I had an issue with notifications, but Gary the admin helped me sort it out. Thanks, Gary! hugs
Could we have some clarity or nuance on the "Car owner" optional profile field? I'm not sure of its utility at the moment. I guess the spirit of the thing is to say "able to travel to see you", but car ownership is more specific than that.
For example, I have a motorbike, and there's a car-share club almost on my doorstep, but I don't own a car, because I don't have kids to regularly drive around, so my answer would be "no", but that could mislead someone that I can't come to visit them away from bus/rail routes (which is a lot of the countryside around me).
Would it be more useful to say something like "has driving license" or "access to own transport"? - because you could always hire a car if necessary.
All "have own car" tells me is the likelihood of your vehicle being full of dog hair, mud and pinecones, or crisp wrappers from kids! 😂️ I'd hazard a guess that half of you "car owners" are paying a loan on the car you don't own yet anyway. 🙃️ I understand that some people make a big deal over that as some social status thing, and it's a bit sad.
@snuggly_sloth Then leave it blank if it bothers you. It's not really that deep.
@snuggly_sloth If you can get around on the motorbike, I'd just answer that one as a Yes.
~ Sunset Snuggles
Strangely enough… I think picture verification like they do on some social apps would stop fake profiles and banned people returning. It may take more time to approve someone as ‘verified’ but it would save the mods and site from so many hours of hunting down bad eggs. @Charlie_Bear @netrunner You two do a lot of that work… idk. Doesn’t mean people can’t join the site but there’s be an additional step if to become verified after that.
@stormydaycuddle But then what would we do with all this free time we would find ourselves having?? (KIDDING! 😅)
@Charlie_Bear I'm sure you’d still have a ton of work but it might make everyone feel a little safer if they are sure of who they are meeting
After a member that i interact with is banned, I don't want delete the conversation, because it's helpful if a banned account comes back, but again, archive would help. It would also be kind of helpful if the pictures that were attached to the profile were accessible, because then it's not just the thumbnail that I can see to remember them, that is of course only helpful if they actually posted a picture of themselves.
Yes. If a member is banned, their picture should still be viewable (instead of just a red X where their picture once was)
@stormydaycuddle omg I hope my comment didn’t seem like I was brushing off your concern because you know I totally agree.
Add a chat room like old aol
@craM - lol... No. I don't even want to think about the shenanigans that would go on in there.
@mike403 this is a chat room with specific topics. 😂😂😂😂 I suppose the structure helps
@Mike403 that's only helpful if someone has their default photo as their face, I've seen profiles where the first is something else, and then the rest are actual photos of themselves.
@cudbud64 - I guess they could make their entire profile still viewable with a tag on it saying that they're banned.
@stormydaycuddle @Charlie_Bear @netrunner some of those social sites delegate some of the modding to non-mod, but approved regular members. Basically these established members can apply to be "reviewers" and when they feel like helping out, the go to a particular section of the app or site where they can view some of the report queue. There they can vote yes or no if the reported item does or does not break the rules, add a comment, and send. I've also seen it used for picture verifications, where it pops up two photos side by side and asks if they match, though I'm guessing folks here might chafe at that idea.
I think I suggested this before, but having some sort of "verified" status that shows a person has had their ID checked could go a long way. It would bypass the need to have a public face pic, but the site privately would have record of the user's face, real name, and ID proving they are a unique real user.
@stormydaycuddle While I'm 100% behind you on the thought, and yes it'd help out drastically with formally banned site members, fake accounts, and maybe scammers, reputable site members have said if trying to join the site it wasn't as easy as it was then they might not have continued the sign up process. So while site members would be checked to be legitimate people and also weed others out, it could drastically drop the number of Clients all Pros see. Yes, it could deter the time wasters, those trying to use the site to date, and other non-platonic reasons but could also make those with good intentions second guess joining.
Mark has said he wants to keep joining the site as easy and hassle-free as possible. I do wish that included some of the recommendations I've given to reduce or otherwise limit accounts not planning to use the site as intended but each idea comes with a hitch which for every 5 people it deters could also deter the same number of people legitimate people.
Ideas are still brought up and discussed among Mark and the Mods for the pros and cons with them along with if they're even possible to implement, but most have high chance of deterring too many people or aren't possible to be done. I do think Mark still tests some he thinks of we don't know of but we aren't always aware of them unless there's a chance for implementation.
@netrunner understood. 🤗
I think most people join out of curiosity with some becoming established members of the community while the others get the ban hammer.
I probably wouldn't be here if I had to jump through too many hoops to join a site that I was unsure about. Platonic cuddling is not yet a widely accepted thing. I made an entire thread about that.
@netrunner That's why it would be great to try something very easy for the users at registration like a validation number sent to their phone. I understand it wouldn't guarantee anyone from coming back after being banned if they create another ip phone but maybe at some point it would become harder/more expensive for them to keep doing so.
I'd be curious how many people would not sign up because of this. I wouldn't mind at all.
@musso75 A phone number challenge has already been considered, even with the additional feature of auto rejecting VOIP based numbers (so no Google Voice or burner phorn numbers). While it could potentially help since phone carriers tend to charge to change your phone number, the idea was rejected for privacy reasons as people joining to checkout the site may back out having to give more information outside of choosing a username and providing an email address. Your mention of it again though did give me an alternative idea to suggest as an alternative method.
Add a way to call or do video chat.
Please extend blocking a profile to include blocking comments from that profile on the forums.
@CharlesInWI - It might make things look a little awkward if somebody is replying to a comment that you can't see because you blocked them. If it's something that goes against the rules, it will be flagged then removed/locked.
@Mike403 it's actually pretty easy to figure out if the flow of convo is broken because of a blocked user. You can also usually tell if the number of comments listed doesn't match the number you can see. It's never been an issue on any other platform. The blocking feature is rather useless as a boundary if it's only for private messages. It can be really, really harmful for people to keep seeing comments from people they've blocked and there's no way for them to unsee them. Those comments are a constant trigger and reminder of whatever the reason they blocked them for, even if it wasn't a banable offense and just a personal one. So it forces the person who would otherwise just curate the forum to not see their trigger to not be able to use the forums at all or risk their mental health.
It's not an effective nor common best practice solution to leave blocking as one way or only in one part of the site and not another. I've also seen it cause MORE issues when people who get blocked stalk the other person in the forums. Blocking shouldn't only stop me from seeing their posts...it needs to stop them from seeing mine.
@cuddlefaery - You have a point there. As if a blocked person being able to read your messages, they don't even have to be a member of the site to read forum messages as it's fully open. @Mark once said that it was designed like that to make this site more visible in search engines. Sometimes posts from the site forums comes up when searching on Google for something related to cuddling and it might get a curious person to sign up.
@netrunner Glad to hear that it might have given you ideas for an alternate solution.
Also, I feel it wouldn't hurt to try for a week or two and monitor the effect on the number of subscriptions during that period. Worst case they could revert the feature without doing much hurt except for that week with potentially a little bit less people joining. And since it wouldn't affect anyone already here, it wouldn't be a big deal overall.
I'm in the camp that it's good to try different stuff because sometimes you just don't know until you try.
I think making conversation in the forum is good as long as it doesnt go all drama. Drama can lead to escalation and affect people in more ways than possibly imagined. I dont like drama...I just wanna cuddle. Viewers may percieve a post differently than originally intended without an author having vocallization and tone to assist. Hmmmm... vocalized forum posts 🤔🤔🤔 is it possible? So you can write and speak what you are saying by pressing a little record/play button or something on each entry. Ill just copy this into the ideas section...
Restructure cuddle Requests and Professional Cuddling forum threads into a clickable geographic map which disolves into forum threads specific to that geographical location clicked. The threads are currently so random that it becomes a needle in haystack to find your location of interest unless you use the search engine for a specific place. If someone likes the randomness as it currently is then nearby the map they can select an "All" button or something. This make any sense?
@CelestialTouch I'm probably communicating something you already know... but the forums has a search box and for instance if you wanted to put in "Utah" all forum communications related to Utah show up. (This year there are 15 or so threads mentioning the word Utah btw,) I know...not much...
My guess is the forums are set such a way to build a large community vs regional ones.