| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/27/2008 5:50:27 PM |
The more Stuff like this gets added, the less I enter into my Profile.
Again I agree. It makes me want to choose 'Prefer not to Say' in every catergory. What next?
People are NOT black and white, we are all shades of grey. Thank God for that! | |
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/27/2008 6:50:09 PM | The more Stuff like this gets added, the less I enter into my Profile. 
I think that the more drop-down menus that get added to a dating site, the more people are likely to put prefer not to say.
Isn't it better to actually have people put content into their profiles that was personally written by them, and have other people read that content to get an impression of them? Rather than having people try to select a custom made match by checking off items from a whole bunch of drop-down menus???
Does your car run?
Is your car in the same state as you?
Does it have tires?
Is it insured? Perhaps we could also add:
-Is it paid for? or are you in debt, well over your head, trying to pay for it?
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| NEW FEATURE: Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/27/2008 7:12:40 PM | I see how one might get offended by the presence of the question, but the proactive man looks upon this as an opportunity, for NA can mean any of the following:
1. I drive a million dollar european sports car and no first date is gonna lay eyes on that baby.
2. I have a Humvee and I wisely choose to keep it off the road until it becomes a museum piece.
3. My vehicle happens to cost a lot to drive (bad gas mileage), though I love it to death. I also value watching my money, so I ride a bus MOST of the time. You'll see it when we blaze new trails through the redwoods or the desert.
4. I just want to see if when it's your turn to suggest a date, you can think INSIDE the box and suggest something that's close by, to maximize face time. I also want to see if such structure will reveal your practical side.
5. The question is irrelevant; this site is about dating and mating.
6. Let me ask YOU: Do you own a vibrator or blow-up lover? I'm trying to figure out your need factor.
This question is leading down a slippery slope to too many multiple choice questions for the profile to reflect the member's self-image.
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/27/2008 8:10:44 PM |
The next option I vote for is "Do you own a Yacht" Yes - No
LOL.
Don't forget to add:
'Do you own your own home?' 'How many homes/villas/mansions/cottages do you own?' 'What is the real estate value?'
'Do you travel extensively?' 'Where do you travel?'
'Do you have VISA, MC, American Express, Diners Club'? 'What is your limit?'
'Have you invested for your future?' 'How much moola have you got saved up baby?'
LOL. But really, where does it end? | |
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/27/2008 8:31:41 PM | I have a car, a BMW no less. Its makes no difference. When I was broke and was taking the bus I still got the same amount of messages.
I have always had lots of Vehicles, Trucks, Cars, ATVs, Bikes, you name it.
But its not going on my Profile, it simply has no Business there.
Anyone who wants to search for me on the Basis of a Car better get the F*** out and pass me over real fast in the Search ... 
I don't think we are getting more Features necessarily, just those Items where an Advertising Buck can be made with them.
I wonder if Money could made on: "Do you have a Criminal Record?" ... lol | |
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/28/2008 11:36:27 AM | I see the thread "lack of information in the profession slot" near this one in 'my forums'.
I suppose soon there will be a drop-down menu for every conceivable occupation and we won't even be able to put what we want. We'll have to choose one of them or have N/A (unemployed bum) | |
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/28/2008 5:42:14 PM | And if not is it because: 1) Ive never done anything that could get me one 2) Ive never been caught (I must be good at it)
Those that end up with Criminal Records rarely have only offended once, but more often is a continuous Pattern of Conduct, and Chances are, they get busted at some Point.
That's all it is. Its better than nothing, usually weeding out the worst Elements.
I suppose soon there will be a drop-down menu for every conceivable occupation and we won't even be able to put what we want.
 | That's why the Profession Field is not currently searchable ...
... its not a Selection Menu. |
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/28/2008 6:08:16 PM | How about housing situation over car? A lot of people live out of their vehicles and have computer access from a library. Or live with parents or homeless shelter. I would prefer someone with a roof over their head then on public transportation, walking or biking then homeless but with wheels. Where are the priorities today? Even children are taught the staples of life in elementary school:
Food
Water
Clothing
Shelter | |
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| NEW FEATURE: Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/28/2008 6:10:00 PM | I live in a major metro area where owning a car is insane... everything I need is right outside my door and that includes what most would consider an awesome date. I make very good money so having/or not having a car isn't a sign of "affluence"
Michael | |
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| NEW FEATURE: Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/28/2008 9:37:39 PM | I've come to the conclusion it is optional and users may opt out It is optional, and I have opted out of answering that question.
However, are people now going to make automatic assumptions about me, based on the non-answer? I suspect that some people will. | |
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| NEW FEATURE: Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/29/2008 3:22:21 PM | I'm big on honesty - I promise in my profile that everything in it is true, other than one's judgment of what is "average" as a body type - and I wish there was a better answer I could give to the "car" question.
I'm a motorcyclist! How about "Do you own a Motor Vehicle," and simple choices like Car, Truck, Motorcycle, Scooter and the like?
ED BEAR | |
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| NEW FEATURE: Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/29/2008 6:36:15 PM | Personally, I don't really see what all the hub-bub is about. Why is that? Because I don't really see this as any different than the threads about "POF should do away with the 'body type' descriptions, or the 'height' question, etcetc". Some people are never going to like answering a question they don't want to answer, or that they think might show them in an 'unsavoury' light, whether it does or not. So where is the line drawn? I've never listed my profession, for example, in my profile, but I never felt the need to ask POF to remove that question from the profile registration. Even if I was still single, it really wouldn't bother me to leave the N/A up for my car, my "smarts" or any other new drop-down menu choices.
Besides, as I'm sure most people who've made more than a few forum posts already know, probably 89% of people are going to lie in their answer anyway, so why sweat it? | |
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| NEW FEATURE: Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/30/2008 2:52:08 PM |
Personally, I don't really see what all the hub-bub is about. Why is that? Because I don't really see this as any different than the threads about "POF should do away with the 'body type' descriptions, or the 'height' question, etcetc".
Sweetness one - good point. However 'body type' has nothing to do with economic status.
I've never listed my profession, for example, in my profile, but I never felt the need to ask POF to remove that question from the profile registration. Even if I was still single, it really wouldn't bother me to leave the N/A up for my car, my "smarts" or any other new drop-down menu choices.
I agree with you again, but if 'prefer not to say' was the option instead of 'N/A' it would imply that you have made a choice not to answer ('N/A' for 'Smarts' implies you don't have any post secondary education).
POF is a great site and you can't beat the price, but I feel there is a socio-economic bias with these new descriptors . Perhaps changing the option to 'prefer not to say' or letting us type in our own answer instead would be more acceptable. Then we can get really creative with the truth (wink, wink). | |
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/30/2008 4:01:15 PM | Even though I have a car and in the past I owned several for a certain reason, I do feel the ownership of a car is irrelevant to dating.
I say drop it.
What else will POF dream of next?
golf club ownership?
fur coat ownership?
home ownership?
cellphone ownership?
As far as the "smarts"/education, I really think we ought to have an IQ test given and I'll make the test for this site. It'll give me an added purpose to finish up on the development of an IQ test......OR, alternatively, just proclaiming our intelligence via several categories (and as usual there'll be more self-proclaimed smarties than not, lol). Education is a bunch of BS. I went to school and got a degree but it slowed down my intellectual progress. A person is smart or not smart and spending the time and money to go to school does not indiate intelligence. I could be in school longer and obtain several PhDs and I would think that would be REALLY DUMB to do!
since no one would claim to be dumb, we could have categories as "average", "higher than average", and "extreme".
I say more importantly than any of the above, and I may have to post this again as I think POF hated the suggestion: A direly needed characteristic that speaks more of money than income level is the ability to manage money!!!!!!!!!! For this we could have:
deep in debt, manageable debt, just getting by with no debt, cash positive, miser/accumulator
and if those categories are not accepted because of the word "debt", the more general words of: very poor, poor, average, good, and excellent could be used.
Come on POF! this is a good site but how about making it great? How about focusing on the things that really matter as far as a realtionship goes?
If I am allowed to apeak more, I'd say to also include a giving category as far as how one is helpful/handy and maybe even degree of intimacy a person desires???????
don't delete this message just because i am making salient suggestions. I don't know enough about the database structures to pull off what the admin has done so i respect him for it, but still, there are things that are lacking and those things could be dealt with for ROBUSTNESS in a dating site. | |
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/30/2008 4:47:49 PM | ^^^While some of those might be good suggestions, the problem still remains...who regulates how honestly or dishonestly people answer those questions? I could put on my profile that I'm the Queen of Sheba with excellent credit and extreme intelligence while also being able to wield a mean drill...but until someone actually meets me to determine that for themselves, then it's all just words, yanno?
Which might lead to the question...why even bother offering these new drop-down menus, if there's no way to check if the answers are accurate anyway? | |
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/30/2008 9:43:26 PM |
Education is a bunch of BS. I went to school and got a degree but it slowed down my intellectual progress. I've never heard of that before! I'm curious what makes you come to that conclusion.
Hopefully your degree increased your salary and/or gave you more/better choices about jobs.
As for your comments about POF being a "great site" -- there's one question above all on here that dictates what new features get added: will they increase page hits and/or ad revenue?
There's a rumor circulating in another forum that "car" and "education level" were added so as to better target ads to people, depending on these things. It's more information about us, so ads are more adapted to us and we're more likely to click/buy the products/services advertised. Not a stupid strategy for a free site...
However, this rumor seems to be consistent with the fact that those fields got added to the database (i.e., profile) but there's no way for us non-paying members  to use it to our benefit (i.e., advanced search doesn't support searching on those fields). I hope the search feature is coming and those are just rumors. | |
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/30/2008 11:15:59 PM | Honestly, I think the Car field is rightly used.
Here's my reason:
It doesn't ask what *kind* of car you have. It asks whether you have one or not.
As someone who uses the bus, it's nice to be able to get my lack of free transportation across without blurting it out while meeting them.
On the other hand, calling the Education field "Smarts" is the most infuriating thing I've ever seen.
Education in terms of degrees has nothing to do with intellect.
On the other hand, if you were to define it as "Education", it would be fine.
That's all at the moment.
~ David | |
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/30/2008 11:30:14 PM | gettig a degree kept me out of better paying blue-collar occupations. what the school system will not tell you is that the lifetime earnings of a union worker exceeds that of a degreed person.
in regards to slowing down my intellectual growth, it's simple: i use to go to a university to learn on my own from age 16 and to then be tied down to a grueling schedule of pretty much nothingness, where coarses could be more efficient and just provide the useful info that would most likely be remembered and later used and so a complete college education could be accomplished in half the time. I am not the only one who thinks this as there is one profesor, I beelive in Texas, who feels similarly. It was mostly a waste of my time and I know I could ahve gotten an advanced degree in a large choice of fields but I didn't want to be suppressed. I turned down an automatic acceptance into an MBA program since I saw the textbooks and they appeared too easy. I don't think highly of anyone's degree. As I said before, the person behind the degree is more important. When I ws a scientist I made it clear I could train a bright 16-yr old to do what the lame brains of society would think only degree holders were capable of. We have stale thinking and some of that has led to poor immigration programs where companies were successfully pressuring government to allow more H1B visa holders and it led to a higher cost of living, especially in Santa Clara County, California. Bad policies based on poor thinking caused great social social problems that did not need to happen.
See what the military is able to accomplish: it does not take 8 years to become a doctor. only those with blinders on, those who can't think independently are locked into such a notion. A lawyer should be able to be turned out in 6 months. A pharmacist in 3 months. A doctor in 1 year or LESS. I even performed heart cannulations on rats upon viewing it done one time - humans are a larger organsim and so it'd be easier to perform surgery with them.
So much for education. let there be SMARTS where a person is assessed by the ability to think, not occupying space and paying a lot of money to buy a piece of paper. I tutored hundreds of college students and I am not impressed by their graduation. There's lots of poor thinkers who paid the money and did what they could. does it make them competent? in some people's eyes. | |
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| NEW FEATURE: Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/30/2008 11:54:28 PM | | A car is not a symbol of affluence.Additionally, I can't see having the sole mode of transportation at the onset of a relationship. Finally, unless you are in a metro area with a mature public transportation, system a vehicle is a must. If you feel it is unfair, welcome to real life. Step up and grind it out until you can get what you want and then grind some more. | |
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| NEW FEATURE: Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/31/2008 12:40:43 AM | Maybe more pertinent would be:
Do you have a Criminal Record?
It'd probably be more accurate, or at least more entertaining, than the 'Smarts' classification.
Yes, I'm an idiot and got caught.
No, I'm a brilliant sociopath and hid the bodies really well.
No, I don't even jaywalk and always remember to say grace. | |
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| Listing of Car or no car unfairly penalizes less affluent
Posted: 5/31/2008 4:55:46 AM |
A lawyer should be able to be turned out in 6 months. A pharmacist in 3 months. A doctor in 1 year or LESS. I even performed heart cannulations on rats upon viewing it done one time - humans are a larger organsim and so it'd be easier to perform surgery with them.
Hmmm... I'll let the lawyers and pharmacists respond to your claim. But I can surely tell you that I don't want someone whose only been studying medicine for one year to do surgery on me. It may be true that med school is too much hoop-jumping that weeds out people, but there is a lot of stuff to "know" as a medical doctor and one year isn't going to cut it! It's a lot more complicated than heart cannulations done on rats.
I agree that college students who graduate may not have SMARTS or be competent as you say. However, they are statistically likely to make more money and less likely to go on welfare than someone without the piece of paper (see my other post for the stats and the reference). I believe that it is because they had the gumption (and pride) to play the university game and finish their degree.
Most blue collar jobs today are not unionized. I have found with my experience in unions that people tend to "expect" raises and don't want to earn them. Because of seniority, there are a lot of mediocre people who end up in better positions ahead of the SMART and motivated people. I believe a university degree can give a person a chance in a job market that rewards people not only for their degree, but also for their performance and their smarts. | |
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