MeetFighters News

This site news article contains information about changes in the messaging functionality. Please read on to see how it might affect you!

Dear members,

When you visit your inboxes, you will notice a new link at the top, labeled "Download all messages a .zip file". This is, in fact, what the link is for: it lets you save all your messages on your computer. Please don't forget that (unless you have donated) starting next month old messages will start expiring; this new feature will give you an easy way of preserving them.

Also, the message history page now shows the contents of the messages between you and a given member, hopefully simplifying your conversations.

– Admin out.

Hi everyone,

Hopefully the performance problems that the site has experienced in the past week are now over. This is the largest website that I've ever created; I am learning new ways of improving performance as I go. It's all very exciting from an engineering point of view!

On the plus side, I am fairly confident that the present software and hardware will comfortably scale to a few hundred online members.

Thanks everyone for putting up with the slowdowns.

– Admin out.

This site news article contains information about changes in the messaging functionality. Please read on to see how it might affect you!

Messages

Since its creation, AllFighters has helped deliver over 360,000 messages. This is great as our mission is helping fighters get in touch; one way to measure success is how much communication we have facilitated. However, some of these messages were never deleted: either because they were unread or because a member likes keeping old messages. This has caused the message database to grow very large.

To mitigate this, starting in July, messages older than 90 days will be purged from the system, whether they were read and replied or not. For convenience, I will be creating some way to download your entire message history.

Donating members will not be subject to this, and will be able to retain their old messages as before.

Reflection on Incomplete Profiles

It's been a week since the site rules have changed, prohibiting members with incomplete profiles from initiating messages. The intention of this change was creating an incentive to update and complete these profiles. I am happy to report that this has been a huge success, with over 300 profiles completed in the meantime. This is almost like 300 new profiles. :)

As expected, there were a handful of guys who tried to weasel their ways around the restrictions by uploading drawings, photos from known production houses or dogs. Thanks to all those who helped flag these images so they could be quickly dealt with!

Small Fixes

I have fixed a bunch of small entries from the suggestion box:

• Tracker/2009-09-23: The member ticker doesn't display the same member twice in a while. Donating members appear more frequently in the member ticker.
• Tracker/2010-05-18: Certain instant messages are now properly translated to the recipient's language.
• Tracker/2010-05-10: The recommendation help is updated to reflect site changes.
• Tracker/2010-05-12: It is now possible to go to your next/previous message without returning to the message list.
• Tracker/2010-05-30 2: You can now delete all your messages with a given user quickly.
• There is a new help page that hopefully addresses common site usage issues.
• Additionally, there are two new photo flags: "duplicate" and "not a personal photo".
• There is a "Translate" button on profiles and recommendations.

If you have ideas or suggestions, let us know!

Hi everyone,

Following a rather lively discussion of my previous blog entry about providers and consumers, I have made the changes outlined in that entry. It would have been good to get more feedback from those who have incomplete profile, but there's been two weeks for that, and I can't wait forever.

Basically this means that if your profile is incomplete, you won't be able to initiate communication on the site anymore, until you fix your profile.

Profile checklist

• Make sure your height and weight are set correctly.
• Mark at least one of the styles.
• Upload at least one profile photo. (Private or gallery photos will not do.)
• Write an introduction for yourself.

What functionality is unavailable if my profile is incomplete?

• You won't be able to initiate messages or challenges. (You can still reply if you receive one.)
• You won't be able chat.

Can't you make an exception? I really can't upload a photo!

No. I am sorry!

If you need computer help, try to get some from your friends. I'm fairly certain you can do it if you really try. Also note that your photo doesn't have to be an ID photo.

There are actually two exceptions: members who have donated are exempt from the restrictions above. This is not an attempt to get you to donate, though! This is a simply gesture to those who have encouraged me and helped the site; it would seem unfair to suddenly make the site they have helped no longer work for them.

The other exception is that you can always send a message to me, the site administrator, so you can ask for help if you need any. :)

– Admin

:This is a longish post, but please read it as it might have far-reaching consequences about this site as we know it.

In the roughly one and a half years that AllFighters has been up and running, we have grown from a dozen guys whom I have invited personally to a radically larger community. I never actively advertised the site, other than posting a link to some of my youtube videos, because I was, and still am, in favor of organic growth: word of mouth. I still remember the first times someone has signed up that wasn't a friend-of-a-friend, and thinking: "how the hell did this guy find us"?

Since then, google has picked the site up, and now you can find us easily with some well-crafted search terms. This has led to a steady growth in membership, and brought on problems that a purely organic community never experiences: arrogant fakes, entitleds and other weird folk. Some of these problems can be mitigated with careful tweaking of site features, including listing of past opponents, recommendations, and the like, but they cannot be eliminated entirely.

One of the issues that I feel is concerning is the growing number of incomplete profiles. Let me stop for a moment to explain what I think makes a profile complete: correct height/weight, some styles selected, an introduction and at least one profile photo. Some of these are obvious: since this is a wrestling personals site, the most important thing a lot us us will be looking for is compatible guys, compatible being defined as those who share similar styles to us and are comparable in size. (There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, but it should be clear that missing information in this department is detrimental to the usefulness to the site!) An introduction is important for conveying personal information and preferences that cannot be expressed with the styles and interests fields of the profile, and also the mere fact that you spent five minutes writing a few lines helps establish a certain degree of commitment.

Finally, a photo is important, and I cannot stress this enough. The database indicates that profiles with photos receive 500% more initiated communication (challenges and messages that are not replies) than profiles without. This means that you can increase the site's usefulness to you roughly fivefold by posting a single photo!

Unfortunately, the percentage of incomplete profiles has increased with the site's growth. It has reached a level that is detrimental to the use of the site. A short analogy: The stock market has "liquidity consumers" (traders who buy or sell at the present "best price") and "liquidity providers" (traders who buy or sell at a price that they set themselves). The providers are who make the stockmarket work by setting stock prices, and they take a certain risk in doing so; the consumers are at less of a risk, always buying/selling at an optimum. If the volume traded by consumers outstrips that of providers, the stock market has serious problems. To counteract this, most stockmarkets charge a little bit extra to the consumers and give it to the providers. They create an incentive to provide liquidity. (I know this is oversimplified.)

In a similar fashion, members here with complete profiles bring content to a personals site; people without are going to be browsing through that content and taking their picks. Clearly, for a healthy site, the providers need to be in larger number than the takers. For this reason, I intend to make some careful changes to the site to encourage the completion of profiles. Nothing as radical as banning incomplete profiles; just some adjustments that would create incentives to finally write that damn introduction.

What I have in mind is quite simple: if your profile is incomplete, you cannot initiate contact. You can still reply to challenges and other messages sent to you, but in order to seek out other members, you have to show us something first.

In recent days, I have Chatted with some guys with incomplete profiles, trying to get hear out their reasons. Here are some of the reasons I heard so far:

• "I don't really know what to write as an introduction." This one is easy: think of a reason why anyone would like to wrestle you, and write about that. Write about what you enjoy about wrestling, what connects you to a site like this, or what you are seeking primarily.
• "I have relatives / employer / friends, and I don't want them to find my photo on this site." You can make your photos restricted, so only other site members can look at them. Also, some members have been very creative at cropping or blurring their faces on their photos.
• "I don't have time to do the photos and introduction." But you have time to write and reply to messages? Come on.
• "I am technically challenged, I don't know how to make and upload digital photos!" Fair enough. But we live in a century where camera phones, webcams and the like are everywhere. Ask a friend to help you out. In fact, most places that develop films can scan them for you.
• "I have photos on another site." That is great for that other site, it's this site that I'm concerned about.
• "I can send photos by e-mail." Great, so you have no problem sharing your photo? Might as well upload it, or wait until someone who already has done so contacts you.

I am sure there some with a very valid reason for not uploading a photo. For instance, I have been chatting with a guy claiming in his profile to be from Germany, who was actually Chinese. So I get it: oppressive government, concern for personal safety and freedom, etc. But let's be frank for a moment: how did he expect to score a meet if his location was off by half the globe? Hurts me to say it, but my site just might not be useful to someone in his position...

So, here we are. Thank you for reading all this. I would love to hear your thoughts about all this, so please leave a comment.