MeetFighters News

Dear members,

There have been a bunch of small changes to the site since the last issue of Site News, here's the list:

• It is now possible to change your username for a token fee.
• The weekly newsletter no longer contains a list of changed profiles. This makes the newsletter a bit more compact.
• The "gallery" and "softcore gallery" photo moderation categories have been merged to simplify the system a little.
• The wording of new event notifications has been changed; they sound less like personal invitations now.
• Site support localization for various languages (some translations pending).
• Miscellaneous small bugfixes and enhancements.

We hope that you continue to find our site useful! :)

– Admin out.

Dear members,

As you may or may not be aware, this site, AllFighters, has, since it's inception 2 years ago, been a one-man project. I am maintaining the servers, writing and improving the site software and supporting members when they have questions or need help.

In recent times, the supporting task has began to outgrow my capacity. In the interest of freeing up more of my time for site improvement, and also helping members get more timely responses to their support requests, I have decided that it is time to ask for help. Specifically your help!

If you think you've been using the site long enough to have a comfortable understanding of how it works, AND have the inclination to help your fellow members, read on!

As a supporter, you will see a list of support requests that need help. You will need to read them to see if there are any that you can reply.

• If you see one that you can reply, you can do so. You can reply with your full profile name, or anonymously (your name will be replaced with an ID number).
• It's possible that you will find support requests that you do not know the answer to. You can skip these, maybe someone else will pick them up.
• Some support requests might actually require me (the site administrator) to fix. With a click, you can escalate these requests and I will handle them. Once escalated, the support requests will no longer be visible to you or other supporters.

This is the deal. So, if you are feeling up to the task, have been a member for at least 6 month, and have at least 10 past opponents, apply with the management!

Hi AllFighters,

Starting this week, you can specify which languages you speak in your profile. If you haven't already done so, please take a moment to edit your profile and select your languages.

Other, smaller changes include:

• Tracker/2011-02-08: The wording of event notification messages has been changed to make them sound less like a personal invitation.
• The way you can select interests and languages has been improved (for those of you using a modern browser).

That's all for this week!

Please read on for an important request from the site's Administrator that might impact your profile!

Improved Site Performance

There are no new site features this week. Instead, I have spent considerable effort optimizing site performance and tweaking the web server configuration.

The result is a dramatic drop in the site's processor usage, which translates into quicker page loads, especially in the evening "rush hours". To give you an idea of how large the difference is, have a look at this monthly CPU usage graph and see if you can tell when the new version of the site was deployed!

Fake Past Opponents

Past Opponents is a very important metric here on AllFighters. Along with Recommendations, they help you identify the "real" people from those who are just here to chat. Granted, there is nothing wrong with chatting, in fact, "cyber past opponents" and "cyber profiles" are welcome on the site as long as they are upfront and honest about it.

What is absolutely not OK is pretending to want to meet people when you really don't. This is where past opponents come in handy.

Unfortunately there are some unscrupulous people who make a habit out of marking people as past opponent whom they have never seen and probably never will. I would like to encourage everyone to look at your past opponents list and make sure you haven't accidentally marked anyone whom you haven't actually met. Failure to do so might result in the suspension or termination of your profile as I start weeding out the fakes!

Thanks and happy wrestling,
Admin.

The Interest Groups feature has proven to be quite popular. We have 54 groups at the time of writing, with a combined membership of 1851. 54 groups are a lot, and sometimes it's a bit hard to find what you are looking for.

To make it a little bit easier, I have introduced a few broad categories like "Fighting styles" and "Specific holds". The categories overlap a little and sometimes it's subjective where a group should belong, but still this should help you find your favorite group a bit easier.

In the interest of limiting the number of groups, I plan to make another change starting in about two weeks: I will start purging groups that haven't proven to be interesting. In order to remain on the site, a group must satisfy two criteria:

• It must have at least 20 members by the end of the first month. (Local groups are exempt from this rule.)
• It must have at least 3 forum posts in the past month.

This should limit the number of groups that are just not interesting enough, and make the good groups easier to find.

On an unrelated note, those of you who have been looking at the Top Members list might have noticed that the "100 past opponents" barrier has been broken! The first member to achieve this is toughwrestler. Congratulations!