MeetFighters News

XXX Galleries Are Here

As promised in last week's news post, and previously voted on here and discussed here, XXX Galleries are here. Members can now post their not-so-family-friendly, NSFW photos in their profile galleries if they so desire. More power to them. However, this is not a "core site feature"; there are two limitations:

• Viewing these photos full size requires a donation.
• Members who check "I do not want to receive XXX-rated photos" in their profile settings will not be shown these photos at all.

Regarding Virtual Profiles

Last week, I asked you about Virtual profiles. The news post sparked an interesting discussion too, I thank everybody who took the time to give their opinion, legal advice (that really happened) or just gripe about toe topic.

Based on the comments, I feel that my intention was somewhat misinterpreted. The intention was not to eliminate the type of person who would consciously and deliberately mislead others. That is a different sort of animal that needs a more nuanced approach than a new profile category. The intent was to let those who just want to chat and cyber be honest about it without retribution, more than anything.

In any case, the poll is now closed, and the results are in:

I interpret these results as a no to Virtual Profiles. I suppose it is still possible for someone intent on cyber to enjoy the site, by adding the related interests to his profile, so there's that. I want to run a site that is enjoyable for all members, scammers and spammers excepted.

What is Coming Next?

I have been making some incremental improvements and fixes to the new message page. It is fairly feature complete now, I think it is a big improvement over our previous offerings. It is now the default mail page for mobile users. Please let me know if you find bugs or have difficulty using it.

That's all for this week.

Hello everyone,

The day finally came when we reached 10,000 members. That is cause for celebration, so please pour yourself a glass of your favorite beverage, whatever that might be.

I won't be going on about how much I appreciate the help of everyone who helped make this happen. If you care, you can read about all that here. Enough said. I want to talk about some of the things I'm planning for the near future, instead.

Feature updates

I want to deploy the new Beta message center sometime Real Soon. It's coming along nicely, just needs some finishing touches before I'll make it the default mail page. The old message page will remain available for those who prefer a more traditional interface, at least for now.

The "erotic galleries" that were mentioned here and here are coming at the end of the month.

The mobile app is currently on hold, because the developer is otherwise engaged, but despair not: development will pick up again and we hope to release a 1.0 version at the end of summer.

Virtual Profiles

Fake profiles continue to be a problem. They are systemic in sites such as MeetFighters and eliminating them completely is far from trivial. My estimation is that about 5% of all profiles here are fake in at least one of the following senses:

• Stats stated differ radically from those of the profile owner.
• Photo is not of the profile owner. (Apparently posting photos found on the web sounds like a great idea to some.)
• Country / city in the profile is not where the profile owner lives.

Obviously these profiles will be not be meeting anyone here for real. So what do they want? "Cyber wrestling" continues to be a popular entertainment (at least 7.5% of members likes cyber wrestling, my estimate is that the real number is around 10%. I must state that there is nothing wrong with cyber talk, if that is what someone enjoys.). Some fake profiles just want to fuck with people, or enjoy some attention that they are not getting in their normal walks of life. The rest want to give the site a try before they create their real accounts.

The site rules are rather strict against fake profiles. You can get suspended for posting fake information or web pics in your profile. Etc. Unfortunately this does not make the problem go away, they just try again with a different identity until one day they slip under the radar somehow. So I've been thinking about finding a solution that makes more people happy. (Obviously I cannot accommodate everyone.)

I am proposing a new category of profiles, I call them Virtual Profiles. The rules for "Virtual Profiles" differ from regular profiles in a few key concepts:

• It is allowed to have multiple virtual profiles. (Article 5 or the Terms of Service prohibit the operation of more than one regular profile.)
• Virtual profiles can post any photo, webpics included, provided that they bear no copyright marking of known production companies or modeling agencies. Virtual profiles will not be suspended or otherwise sanctioned for posting "fake photos".
• Virtual profiles may not have any past opponents (they may have cyber past opponents only). This should be obvious...
• Virtual profiles may not have nor write any recommendations. This is a direct consequence of the previous rule.
• Virtual profiles may not use abuse flags, nor can they be flagged for abuse. (None of the regular abuse flags apply to these profiles.)
• Virtual profiles may not post location information in their profiles. They belong to cyber space.
• Regular profile owners may choose to block incoming messages from virtual profiles.
• Most importantly: virtual profiles may not, under any circumstances, suggest that they would like to meet in real life. That's not what they are for and for a virtual profile to do so would be a scam. (Doing so will be basis for suspension.)

So, what do you think? Keep in mind that this is an attempt to "legalize" some "fake profiles" and help everyone. The idea is not to punish, but to enable while keeping the original purpose of the site intact. This new feature will also allow me to better deal with fake profiles: I can simply convert them to virtual profiles, and everyone is happy. (Maybe. I don't know.)

Do you think Virtual Profiles are a good idea for MeetFighters?

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Admin.

Hello everyone,

I have some small updates that, put together, warrant a news post.

First, there is a new Photo Management page that is similar to the old one, but hopefully faster and more intuitive. You can simply drag your photos around to put them in your profile or your gallery. Saving is automatic. I wouldn't say it's perfect, but a big step up from the clumsy old interface.

Second, beta testing of the new Message Center continues. It still lacks a lot of features, including automatic updates and localization, but it is largely functional. Enjoy it. :)

Additionally, I have added a "Report member" button to profile pages. It's for reporting Terms of Service violations, so please don't mistake it for a "teacher billy was mean to me" button. I hope it won't be needed too often!

I've done some other small fixes, speed optimizations and minor enhancements. If you look closely, you might notice. :)

Your humble servant,
Admin

Quick summary: Please check your gallery and the new profile fields to make sure they fit your preferences.

There's a bunch of new features coming out this week!

New Profile Options

• Tracker/2015-01-18: You can specify the gender of the person you are looking for (male, female or both).

• Tracker/2015-03-16: You can also indicate your sexual orientation (straight, bisexual or gay). There used to be similar checkboxes under "Interests" ("I'm gay", "I'm straight", ..), but these were somewhat confusing. Some members checked all three of them, just to cover all the bases. Well now the bases are much more straightforward to cover. :)

• "Pool wrestling" and "Oil wrestling" are no longer under wrestling styles. They have been moved to Interests instead. It makes more sense: these are neither olympic sports nor broad categories.

• The Interests have been organized into some broad categories. There's also bunch of new interests, please check them if you fancy them:
  • "Practicing techniques" (replacing "Practicing holds")
  • "Competing (tournaments)"
  • "Only interested in stand-up fighting"
  • "Not interested in stand-up fighting"
  • "Karate"
  • "Taekwondo"
  • "Capoeira"
  • "Ninjutsu"
  • "Stakes"

Update on the Galleries

As discussed here, new galleries are coming. Starting a month from now it will be possible to put your erotic photos into your gallery. The system has automatically placed photos that were uploaded as visible but later moderated as erotic into your gallery. If that is not what you want, you can move them back into your private folder. You have until the end of April to do so, should be plenty of time. (Photos that were uploaded as private will remain private.)

This means that photo classification is a little different now: "Erotic content" and "Private only" categories are now separate. It should be easy enough to get used to for those who help with classification. Speaking of which, photo classification has been rewritten to be more smartphone friendly. Try it, see if you like it any better than before!

Android App

The alpha test of the MeetFighters mobile app has started! Read more about it here.

Other changes and new features

• Tracker/2013-03-12: You can now see a list of profiles that you have visited. The list is accessible on the "Who has seen my profile?" page.

• We have moved to a new Content Delivery network called KeyCDN. The previous one (CloudFlare) was cheaper and provided some very nice features. Unfortunately their implementation of HTTPS (secure HTTP) was incompatible with Google Chrome running on older Microsoft operating systems, leaving some members unable to connect. My attempts at working around the problem have been unsuccessful, so a switch to a new provider has become necessary. KeyCDN's HTTPS implementation does not cause similar problems.
  
  The unfortunate fact is that HTTPS is a necessity on the modern internet. We can no longer rely on HTTP when sending passwords or other potentially sensitive information. MeetFighters is dedicated to protecting our membership from snooping and other forms of attacks.

Admin out.

Hi everyone,

Chrome Error

In the past few days, members visiting with Google Chrome browser were reporting a site certificate error. My research on the topic (meaning I googled the error code) revealed that this is a bug in the Chrome browser that only manifests on operating systems that were not upgraded recently and cannot handle the ECDSA certificates that are used by CloudFlare, our content delivery network. Unfortunately fixing this is beyond the scope of this site, so for now I have re-enabled insecure http connections.

If you are still experiencing a problem with your Chrome browser, please clear your browser cache. You can do that by going to Settings -> Show advanced settings -> Clear browsing data, select "the beginning of time" from the dropdown menu and check "Cached images and files".

XXX Gallery Votes Are In

Two weeks ago I asked questions regarding XXX galleries. The votes are in, and the results are quite interesting. I read lots of interesting and insightful comments on the topic. Big thank you to everyone who contributed to the discussion!

As always, I calculated both the "raw" vote percentages and the "weighted" vote percentages (weighted meaning that votes are multiplied by the number of past opponents a person has).

The twist here is that XXX photos "win" the majority of the votes, but "lose" the majority of the weighted votes.

• People with fewer past opponents crave XXX photos more.
• People with more past opponents are less interested in XXX galleries.
• There are fewer interested in posting their XXX photos than those who would keep their privates... private.

My interpretation of the results is:

• The results are close enough that there is no consensus on XXX galleries.
• The picture is further blurred by the fact that there is a basic difference of opinion between "highly active" and "low activity" members. The difference is so pronounced that the weighted result is the exact opposite of the unweighted result.

My decision is: XXX galleries are coming, but they are not going to be a Core Site Feature. This means two things: first, XXX galleries will be configurable: anyone will be able to turn them off in their Site Settings. Second, similar to videos, XXX galleries will be restricted to donors and members with 10 or more past opponents. The intention is not to draw on people who just want some porn and not really interested in Meeting Fighters. Since porn is already in great abundance on the internet, it would follow that such tourists would look for their sugar elsewhere.

Over the course of the next few weeks I will introduce some updates to the Photo Management page that will allow people to select their XXX photos for publishing. Shock photos and copyrighted photos will not be sharable. I am also considering adding gallery folders to the mix. We'll see how it goes.

Mobile App Timeline

I have an update on the timeline for the MeetFighters mobile app.

We'll start with an "alpha release" on the 5th of April in the form of a downloadable Android package. This will be distributed to site members willing to do some testing and giving us useful feedback. Based on your feedback, the first Android release will follow on the 19th of April. An iOS version of the app is in the planning stage with no release schedule yet.

That's all for this week! Feedback is welcome.
Admin