MeetFighters News

Dear members,

There have been some visible and not-so-visible changes in AllFighters recently, and I figured it was time I wrote another of these news posts.

New Chat System

This is probably the most visible. The new chat system is based on flash, and will hopefully be more reliable and visually pleasing than the previous chat system. You can still use any of the old systems if you prefer; simply go to the preferences page, and select the chat system you like.

Photo Moderation

In order to make the system more transparent AND more economical on my time, I am now "[WikiPedia:Crowdsourcing crowdsourcing]" the moderation of photos on this site. As you might know, naked, shoking, sexually explicit, etc. photos are not allowed on our site.

Now, when you visit a member's profile or the list of photos, you can tag inappropriate photos as such. This will help me run the site more efficiently. Flagging such photos is anonymous, but doesn't automatically remove the offending photo. If a photo is flagged by enough members, the site moderators will deal with it.

Changing User Names

Right now, you cannot change your username on AllFighters. Once you create your profile, you're kind of stuck with whatever you entered at registration time. There is a reason for that: AllFighters is a social networking site. This means that once we get to know you as "SuperGrappler", that is who you are to us. If you change your name to something else, all the knowledge about you as "SuperGrappler" is lost, and we must meet you again with your new alias.

In short: name changes are detrimental to how the site is supposed to work. Sure, you could delete your profile, and create a new one with your latest and greatest name, but there are some drawbacks: You lose all your favorites, past opponents, recommendations and messages.

In order to balance the need for the social aspects of our site and the need of some members for a new alias, I am now considering the following: I would allow members to change their names, under two conditions. First, you cannot do it more than once a year. (I expect that for "normal" usage of this site, this shouldn't be much of a limitation.) Second: in order to change your name, you must pay a token amount, something like €20. There is rationale for this: if changing your name isn't worth €20, it was probably not very important anyway, and your current name will do just fine. More importantly, this is a small compensation you pay to the community (via helping me maintain the site), in exchange for our effort of having to adjust to your new name.

My question is: do you guys think this is worth exploring? Please, if you vote, also leave a comment stating why you feel that way.

So two days ago I have sent a mass message to every member about AllFigthers' birthday. Apparently when you send out 1700+ messages one day, you have a lot of catching up to do on replies on the next.

I'm happy to say that my little musing has has generated lots of dozen positive responses. I thought I'd share some of them here:

• "I have met and wrestled quite a few guys through this site recently and I have had positive experiences for the most part."

• "I work for a non-profit organization and deal with the public daily so I know the amount of grief that can come about from those who wish to argue and complain."

• Don't let the "entitleds" get you down. As someone who has organized wrestling parties, I have encountered a touch of the "drama" the entitleds bring to the table. One day you must share with me your efficient methods of dealing with them.

• [I]t has been fun to see and help the site to grow.

• "[S]hould you ever come to Mexico, let me know. It will be a pleasure to show you around and why not, even wreste you too!"

• "It's a great site and definitely the best wrestling meeting place."

• "I hope and wish there are many years to follow..."

And finally, one of the assholes chimes in. (A little background: there was an incident a few weeks back when an automated bot managed to register on the site and send off a few hundred spam messages before I tackled it.) This is the one guy has been bitching about this ONE spam message before, the only one that he got the whole year, and now he does it again.

• "The other day I got a spam email through this site from some girl talking about having intercourse with women, or something, which I deleted. I did not appreciate having to login on here to read that garbage. So obviously you are not doing anything to screen who is sending emails. The picture of the women wrestler is still onthe home page. Suffice to say, I am not thrilled with this site. Thank you."

The extra irony here (besides the obvious stuff) is that if I did screen the messages personally, his kind would never get to send one, ever.

That's it for today's testimonials. Thanks to everyone who has responded. You guys rule!!

Admin out.

Dear members and visitors,

I year ago today our site, AllFighters, opened its gate to the public. I would take this opportunity to send a quick message to everyone about, well, basically about my feelings regarding running this site.

As many of you will know, this site is not ran by a corporation, it pretty much started as a pet project of mine: building a wrestling/fighting site that is good. How far I have come toward this goal is sometimes a matter of lively debate on the Chat; my personal take is that as long as the site helps people sharing my interest get in touch with each other, it's a win. (Click that last link, it's a great mess but somehow still makes me proud!) I will try to do my best keeping the site running and improving its feature set. I will also keep the site free of commercial interests that might compromise the goal of becoming the best personals site there is. So, there will be no ads, no membership fees and no product tie-ins.

I would also take this opportunity to say that although the most of you have been great members and courteous guests, there have also been plenty of incidents that have made running this site a less than pleasant experience. Dealing with guys who seem to have infinite time to argue about stuff in the terms of service they have already agreed to... The "entitleds" who behave as if they were paying customers on a luxury cruiser... The jerks who seem to derive their sole pleasure from being rude online... Certainly these people are a minority and I have become increasingly more efficient at dealing with them, but oddly they still have the largest emotional impact on me. I guess this comes with the territory.

On the bright side: we have 1736 members, 4209 photos (3834 of them visible to all members), 917 positive recommendations, 145786 messages delivered, etc... Thanks for everyone who has helped me get this far: those who have encouraged me, those who helped with administrative tasks, those who invited others to join, and a BIG thanks to those who have donated. You guys are the BEST!

I also have a request to make: please make sure your profile is GREAT. If you haven't already done so, do these:

• Set your location on the map so people will see where you live. Simply selecting your country is not good enough.
• Upload some photos. Making photos mandatory has been a long debated issue. My take is that I don't want to force people, because there are some who might have a legitimate reason to avoid this. Making it a requirement would end in lots of fake photos by otherwise good guys who feel they are being coerced. However, and I cannot emphasize this enough: photos are important. If you are seeking new opponents, and want to be taken seriously: you need a photo.
• Complete your profile. Keep your height and weight up to date. Write a longer introduction. Tell people about yourself, who you are and what you expect. It's who you are.
• Write recommendations and mark your past opponents. It helps if people see that you have met others before and had fun. It's what a social network is all about.

That's about it from me, for now. Thanks for reading all this. A little more about things to come: battle reports, better management of past opponents (separating "real" and "cyber"), more search options and more...

Happy wrestling to you all,
Your friendly AllFighters Admin.

A smaller entry from the wishlist has been implemented today: when a member is online, you will see a small icon next to his name in the members list and his profile page.

Something like this:

Thanks to hashbock for the idea!

If you have time, please have a look at the Suggestion Box and rate the entries that are important to you.

The purpose of this site is, by and large, is to help our members get to know and meet others with similar interests. There are two steps for accomplishing this goal:

1. The system lets you find profiles that are of interest to you (and lets others find yours).
2. The system lets you get in touch with those profiles (ant lets other get in touch with you).

(I think we all know sites that fail at one or both of these.)

One measure of success is the first step, that is, how many profiles are there to be found, and the general quality of those profiles in terms of completeness, photos, etc. The other measure, and the one I'm getting at right now, is the raw number of messages exchanged between members. Well, I am happy to announce that this second measure, that is, the number of messages, has just passed 100,000. That's one hundred thousand messages that were delivered on AllFighters since its inception!

On an unrelated note: a small fix deployed today, will make sure that certain messages (such as challenges) are no longer sent more than once.

Also, the Suggestion Box now lets you rate individual suggestions and bug reports. By rating them you let me know how important (or unimportant) a given feature is to you, which in turn helps me choose ones to work on. Your input is appreciated!

Happy wrestling,
Admin out.