MeetFighters News

Hi AllFighters,

Since last week, I have made some changes to how the World Map is generating the map markers. The markers are now hopefully laid out better. Previously it wasn't uncommon for some markers to appear in the oceans, these anomalies are hopefully gone, or at least, much less frequent. The markers also show the photos of members now.

Behind the scenes, I have done some work on detecting malicious users registering on our site. Unfortunately there is no way to eliminate this possibility entirely, but the new measures will help mitigate it. Your common sense is still required in detecting fakes. For instance, if you see "Fake Profile" on someone's "Recommendations" tab, maybe it's best to steer clear :)

Please vote about webcam chat!

– Admin

Hi AllFighters,

It's been a hectic week, and there are many updates, some more visible, some less so.

First, those who have been frequenting the Chat probably noticed that there have been problems and outages with the flash-based chat about 2 weeks back. It seems these problems have all been resolved now, and chat service should work as before. The lightirc guys were very helpful in trying to solve the issue. They had some serious hardware problems and had to issue a new version of their software to make everything work again. To all the guys who messaged me about chat problems: thanks for your patience and I hope everything is OK now.

This brings me to the second order of business: A webcam feature for the chat has been requested (and denied) repeatedly. However, with the new server infrastructure, it has now become a possibility. As with all things, there is a cost involved. I am not willing, at this time, to compromise the site's original purpose with a product tie-in or advertising, and therefore would like to continue to rely on donations. In the interest of encouraging donations, we are now accepting donations in British Pounds and U.S. Dollars, in addition to Euros. So, if there will be enough donors, I will make this webcam feature!

Would you be willing to donate for webcam chat?

Moving on, a lot of work has gone on behind the scenes to fight and prevent spammers. Long-time members might remember a few incidents about "lovely girls" registering and soliciting e-mail addresses from members, mass mailing hundreds before I could ban them. I am happy to announce that I have implemented a preemptive filter that, since its deployment 3 weeks ago, has caught another "lovely girl" from Senegal and a Nigerian scammer.

Other news:

• Thanks to wfszczecin we now have a Polish edition of AllFighters.
• Tracker/2010-04-02: There is now a login form at the top of the screen for convenience.
• Tracker/2010-04-19: There is a weekly newsletter with new profiles, blogs, etc. You can opt out by visiting your preferences.
• Tracker/2010-03-31: You can now quickly search for new profiles in your area, under the "What's new?" menu item.

That's all for today,
Admin out.

Last week was a busy one here at AllFighters HQ! Please read on and comment.

First, we finished relocating to a new data center. AllFighters is now hosted in London, and is hopefully faster, has better network connection and will have fewer outages than before. This is made possible by a few donations we've received in the past months. Thanks everyone.

The move went pretty smoothly, but like all big changes, there were, and probably still are, some issues. I am fixing them as soon as I'm aware of them, so please, if you encounter a site error, drop me a note!

Second, there's a new feature that notifies members of certain things, such as favorites logging in or somebody inviting you to Chat. Personally, I hate popup windows that appear on some sites, so I chose a relative visible but unobtrusive floating panel with a red dashed border.

Finally, I'd like to ask for your input regarding another site matter. As you (probably) know, AllFighters has a very simply worded Terms of Service. It's much less legalese than the Terms of Service on most other sites, and for the most part, it simply says "don't be an ass". One particular term, however, forbids uploading of X-rated photos. There are a couple of reasons for that:

• First it's a legal matter: there are some very unpleasant local laws that adult websites must comply to.
• There are enough dating sites on the net for naked pictures, and there is no need for AllFighters to become one of them.
• Trying to be friendly to members who are don't want sex , or are straight.

The reason why this part of the Terms of Service is problematic is that it is the least intuitive one. Probably some guys are out there thinking, "Well well, nobody has uploaded a photo of their dicks to this site yet! Time I fixed that". Or they aren't, but anyways, about one in every 20 or so new photos is explicit enough to be flagged by multiple members. (Big thanks for those who patrol the photo uploads so I don't have to!!) Once a photo is flagged by enough members, I click a button that makes the photo private and sends a carefully worded warning to the photo's uploader.

Simple, right?

For the most part it is. Usually, when someone receives this warning (and again, it is just a simple warning stating that the photo is naked, explicit or whatever), they just delete the photo and go on with their lives. Sometimes I get a small apology, or even some expression of appreciation for my work on this site. (I like those.) However, about one in every ten, goes into something I call "entitled, angry white thrash mode", explaining to me how they are right and everyone else (especially me) is wrong, and they will tell everyone not to use this site as it clearly sucks, and they will destroy everything I ever held dear (OK, that last part I made up).

My question to you is simple: how would you deal with them?

– Admin out.

Dear members,

Today I am closing one of the long-standing items from the Suggestion Box: the distinction between members who have had cyber/phone matches and members who had real-life matches. This was one of the highest-rated requests in the box, and finally it's implemented.

According to the original request:

:I think there is a need to distinguish between real and cyber in the Past Opponents feature. I had originally presumed that this would only be applicable to real opponents, but I had encountered some guys who had verified others as past opponents on the grounds that they had done cyber with them. I would like to be able to distinguish who had wrestled who for real. Thanks.

So what does this mean? It means that there is an extra category on a profile, right next to "Favorites" and "Past opponents": "Past cyber/phone opponents". I also made a best-effort attempt to reclassify some previous "past opponents" to "cyber past opponents". The way I did it was with an automated algorithm that mined multiple sources of data:

• The Chat for the past few days (i.e. asking for cyber on #allfighters, or visiting the #cyber room on numerous occasions).
• Certain information from profiles, such as "Not interested in cyber wrestling" or "Not looking for live meetings".
• If the member has "cyber" in his name.
• Most importantly, the network effect: past opponents of non-cyber profiles are less likely to be cyber profiles. In the end, AllFighters is a social network site, which is why this information weighed most.

At the end of the day, 350 of 5166 (7%) or all links were reclassified to "cyber", and less than 50 members had more than 2 links affected.

Please, visit your list of past opponents, and check if any of your links are badly categorized!

Both false positives and false negatives are easily possible, which is why I need you to check your links. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Thank you!

Move to a New Data Center

Soon (possibly this week), allfighters will be moving to a new datacenter, hopefully this will help us have a higher uptime, faster connection and better service. The move will make some future enhancements possible, the most interesting of which might be a video-enabled version of Chat. (This is not a promise for video chat, though. It might not be feasible in the end.)

However, the better hosting comes at a modest price. As you know, AllFighters membership is free, and there are no product tie-ins or advertisements on the webpage to offset operation costs. Please, if you can spare a little, donate to AllFighters!

Regards,
:– Admin out.

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.