Not to pick on you Daniel, but actually, the point of this system is so that people don't have to ask us to move threads. Our goal is to have the forums still running smoothly without having to have users contact us any time an issue arises. By having their thread deleted, hopefully people will learn to post their topic in the correct forum in the first place.

It definitely might be a little bumpy at first, but hopefully people will eventually get comfortable with it.

Yup, that's one idea we're considering. Hopefully you'll see some improvements in that area shortly...

Also, please do not get upset if one of your topics gets nominated for deletion. I have a feeling that will happen quite a bit, especially in the beginning as people want to try out the new tools. But you absolutely shouldn't take it personally - everyone has their own opinion, but the bar has been deliberately set high so that hopefully only topics that really should get deleted will get removed.

All you need is four "Don't delete" votes and your topic can't be deleted. So my guess is this topic will live. The goal of the new system is that the bar for deleting a topic should be fairly high. We may even increase it if too many topics get deleted.

You definitely shouldn't take it personally though if one of your topics gets nominated for deletion. I think that may happen quite a bit, especially in the beginning, as people just want to play around with the new tools.

Knoxman - I didn't think your first post was that bad, but your second one certainly was. Make sure to tone it down and keep the discussion civil. There's no need to resort to insults.

We can't claim credit for this idea, by the way. We saw a similar system on another site and liked it. Hopefully it will work well, but we're also definitely willing to change it if it's not achieving what we had hoped.

I agree that you need to have a somewhat thick skin in general when you're interacting with people on the internet. But I also definitely see how it could be frustrating to write messages to a ton of people and have very few or even no people respond. We're just trying to find ways to encourage people to respond without being overly coercive.

S1owhand - I hear what you are saying. That is definitely the tradeoff. But there are some things we could do to address that. We already allow you to set a lot of filters so that only people you really want to talk to can email you. We also could set the bar fairly low on the percent of emails you need to respond to, i.e. maybe anything over 50% is green, anything over 10% is yellow, and only less than 10% is red.

Anyways, it might be something that we try and if people hate it, we'll pull it out. Just trying to get a sense of people's initial reaction to it.

All votes do remain private - no one knows who voted for what except for Vanchau and myself.

Only topics that have been recently created can be nominated for deletion. The controls will be very obvious on those topics that are eligible. After a short period of time, the topic can no longer be deleted.

Really, at this point, we only want topics that clearly violate the rules to be deleted. You should be able to assess that immediately which is why we only allow them to be deletable for a short period.

Sometimes, though, a topic will start off on a good note, but then a few posts in someone flames another person and it degrades into personal attacks, etc. This system currently isn't designed to handle that, but we're brainstorming other ideas that might help address that like being able to report bad posts, etc.

Hopefully you'll see some improvements in that area shortly, but we'd like to first see how this initial set of improvements work.

Yup - when you nominate a topic for deletion, you have to state the reason why you think it should be deleted. This reason will be shown as everyone casts their votes. Once you see a topic that has been nominated for deletion, I think you'll be able to see how this works.

We'll see how it goes - if it's not working out well, definitely let us know what the issues are! We'll be watching it ourselves, of course, but we'd love to hear from you guys how it's working for you.

One idea we had was to show on a person's profile a general idea of how often they responded to emails they received. For example, there might be a green, yellow, or red indicator on someone's profile indicating how responsive they are to messages, i.e. that they respond to emails most of the time, some of the time, or almost never.

That way, everyone has an incentive to reply to messages they receive to keep their profile "green", and you have an idea of who probably will respond and who might not.

What do you guys think of that idea?

As soon as there are 4 "Do not delete" votes, the voting ends and the topic cannot be deleted any more. In a similar fashion, as soon as there are 7 "Delete" votes, the vote ends and the topic is deleted. There can't be more than 10 votes on any topic.

We will be adding a link where you can see all the topics that need moderation, i.e. can be nominated for deletion or voted on.

And hopefully, there should never be a "battle" to save a topic - the main goal of the system is that only topics that should be deleted get deleted, and vice versa. We'll continue to try to tune the system to achieve that goal.

OK BigG's has been moved, thanks.

Hi folks,

I opened up two new forums:

- Coffee Houses, Bars, and Other Chit Chat
- Games

If you see any of your favorite threads missing, it might be because we moved them in there.

Thanks!
Mike

Hi everyone,

Our goal for the JustSayHi forums has always been to provide a safe and friendly environment where all of our members can meet and get to know one another. To date, we hope we've been at least somewhat successful in achieving this goal while still allowing the freedom to discuss almost any topic you wish, even those more difficult or controversial.

As the site continues to grow and the number of topics and posts skyrockets, however, it's become harder and harder for just Vanchau and myself to moderate all of the forums as closely as we'd like.

So today, we'd like to introduce you to the new moderators of the JustSayHi forums...

All of you!

That's right, every member now has the power to moderate the JustSayHi forums. As long as you've been a member for at least a week, you'll have the ability to nominate and vote on topics for deletion. Our hope is that this new system will help ensure that bad topics are quickly removed from the forums while still maintaining the free flow of discussion that we have always strived for.

Here's how the new system will work:
1) All members who've been on the site for at least a week now have the ability to moderate the forums
2) When a new topic is posted, for a limited amount of time you can nominate that topic for deletion.
3) Once a topic has been nominated for deletion, other members can then vote on whether they agree. If 7 out of 10 people vote for deletion, that topic will then be removed.
4) Members who have too many topics deleted risk having their posting privileges suspended, or may even be banned from the site.

There are a few important rules and safeguards that you should also be aware of:
1) Only topics that violate our forum rules should be deleted. If a topic does not violate the forum rules, it should NOT be deleted, even if you disagree with the content or dislike the member posting the topic.
2) Vanchau and myself will periodically review topics that have been deleted and may undelete them if we feel they were deleted erroneously. We may also delete topics that members have voted to keep on the site. Basically, we reserve the right to make the final decision on all topics.
3) Members who continually vote incorrectly, i.e. deleting topics that should not be deleted or vice versa, will lose their moderator privileges. So if you're not moderating the site in the same manner that Vanchau and myself would, you won't be able to continue to moderate the forums.
4) The moderation system should NOT be used for your own personal agenda. Anyone who abuses the moderation system in this manner will be banned from the site.
5) If you feel the moderation system has been abused, please the Report Abuse button to notify us. We will investigate and take the appropriate actions.

We're very excited about this new system, but we also realize that there may be some hiccups initially. We're going to be watching the forums closely over the next few weeks to make sure the moderation system is working as planned. If you see any issues, please just let us know - we would love to get your ideas and opinions so we can make sure the moderation system is working as well as possible.

And of course, if you have any questions or concerns at all, please just let us know. We always love to hear your feedback, good or bad.

Thanks everyone for all of your help in making JustSayHi the best dating site on the net!

Sincerely,
Mike and Vanchau

Does everyone who has this problem use AOL? For anyone who is having this problem, can you please let me know if you use AOL, and also what browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.) and what operating system (Windows XP, Mac OS X, etc.) you are using?

We've had a lot of people saying that this is an issue, but we can't actually reproduce this error ourselves so we are having a hard time debugging it. So if we can get some more information on the computer you are using, it would be helpful.

Thanks,
Mike

Has it always been like that for you, or is this a recent change? What browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.) and what operating system (Windows XP, Mac OS X, etc.) are you using, and how big is your monitor?

Katertots - have you tried adding "no-reply@justsayhi.com" to your address book or to your safe senders list? If you haven't, try that and see if it helps.

If you need help on how to do that, just let me know.

I think we've already banned this person. This type of behavior definitely will not be tolerated so if it happens again, just let us know and we'll kick them out promptly.