MeetFighters News

So... Trial users... Who are they?

It is my new term for people who have just registered here, but they haven't uploaded a photo yet (or they have but their photos are just not good enough). They really get the short end here, don't they? No initiating messages, no sending challenges, no chat, nothing. On top of that, they get messages about photo moderation and how the photos they uploaded are just not gonna cut it here.

How did it all begin? It began two years ago, when I wrote about Providers and Consumers. It was written at a time when people who didn't bother to finish their profiles started to show up en masse, and went straight to the chat annoying regular members. They are the ones who never bother to check out someone's profile and just start asking and endless stream of pointless questions. Granted, back then the site was much more liberal (I didn't even require one to write an introduction at registration time).

After that, the site became a lot more demanding: complete your profile or no chat. Post a photo or no messaging. It made sense, but it also made the site very unfriendly toward new members. In the long run, this unfriendliness has turned away many people who would eventually post their photos and become site regulars, if only they got a better first impression.

So: I am instituting a small change in the site policy: trial users can initiate 5 messages per day. They can still reply to messages without limit. In turn, it is now possible for regular members to block these messages from trial members. Just visit your Administration page.

A related change in site policy is that members with 10 or more past opponents are no longer considered trial members.

Other changes since the last site news:

• The French localization of the site has been updated. Thanks to ladron fr!

• You can now create a bunch of "canned messages" to send (donating members only).

• The Statistics page now treats the USA and Canada as one country (previously each state and province was listed separately). It also shows now the top donating countries. I wrote a separate blog entry about the new insights, like how generous the UK guys are or how few members are from Africa.

• You can now download your private notes in a .zip file. It is also possible to sort your private notes by date.

• Rearranged profile pages to show all the "action buttons" at the top.

• The "who has seen my profile" link is back on the main menu by popular demand.

• Mobile browsers are now automatically detected and presented the compact site view. This can be overridden on the Administration page.

• Defunct fight venues are displayed differently on the list.

• Search results are displayed faster without a page reload.

• For photo moderators, the number of photos to be moderated is displayed more accurately.

• It is now possible to edit your comments for about 10 minutes after posting them.

• The site's RSS feed includes some pretty pictures.

• The site newsletter coloring problem is resolved.

• Your photo thumbnail appears at the top of the screen.