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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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This posting is in general response to several comments made in various threads. There have been some voices of balance, sanity and reason, however:
1) "Inactive" Profiles
Those who rush to complain about user "inactivity" might just take a brief moment to consider what "active use" of the site actually includes, e.g. maintaining existing contacts, recommending the site to others, verifying genuine players known from other sites, forums contributions, etc.
Nonetheless, the "logic" of some would clearly "reason" that a webmaster, for instance, who may spend a lot of their time managing / improving the site, for others, for free, supposedly makes less of an active contribution to the site than someone who benefits from such selfless generosity and uses the site, for free, solely to arrange their meets.
We know some people currently having a baby - by some users' "logic", they should be "punished" for the months out they are taking from playing to devote to this happy development by being expelled from the "community" - charming.
2) Auto-deletion of inactive profiles.
As pointed out repeatedly by e.g. sugarxspice , soldiers on extended tours of duty abroad, for instance, may not be able to log in for months on end, notwithstanding which some users would clearly appear to think that putting one's life on the line to help keep them nice and safe back home (and able to play, incidentally) should be rewarded by being kicked off the site after a few weeks.
A sensible compromise idea, taken up by SJ & Mark, is auto-hiding an inactive profile after a reasonable amount of time (say between 1 and 3 months?), so that it doesn't come up in searches, but refraining from deleting profiles for much longer (at least a year?)
As was further pointed out by another user, a profile can be kept "actively unhidden" by simply logging in and straight out regularly, no matter that the user concerned may never actually make any kind of real active contribution to the site anyway. Such a user causes far more inconvenience to others than one who only logs in to make a genuine active contribution.
3) Hidden Profiles
The site offers this very welcome feature, to every user, for reasons that come under the umbrella of PRIVACY.
Those complaining about members who make use of this feature might care to try and explain in any sort of rational way how demanding "their absolute right" to view people's vital statistics, preferences, friends list, photos, etc. at any time that might suit them and against the wishes of the owner(s) of the hidden profile is any less of a violation of privacy than those who copy profiles / pictures for uses not intended by the profile owners.
Complaining about hidden profiles while at one and the same time braying with "righteous indignation" about data / pic collectors, etc. is just hypocrisy.
4) Slow / inefficient searches
More than a few users complain that things like (1) - (3) above slow down the search process and/or returns results of no use to them.
The same people presumably complain daily to the likes of google, yahoo, microsoft et. al. about the intolerable number of seconds an Internet search takes and/or all the results those free search engines return that are not just exactly what they wanted to find for their own purposes? No, thought not.
By far the most likely cause of a slow search is one's computer being clogged up with needless and redundant crap and/or running an unnecessary number of applications simultaneously. I've already posted some advice for sorting this out; the irony is that those who complain the loudest are probably the least likely to make any effort to find, read and/or follow it. Apathy it seems rules the day - "someone should do something about it - just so long as it's not me".
5) Compulsory verifications.
A variation on the same old tired theme - the site owners/administrators should take it upon themselves to provide an absolutely infallible verification system (er - impossible) and profiles that aren't verified with verified photos to boot should be excluded, if not from the site altogether, then certainly from search results.
If users want to impose criteria such as not contacting an unverified profile / with unverified pics, that's up to them. This is no different from setting other criteria for themselves e.g. won't contact / meet smokers, etc. That's quite a different thing to "reading the riot act" to other users because the make-up of their profile doesn't fit your search criteria - you may as well as insist, for example, that all str8 couples be banned from the site because you're only interested in meeting bi-fem couples. And one similarly assumes that you'd be OK with being chucked off / excluded from search results yourself because another user only wants to meet single fems?
No, thought not again. If searching a site is really just such hard work and huge inconvenience to you, why not just remove yourselves and let those that are willing to make some effort alone?
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This posting is NOT by way at "having a go" at members who have made reasoned suggestions for improvements to the site, nor at those who happen to disagree with us. The forums are supposed to be for debate - a frank exchange of views and opinions.
However, there is a very real difference between making proposals aimed at stimulating debate and "dictating" to other users / site admin how things "must" be changed to the benefit of yourselves regardless to any damage / hurt / insult to others.
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