I can't really find it by searching (as it will give me every comment/post ever made with the keyword) but is there a way to set a distance for yourself? Or am I just missing it. Cause getting messages from people asking me to travel a distance that would basically cost me too much. I see @MCcuddles2 above talking about distance and search but is that a personal setting or just a site wide thing?
There isn't a way yet to restrict who can find or contact you based on distance.
Those who are contacting you from far away are choosing to set their search that way which is less common. Most people will search within a local radius and should therefore only find you if they are near you.
One of the problems the community faces is the vast number of messages received by women. Particularly women who are new to the site. Many women leave quite quickly because of this (they have told me so before leaving, and I see the deleted profiles). It can be completely overwhelming. Note that this has nothing to do with unacceptable messages: that's a totally separate question.
Some of these women would have gone on to become great enthusiasts, great forum members, or great professionals. Or all three.
A possible solution is to limit the number of initial messages that can be sent. I'm sure this has been discussed before, but maybe it's time for it to come up again. This will have the fairly obvious benefit of reducing the number of messages that are received. It won't help much for the new women - I'm still thinking about that - but it's a start.
New members would be limited to sending a maximum of two initial messages per day to enthusiasts: they may message professionals freely. Replies are unlimited. This restriction is made clear once a member starts to send messages, with pop ups perhaps like this:
You have reached your daily messaging limit. New members like you are restricted to sending two initial messages a day to fellow Enthusiasts. Choose carefully who to write to! Tips on writing great initial messages are available in the Forum. Replies, and replies to replies, are not counted against this total. You may message Professional cuddlers freely. For most people this is the best way of finding cuddles quickly. This restriction is relaxed over the course of time and as you participate more in the Cuddle Comfort community. Happy cuddling!
You have reached your daily messaging limit. New members like you are restricted to sending two initial messages a day to fellow Enthusiasts. Choose carefully who to write to! Tips on writing great initial messages are available in the Forum. Replies, and replies to replies, are not counted against this total.
You may message Professional cuddlers freely. For most people this is the best way of finding cuddles quickly.
This restriction is relaxed over the course of time and as you participate more in the Cuddle Comfort community. Happy cuddling!
This would prevent new members from spamming every women within 100 miles.
After a few weeks (site data will provide a clue as to the right period) this is increased to four initial messages per day.
After a few months and {a few forum posts OR a few professional bookings OR a few good Karma}, the restriction is silently lifted altogether.
This would only apply to new regular Enthusiasts. Professionals, Moderators and Admins would be able to message freely. All existing accounts would be grandfathered in to messaging freely.
And/or ....
All initial messages must have a minimum number of characters, say 25. (Spaces can be included or excluded, whatever is easier to code.) Attempting to send such a message results in a popup which says something like:
All initial messages must have at least 25 characters. Analysis of site data shows that initial messages of fewer than 150 characters (i.e. about three sentences) almost never receive a reply, either from Enthusiasts or Professionals. Tips on how to write good initial messages are available in the Forum.
All initial messages must have at least 25 characters.
Analysis of site data shows that initial messages of fewer than 150 characters (i.e. about three sentences) almost never receive a reply, either from Enthusiasts or Professionals. Tips on how to write good initial messages are available in the Forum.
Alternatively, go the whole hog and make the minimum length 150 characters.
And/or ...
If an Enthusiast user has more than say, 12 unread messages, and somebody (not a Mod or Admin) attempts to send an initial message, the message is not sent and instead the sender gets a popup:
Thank you for writing to [recipient name]. Unfortunately their Inbox is full and your message has not been delivered. Please try again after they have next logged in.
The recipient is not informed.
@CuddleDuncan I've also been told by new female enthusiasts that they get overwhelmed with responses, and many go inactive afterwards. I like these suggestions and would be great to see them implemented. Hopefully this will result in more active female enthusiasts and less threads from men complaining they they never receive a response.
Thank you @sunnysideup.
Quite separately ....
On the Cuddle Requests board, any new threads that could have been posted in one of the stickies are silently and routinely moved into the relevant sticky. This will improve the chances of some kind of conversation happening in the sticky, and thereby turning the whole board into something more than a dustbin.
New members occasionally make comments to the effect of 'is there anybody here?'. This question is prompted by that board being silent apart from the rustle of tumbleweed.
I appreciate that this means more work for the moderating team, so implementation should wait until we have a new moderator. It could be a part of their training.
My long term intention is that each of these stickies will have enough activity to become a whole board.
Secondly, change the title of the General Forum: Introductions thread to Forum - Introduce yourself here since it's not on the General board any more.
@Stevie_B may I suggest a few words in your profile to discourage such requests, and a copy-and-paste reply ready to go.
The very long distance requests are quite common and are usually fake or dangerous: treat with extreme caution.
There is a 'middle zone' (2-3 hours) where some professional cuddlers are willing to travel on the basis that travel expenses are paid and the session is sufficiently long to justify the trip. Always collect the travel money and a modest deposit in advance.
Ability to show you’ve replied to a message from the inbox. Either with a symbol (arrow) or the actual message you sent visible.
Also select multiple messages to delete.
As for new enthusiast and throttling messages I suggested a few pages back a way to help limit their inbox messages.
Allow all enthusiasts the ability to set parameters on who they can receive messages from. Examples
I think this could help retain alot of new members here, especially women who do feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of welcome messages they receive.
A 20 year old enthusiast likely has little to no interest in receiving messages from say 56 year old Vern who lives 2,456 miles away.
Those darn Verns! 😂 @Envie
Additionally I would like to see a character limit parameter put in place, similar to what you can do on Plenty of Fish. For instance, a person can require that at least x amount of characters must be written in their first message before it can be sent.
Also, the ability to stop people from just booking without sending a message. I'm sure like 99.7% of us pros would be so grateful for that.
@Catloaf Vern shenanigans. 😭
the ability to stop people from just booking without sending a message. I'm sure like 99.7% of us pros would be so grateful for that.
Oh god yes this. Again, I'm not a vending machine. I'm human, treat me as such by at least sending a introduction message. This has a huge impact on whether or not I accept a proposal.
@Evie Vernanigans.
The wording of the
Request to Book
button on Professionals' profiles is not satisfactory. It is scary to new members, who are afraid that it will launch them into a booking process before they are ready. It is also confusing: how do you ask a question before committing to booking? (It puzzled me for quite a while, before I uttered a short prayer, closed my eyes, and clicked it.)
The previous posts demonstrate also that some Professionals are not satisfied with the phrase because it promotes a feeling that you can 'just book', which isn't actually how it works.
I suspect there is a history behind this wording. It would be interesting to know what has been tried in the past.
Send Message like it says on Enthusiast profiles is no good because it leaves you wondering how you book. It may also lead to a flood of frivolous questions.
Booking / Enquiry
Contact Me
Arrange / Discuss Session
Click for Contact
Secondly, when you click on that button, the current wording at the top of the screen that appears is:
When you're ready, suggest a booking below.
then the time and date boxes and a green button saying Request Booking and then below that the usual messaging interface.
I suggest the wording is changed to:
When you're ready, suggest a Booking below and write a short message to introduce yourself, offer alternative times, explain what you are looking for, and ask any questions you may have. To ask a question which is not answered in the Profile, you can skip the Booking step and just send a message.
Thoughts?
@CuddleDuncan
The wording of the Request to Book button on Professionals' profiles is not satisfactory. It is scary to new members, who are afraid that it will launch them into a booking process before they are ready. It is also confusing: how do you ask a question before committing to booking? (It puzzled me for quite a while, before I uttered a short prayer, closed my eyes, and clicked it.)
Yes! I think this has been brought up a few times, and it's the reason I have a little disclaimer on my profile that says you don't have to book anything in order to message me. Believe it or not, I might be a pro, but it costs nothing to ask me questions, and asking a question does not lock you into anything! Nor should it be implied.
If only allowed 2 messages per day I would have left the site.
Perhaps instead of limiting senders, they could provide ways for recipients to have some control over their inboxes with filters, and also provide new users with a short, Best Practices for Site Use Success guide.
@quixotic_life I'm only suggesting a limit of two initial messages per day i.e. messaging somebody you have not contacted before. And only when you are new.
Censorship, no matter how well intended, never works.
Not to mention, are you truly wanting people new to the site and looking for local professionals to hire to only be allowed to contact them two at a time?
I doubt many professionals would be ok with that.
@CuddleDuncan ~ I get that, I just don't like it. It's not considering the range of communication styles and over corrects for other's thresholds.
Additionally, it doesn't take into account past experience in relation to the learning curve.
IMO, the proposed limit addresses the wrong concern, and would likely create others, which would ultimately lead to a decrease in the retention rate of newer users.
So again...
Limiting messages is fascist, unless the pro or enthusiast has the option to turn off the message limiter capacitor.
You have several options already—deactivate, pause, block and report.
@CharlesThePoet I wrote,
New members would be limited to sending a maximum of two initial messages per day to enthusiasts: they may message professionals freely.
What is your suggestion for increasing the retention rate of new women members who are scared away by the volume of messages?
@quixotic_life
IMO, the proposed limit addresses the wrong concern
What do you mean, the wrong concern? Are you saying you are not concerned about new women members being driven away by volume of messages?
which would ultimately lead to a decrease in the retention rate of newer users.
Well, yes, I certainly hope so. We want a lower retention rate of idiots who send out dozens of worthless messages. At the moment they leave after they have done that: we want them to leave before. We also want to give them an obvious route not to leave, and become a successful member instead, which my suggestion does. Making initial messages valuable is one possible way to achieve that.
it doesn't take into account past experience in relation to the learning curve.
Well, no, obviously, I don't know the long term history. Which is why I wrote,
I'm sure this has been discussed before
I'm very much in favour of Best practices guides or something like that, but this type of person does not read them. Remember that they do not read the existing advice, they do not read the profile before messaging, and many of them do not know what the word 'platonic' means. I suspect that many of them can barely read at all.
Filters for inboxes are much more work to code than a simple numerical limit, which is a major factor. They also give nervous new members another puzzle to solve. That's why I suggested such a simple protection system for Inboxes. Do you think it would be any use?
And as a matter of interest, can you remember roughly how many people you contacted in your first month on the site?
Well, to begin with, I don't have any suggestions about how to subvert the free will of others.
If anyone wants to leave then they should.
As to how to make the experience as pleasant as possible for "Enthusiast Women", I am not sure that is in the website's best interest. And, in any case, that is FAR beyond the scope or power of the website.
No way to make the majority of men, and women, to be other than what they are...
@CuddleDuncan 's concern is about the user experience, which is the bread and butter of any website/app/business.
I can agree with him that if the current UX is driving away female enthusiasts, then it should be amended to promote retention. I think everyone can agree with that, as the result of a better UX will be a stronger and healthier community.
we are all just disagreeing about what those amendments should be.
@MCcuddles2
Well, the bread and butter of this site is connecting clients to professionals.
Everything else is nice and all, but not what keeps the lights on.
@CharlesThePoet the other day Mark wrote,
I've always believed that the community here gives this website a soul. I absolutely cherish that and want to nurture it as best I can. It's why I've had sleepless nights ....... This has always been a community-first website, with a small business emerging later out of necessity.
I'm not saying that Mark, and the rest of his team, aren't interested in everyone's best experience.
I am only saying that what pays the bills is NOT the "enthusiasts".
It is connecting clients to professionals, and in this case that is almost entirely male clients to female professionals.
As far as I am personally concerned (as opposed to philosophically and pragmatically concerned) they could figure out a way to make it impossible for men to initiate contact with enthusiast females at all. Literally, men could only reply to the women that reached out to them first.
(Because that is how I, personally, conduct myself here. But I am a weird metric: a male that doesn't reach out to women enthusiasts and who doesn't hire professionals. If I was the typical man on this site, this site would cease to exist.)
On the other hand, that would probably drop the number of men on the site a considerable amount, and again, that lowers the number of potential clients, and potential income.
@CharlesThePoet
isn't that just a more restrictive version of what @CuddleDuncan is proposing? 2 messages allowed vs 0?
and when I said bread and butter I suppose I meant a different meaning than the traditional financial one, I meant that UX defines the success of a website. If we want to encourage retention of female enthusiasts, UX is how you do it.
I'm coming from a bit of a scientific background here, being a data scientist. We spend a lot of time thinking about why people do what they do while on a website. We do something called hypothesis testing where we apply small changes to the (UX) User Experience, and then we statistically compare the affect of those changes on a given metric (retention), we compute the statistical margin of error and decide if it's the way forward.
I am only saying that what pays the bills is NOT the "enthusiasts". It is connecting clients to professionals, and in this case that is almost entirely male clients to female professionals.
Well yes, that's why my suggestion nudges new men towards the professionals.
The 'Bumble' solution, where only women are allowed to initiate contact, is certainly another possibility.
@CuddleDuncan yeah! bumble is what came to mind when I read that.
Yes, which is why I was trying to separate my personal feelings (Don't care, barely effects me) about it from my philosophical and pragmatic views (censorship is bad, but protecting women is good).
The current model already nudges men towards professionals. That is simply demand and supply in action.
Making an app and making cuddler request something you can respond to.
@SoftCuddleBug95 Now that is what I am more interested in—what the women prefer rather than middle-aged white guys pontificating on a computer/iPhone etc.