MeetFighters News

On a brighter note, there is a new site feature, called the Match Request. Enjoy! :)

Dear members,

Unfortunately I bring you sad news for the otherwise happy new year. Last month, one of our members has died in a fight, apparently one that he has arranged on this site. The news reports that I have read are a bit sparse (and sometimes downright wrong) on details, and a police investigation is ongoing, so I am not in a position to go into details.

This really made me think hard about safety, and what I could have done to prevent a tragedy like this. Now the deceased was an experienced fighter, who has been practicing various combat sports and MMA since childhood. He knew and loved fighting better than most of us. There's little advice or warning that I could have given him that would be of use. I also realize that this site has facilitated lots and LOTS of matches, none of which have ended in tragedy during the three-year existence of the site, until now.

Still, I have a feeling that I had an indirect role to play here, and so, I'm thinking about what I can do to promote safe fighting. As usual, any tips are welcome. Let's try to deal with this constructively, without over- or underplaying the issue or scaremongering. This is both an isolated incident and a wakeup call.

Site updates follow:

• The Chat system has been upgraded; it now supports international letters better. It also has a webcam feature! (Flash only.)
• You can re-activate your e-mail address by requesting a new activation code. This is useful if your e-mail address was bouncing and the system deactivated it.
• A bunch of small, behind-the-scenes fixes.

On an unrelated note, Happy New Year!

After a day of gradually more and more severe performance issues, I think I managed to nail what was causing it and fixed it. I hope I'm not jinxing that :) After some software and hardware tweaks, the site is now running faster than ever!

Other than this, there have been a number of small and medium changes:

• Upside down and sideways photos can be rotated now after upload (Tracker/2011-11-24).
• Fix for searching for city without selecting a country in Advanced Search (Tracker/2011-09-02)
• You can now delete your blog entries (Tracker/2011-11-29).
• The Admin bot on Chat no longer repeats itself when a user uploads several photos.
• A small update to the site's appearance (better looking headings).
• The videos page now shows the latest uploads.
• You can now turn of individual "logged on" notifications for your favorites (Tracker/2011-08-22).
• The flash chat has been upgraded, it solves a bunch of issues related to international characters (Tracker/2011-11-13 2).

I am now working on a calendar project, mostly for my own use. If it becomes mature enough, I might end up incorporating it in AllFighters too. Stay tuned...

Also, season's greetings and Happy New Year to all! :)

Admin out

Greetings gentlemen (and you very few ladies),

I'm bringing you the latest site updates!

• General performance optimization. The site was just getting slow in the rush hours!
• The Message list can now show your unread messages (in fact, this is now the default).
• Tracker/2011-10-16: Changed the wording of the "Gay" "Straight" and "Bi" interests to describe the profile owner ("I'm gay", "I'm straight", "I'm bi").
• Tracker/2011-09-18: Fixed a bug that prevented members from changing their blog settings.
• Some miscellaneous tweaks to the Help and Support and Photo moderation pages.

– Admin out

The poll for what should happen with the "mild" moderation category has closed and the votes are in:

• 549 votes for leaving it as it is
• 312 votes for merging it with the "clean" category
• 80 votes for merging it with the "xxx" category.
• Also, 31 suggested that we eliminate the need for photos altogether. Better luck next time! ;)

Another interesting statistic is to add up the number of past opponents for the voters in each category. In this strange form of "weighted democracy" we get:

• 4646 votes for "Leave it as it is."
• 2213 votes for "Merge it with the "clean" category."
• 605 votes for "Merge it with the "sexual content" category."
• Finally 110 votes for "I disagree with requiring photos in exchange for full access to site features."

So, yeah, the "mild" category is here to stay. So say we all! (Actually, so say we most.)

After reviewing the results,

I started thinking about how I can make the moderation process a little bit easier for both the moderators and the photo uploaders. The poll validated my moderation categories (most voters agreed with what we have), but I still had this feeling that the process was too difficult.

What I have came up with is similar to the existing system in mechanic, but different in look and feel. Each moderation category now has a bunch of small pictures that serve as templates. For example, here's the "face sitting" pic:

To view this, and all the other drawings, check out the new Photo Moderation page. (The "Suggestive pose" drawing is my personal favorite. :)

How does this help the moderators? It now gives them a menu to choose from when moderating a photo. The menu is in order of precedence, so it is now clearer when one has to choose between "mild" (e.g. undies shot) and "gallery" (only the waist is visible); in this case the "gallery" wins because it has higher precedence.

Also, the new moderation page shows the photos larger than before, making moderation easier and more fun.

How does this help the owners of the photos? They (hopefully) get more timely and consistent moderation. Also, they get some indication about the reason for the moderation their photos receive (e.g. "your photo was placed in the gallery because it only shows you from the waist down, please upload a more complete picture").

Let's see how this works out...

– Admin out.