

The following lengthy messaging and finally a telephone conversation I had with him, funnily enough, followed the Five Stages of Dying:

• Denial. It wasn't me. You have no proof.
• Anger. I will sue you for "Defermasion of charactor" (sic!).
• Bargaining. Can't I just slowly "retire" the sockpuppet, maintain the illusion and make him go away?
• Depression. OK, that was maybe not so, but the rest fit so well.
• Acceptance. In the end we compromised: he could skip the public apology, but had to explain himself to everyone he deceived on this site, and delete the sockpuppet.

The Scientist Takes Over

The way I found the first sock puppet was kind of simple: someone ratted him out. Not taking the word of one over the other in such a sensitive matter, I started thinking about how sockpuppets can be detected on a site like AllFighters.

Finally I decided to use something called Pearson's correlation formula, using certain "traits". I chose a bunch of traits based on the site logs that characterized the way someone used the site. In the interest of not giving a formula for getting away with sock puppetry I will not describe the exact traits I chose, but sufficient to say that when I ran them through the correlation formula, they showed the sockpuppet and the master to be the same person. (I would like to note that even if I was to describe these traits, it would be difficult to evade detection.)

To put the formula in simple terms, it says that, two things are the same if they

• Commonly share traits that are otherwise uncommonly shared among the rest of the population.
• The traits observed on a given time period predict shared traits on another time period (extrapolation).

For example, two people sharing a unique browser is a strong correlation, but sharing a very common browser is not, because there are many others who are using it. Or, logging in from the same AOL proxy is not correlation because AOL proxies are typically shared by a whole region of people.

Long story short, the first puppet master was found with what satisfied me as mathematical accuracy. At the time, my little correlation algorithm hasn't identified any other sockpuppets, so I put it to rest.

Which Brings Us to the Present!

Fast forward one year and about 2000 members. This morning I found a message from a concerned member, asking me if "ultimatewrestler" was real or not. Imagine my unsurprise when I found that "he" wasn't. I dusted off the aging sockpuppet detector, ran it, and was a little shocked to find that things have deteriorated significantly in the past year. It found about a dozen of sockpuppets right away.

My question to you, as a community is this:

How do you think I should deal with them?

Please, no knee-jerk reactions. Think this through. No throwing out babies with bathwater.

Your insight comes here: