Purpose built dating site proposal

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Recently there was some honorable attempts at reorganization of Personal Ads on this section of WP. It struck me that although this is well intentioned, there are some major limitations of thread format are a dating service. Also sites like Aspie Affection are using of the shelf generic software which isn't working that well, and their remit is not flexible enough.

I have some technical abilities as a programmer and have experience of developing, hosting and managing projects for others, especially setting up specialist infrastructure. I am planing to host this, if it goes ahead.

I thought it would be nice project to develop a site for people such as us. I'm not talking just for ASD, I don't want to limited the site to one demographic, but instead be welcoming and to all neurotypes and catering to he idea conventional and unconventional relationship requirements, rather being a conventional dating site, adapted.

The idea behind the site would be to

1. Accommodate different social and relationship requirements conventional or not, and welcoming of all Neurotypes.
2. Provide a simple easy to use interface, and design.
3. Steer away from social engineering through love and compatibility algorithms, or other. The point of the site would to be a tool, not professing to know your mind better than you.
4. Have powerful search indexing / meta capabilities and cross referencing. The idea would be to make searching and creating identifying information or preferences easy.
5. Make profile flexible, as to your specific relationship requirements, and have that meta reflected in search results.
6. When viewing profiles and elsewhere, you will get related profiles based similarities, preference of meta, etc This would not profess to understand compatibility, but simply ensure that everybody gets a decent amount quality exposure.
7. Be FREE to sign up and create ads.
8. Have a reasonable charge to make a contact between people for two reasons
   1. Help recoup the cost and keeping the site ad free.
      
   2. Improve the quality of responses reducing spam and scammers, who are unlike to want to provide financial information, which would comprise them and isn't worth their while.
9. Make use of primary photos in the presentation on the front page an listings. This would be an avatar which is a face of the member. Realistically there has to be some visual, I think there has to be a minimum requirement of a photograph of the face, there is no getting round this, I don't profess to be an Adonis either, but there is this element to dating like it or not, it is also from a design perspective easier to present a dating site, if you don't have random avatars or generic standins. There would still be plenty of ability to have a flexible profile, with few compulsory requirement, and plenty of other pictures.

The question that I want to ask is if I go ahead with this, who would be interested in being a pioneer? When launching it would need people already on board. So we hit the ground running.

I wish to a gauge interest. Is this something that you would be interested in? It will take me several months to get to production, as I have balance with other priorities. I know some of you may have feature request but bare in mind I have some experience with web projects, and I'm weary of feature creep, which can slow down development. I need to be realistic to make this achievable.

If you are interested pipe in here.

I'd also be interested in potential moderators and representatives, especially those that are good with social media and/or blog/vlog (as honestly this is not my forte).

the whole free to sign up but have to pay to message is irritating. you"ll find a million dating sites with that setup for various groups of people or interests. why do all these sites suck? people can't message each other, those who pay message others but then the person can't message them back.

I think a good aspie affection replacement would be a forum section where members can post an ad linking to thier pof/okcupid profile. listing their area in the ad here, then a mod groups the information in a state by state list. perhaps even in a county by county in each state.
though I don't think theres enough aspies wanting to date aspies which is likely the more legit reason the dating site part of wp doesn't work well.

I think the site should be free without ads. I can donate space on my hosting account if the problem is the hosting fees.

I also think there should be some measures to handle shy dating, as this is often a problem for neurodiverse people.

I'm open minded about funding model.

The hosting fees aren't the main issue. I think it would be useful to have some revenue to put back into the site. I am also may use
an UX person especially an expert on user interaction, and wound have to fork our money for this. My are is the technical infrastructure, I'm useless at thinking like the users. There may also be some budget on social media promotion again not my fortee.

It would also use responsive design, and would need some graphics.

Primarily the point of the transaction is security and quality. It could be nominal.

Also it is my intention that it isn't per message. You would open up a communication with a person. So each person in a conversation/discussion pays once. If they want a separate conversation they can pay.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 04 Nov 2014, 6:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It is my intention to accommodate everyone but bare in mind I'm not social engineering. So I can't force shy people to be less shy (as someone who has experienced SA and someone who needs and wants less social interaction I do understand).

Definitely I want to provide a way for people to explain things like shyness and such taxidermy. The suggestion would automatically be based on this, and they could edit the search meta (so an introvert who prefers extroverts would be able to set their requirements).

My main issue with this (and all niche dating sites) is user base. Aside from the 3-5 top dating sites out there, the rest have absolutely pitiful user bases, particularly in less urban areas. For paid sites it is even worse, and with a handful of fairly high-quality free sites out there I don't see a whole lot of point in paying for one. For an ASD-based site, it's to be expected - we can all come to this site and feel like there's tons of people just like us out there, but the reality is that, geographically, we're still quite dispersed.

This is using a spanner as a screwdriver IMO. Forum sections, and thread have very limited cross referencing capability. Either way would still the search indexing, which is much more advanced kind than you have on the average forum, with dedicated engines.

I'm not limiting to just Aspies / ASD as stated. Just that such communities are good starting points.

Again this is for all Neurotypes.

I do take your point.

I want to create an environment people feel comfortable on, especially the different. So for instance people like myself who get a lot out of a little interaction, and have problems with conventional expectation of relationship, which would not work for me.

I'd be open to something like this, but I'd prefer having ads to having to pay. Dating sites are useful, but not useful enough to warrant paying for. Then again... people on a site like this would probably take it considerably more seriously than mainstream online dating services.

I definitely think that if you were to do this, you would have to have it be free to start. Then if people were open to it consider instituting a charge.

Problem with ads is PPC / syndicated is a waste of time both in content and revenue (there are also privacy issues sometimes). I would consider submitted hand picked ads and have developed such software in the past, but this is obviously something that would kick in once the site is well established. There is the short term to think about.

This doesn't help the quality issue though. I could consider SMS confirmation.

I think the idea of the beta stage being totally free is a good one.

Idk the forum my browser game alliance uses has a quite good search engine.

I wouldn't want to pay at all. only way I would pay is if the site guarantees some level of success or only has women pay. the reality is dating sites for men is just a waste of time that most companies try to milk for all its worth. guys pay hundreds of dollars and by the end of the year are still single having had no dates. I won't pay to send a message to a girl and get maybe one or two back before she moves on to the next guy.

the search index will likely just be used like okcupids to get rid of the unformentionables. the aspies, fat people, ugly people, etc.

I'm not planing to discriminate by gender. Or any kind of "positive" discrimination , there will not be any one political slant. Like I said I'm don't doing social engineering period/full stop. Nor am am I guarantee relationships, in fact the whole point of the site would be on flexibility and ease of searching, rather than micromanaging relationships. This would be a tool, and a focus for people who have different relationship requirements.



Unless people self identify as fat, ugly, etc the search index would not record this. People would not be forced to reveal nuerotype(s) but are free to do so.

It is conceivable and probably that people may choose to search for particular nuerotypes. I would not judge, and moralize.

Of course people will discriminate based on the result but that is real life I can't control that.

Users would no only be able to submit their own requirements, they would be be able to weight the adjectives and other meta tags themselves.

didn't say you had to just giving my input as a dating site user. I won't pay for dating sites, I can't afford to throw the money away. perhaps donations like other sites do.

won't people list their weight? then its just a matter of searching around the fat ones by weight. Theres other ways to do it too. people who don't want fat people will always find a way given an extensive search feature.

If people list their weight then possibly, but there would no requirement to do it nor a specific field for it. You are implying that selecting by weight would be something to crack down on. The reality is I can't control this nor would I try. People have preferences, besides there is a differnce between searching for things and viewing profile, then making a choice, which is going to happen anyway.

Out of context what does a weight mean? I could put "1 tonne" in my profile it doesn't mean that is my weight. Ok some people might put "skinny" or "fat" in their profile but that is up to them. I not going to prevent that, nor searching for it.

Let me explain the technical. There will be several indexes, and search capabilities, but it will on directly imputed data. There will also no imaging/visual search capabilities in a search. So really it would only search on what is provided. Yes there are external way to search, by web search engine/ scraping, but this is indirect requires some knowledge to do successfully. It is less contextual, it is harder to do and can be time consuming. It also doesn't have the interface that the search would do.

The search capability is not going to be specifically focused on appearance, becuase people are going to make that judgment, once they review the profile or get to know the person. A key focus would be more on relationship attributes.

The idea would be to make a site where the unconventional, different etc, can state their nature and requirement and look for people that suit the relationship they want.