See Through Your Own
Rose Colored Glasses

I am an electronics engineer, and software guy, and I decided enough is enough. There is absolutely NO reason we (as members) need to put up with this. But launching a successful new dating site is insanely tough not due to technical reasons, but because it's very hard to grow a membership base.

Until you have a critical population of women you won't attract the men, and until you have the men, you won't attract the women. It's a chicken and egg problem. Countless people have tried to launch new dating sites with all kinds of angles, and almost all have failed.

The few that do grow get bought up by the "dominant corporate player" in this field, and promptly get merged and evolved till the site is just another one of their family of corporate sites.

So this is my attempt at trying to crack that monopoly and break into this space for no other reason than I am procrastinating doing real work, so I spent a few days making the site. Plus I am annoyed that I am being toyed with by unseen gremlins who keep the useful statistics all to themselves, and create truly hurtful algorithms that treat real people terribly. I would be happy to eat their lunch, and maybe put all those sites out of business. (A wonderful revenge fantasy, LOL).

Based on all the multitude of failed dating sites that have gone before, this site probably won't attract members either. But I will do what I can to attract new members initially by low budget person-to-person techniques and some cross marketing on websites where potential members might see an ad or posting.

I am also looking for a small team of volunteers to assist online, and at some in-person events. I am hoping we can attend or host some in-person events promoting the site (trivia nights at a bar, a group bbq, dinner and dance at a venue with a live band). I want members to see this site as their community resource where they have influence.

But I promise if this site thrives and the membership base grows, I won't let it be gobbled up by any "dominant corporate player". It will always be radically transparent with useful searching and messaging ability that will always be free.

Interactions between members are built around conversations. Conversations start with a conversation request (CR) by one member to another. Currently every member is permitted to have 8 CRs in circulation from them at any time. Think of a CR like an envelope that contains one message. The outside of the envelope clearly indicates who it is from (their username), who is the recipient, and the envelope also shows 2 numeric scores representing the quality and originality of the message inside. (To follow the analogy, these scores are like seeing your address in fancy hand written calligraphy, or written in barely legible crayon. It gives you a reasonable guess about how much effort the sender put into the message inside.)

At any time a recipient can look over all their unopened CR envelopes, and discard any they have no interest in without even opening them. However, to open a CR envelope, the recipient must have one conversation slot available, meaning they currently have less than 4 conversations active. Then they can open the CR envelope, read the message, and still reject the request immediately if they choose. Then they can do the same with the next envelope if they wish.

But if they are interested, they can accept the CR and commence an active conversation with the person who sent them the CR. That uses up one of their active conversation slots. Since their conversation slots are precious to them they won't waste time chatting with someone they are not interested in.

Since the recipient just opened the CR and now has allocated one of their conversation slots to that person, after reading the incoming message they would normally respond to that opening message with a message of their own, and this would start a back and forth exchange of messages.

At some point, both members in a conversation may decide to meet in-person for a meet-and-greet, so they let the system know that with a drop down menu. We want to know when a conversation leads to an actual in-person meet-and-greet because that is one of the PRIMARY purposes of this dating site. And if it can be measured, it can be optimized.

But either party may also decide the conversation has gone on long enough and they have decided not to meet the other person. In that case, they are called "The Terminator" and the other person is called the "Terminatee", or the "Minatee" to make it sound less harsh. The Terminator can simply end the conversation at any time using a drop down menu to let the system know why in a very general way. This is called "explicitly" ending the conversation.

Knowing why the Terminator made their decision is recorded by the system for analysis purposes so we can make the site better and improve scoring and matching algorithms.

It is possible that constructive feedback to the Minatee might also be welcomed by them, and members can choose to share their reasons for ending a conversation with the Minatee on a conversation by conversation basis. Note that absolutely no feedback is offered to the Minatee in any way that would identify the Terminator unless they have explicitly given their consent.

In all cases discretion is used by the system about what feedback info is provided to the Minatee, and how it is presented. The goal is to avoid feedback that is too harsh or emotionally challenging, and to avoid ego driven disputes among members. But it is a balancing act, because real authentic feedback is very useful to let members refine how they present themselves, or to reset their expectations about what is appropriate, or who might be a good match for them. It's a classic balancing act, be honest, but be kind.

This site is different because it treats your time and focus as an expensive resource that deserves to be valued as PRECIOUS. The time you take to write an opener is not free. The creativity you apply is not free. The time you take to read invitations is not free. Even the time you spend waiting for a response that may never come wears on your optimistic heart. Too much ghosting can turn you into a bitter misanthrope.

Ensuring everyone recognizes and respects the time investment of other members is done by three complimentary systems.

First, the system imposes rules:

• Everyone is real, verified with government photo ID matched against a live video selfie from multiple angles. Uploaded photos are cross-checked so nobody claims to have found the elixir of youth.
• Zero tolerance for deceptive bots, scammers, or commercial peddlers of any kind.
• You can only have 4 active conversations at any one time, and 8 outstanding conversation requests (CRs) at any one time.
• Once you are in an active conversation then 48 hours of no response is ghosting, and ghosting has penalties.

Second, everyone's behavior is tracked and publicly visible:

• Conversation request messages are assigned a quality and originality score by the system. Those scores are visible to the recipient before they choose to accept or reject the request.
• The percentage of conversation requests you sent that were rejected unopened, rejected after reading, accepted.
• The percentage of conversation requests you received that you rejected unopened, rejected after reading, accepted.
• A histogram of the quality and originality scores of conversation requests you send to other members.
• The number of active conversations you are currently in.
• The number of received conversation requests pending.
• The number of sent conversation requests pending.
• The number of conversations you were in over the past 14 days that are now ended.
• Your response times are tracked.
• Endless conversations that go nowhere are tracked.
• Who ended conversations, and why, is tracked.
• These statistics are public — that is the radical part. You are NOT anonymous.
• But the algorithm is forgiving. Statistics use a rolling 14-day window or a decaying balance. If you have a bad patch don't worry, after a couple of weeks it will all be behind you.

You can be rude, or overly picky, or have an unrealistic idea of how attractive you are if you want to. That's your choice. But the community will quickly see how you behave, and they can choose to ignore you. All the rules, algorithms, and scoring systems are completely transparent. Our dating coach AI will even give you tips if you're struggling.

Third, you are not alone — in both a good and bad way. You are not nearly as special as you think. The site publishes full group statistics (anonymous) for each gender and 5-year age bracket about how people actually behave and what they claim to value. It is interesting that in the real world these often don't align very well. You might be surprised what is actually "normal." So don't be too hard on yourself. Some of us are human, for better or worse.