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.