| | Racial Preference option.Page 1 of 1 | | I love this site But it would be great to allow people to choose their racial preferences. That way I'm not the Black guy who talks to the White girl or the Asian ect, and I get sorry I don't like Black guys. When I do a search it should not only give me the option of filtering by racial preference. I should also be able to filter by their racial preference as well. | |
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| Racial Preference option.
Posted: 5/11/2012 4:40:17 PM | | Anytime we contact someone we are taking a chance that there is something they may not like about us, and race is just another one of those things, so if you implements such a feature to be fair you would have to implement that same feature for all searchable criteria and that would quick eliminate many users and in a click based world probably not the best way to go about it. | |
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| Racial Preference option.
Posted: 5/11/2012 9:31:35 PM |
Anytime we contact someone we are taking a chance that there is something they may not like about us, and race is just another one of those things, so if you implements such a feature to be fair you would have to implement that same feature for all searchable criteria and that would quick eliminate many users and in a click based world probably not the best way to go about it.
I don't have a problem with "taking a chance" on someone who may, or may not not like me for whatever reason, this goes with the territory in online dating, but a 50/50 "chance" beats a ZERO "chance" any day, and by having the ability to weed out the racially preferenced absolute ZERO "chance" percentile, I, by default, am more efficient with my management of search time on this site, while not wasting someone else's time, as they now must have to delete my unwanted messages. Unnecessary messages that, by the way, obviously consume more of this site's bandwidth, so it's not as efficient for the site either.
I'll gladly pay POF for the privilege of being able to search for a specific race of likeminded individuals. I have, and will continue to pay on other sites, strictly based on this ONE feature alone, and those sites are very popular.
Until POF decides to offer this one little feature into their site, I will continue to only use this site for free. | |
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| Racial Preference option.
Posted: 5/12/2012 8:29:47 AM | I agree with pretty much everything Rinnaye said but the one problem I see with making this a paid feature is that in order for it to be worth paying for, all users would have to fill out a preference listing, which is no big deal for new members, but getting the 40 million or whatever established members to do so would likely be a task of epic proportions. POF has basically gotten too big for its own good, such that making significant changes in the site's philosophy tend to be highly problematic. Which is not to say they don't try, particularly when it's a stupid idea that's easy to implement (taking away "viewed me" as a free feature, for example). But a good idea that's difficult to implement? I don't know.
That said, a couple years ago they made "Would you date someone with kids?" and "Would you date someone that's a smoker?" mandatory questions, so why not tack on "Would you date someone of these ethnicities:", "Would you date someone of this height range: ", "Would you date someone of these body types", "Would you date someone of these religions:"? The best thing about those "mandatory questions" is that they didn't put people's answers on their profile page --- instead, if you answered "No, I wouldn't date someone with kids," the site simply doesn't put you in the matches of people who have kids. That stealth method would be almost of necessity with a hot button issue like ethnicity, because if people could see that you said, "No, I wouldn't date anyone that was Asian," I guarantee you hate email would be a coming (on this site, that is -- on paid sites that list preferences, they don't allow for such shenanigans). So basically, if you got a paid POF membership, you'd get a list of matches that would only include people who have not eliminated you as a potential date because of your ethnicity or height or body type or whatever. And maybe you could have the option of doing advance searches that way, too (only returning users who haven't eliminated you as a potential date because of your ethnicity). Without the information listed directly on the profiles, you wouldn't know why someone you found interesting in a regular search didn't show up in your paid search -- could be many reasons.
Interestingly, the site actually already does this for mail settings. If you do an advanced search while logged in, no one that has their mail setting age range ending above or below your age will ever show up in your searches. So this idea would just be a natural extension of that, except it's not a mail setting, so you could still take your inefficient chances and email someone that has apparently eliminated you from consideration for ethnic or height or body type or religious reasons and see if you're just awesome enough that they decide to respond to you anyway. | |
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| Racial Preference option.
Posted: 5/13/2012 3:24:24 PM |
Anytime we contact someone we are taking a chance that there is something they may not like about us, and race is just another one of those things, so if you implements such a feature to be fair you would have to implement that same feature for all searchable criteria and that would quick eliminate many users and in a click based world probably not the best way to go about it.
I agree. I'm sure it's not fun hearing "I don't date black guys" but unless the woman makes it very clear in her profile that she's open to dating black guys (or that she idolizes Kim Kardashian), you already knew there was a chance that she may not be interested in black men. On the other hand, even though I clearly state in my profile that race isn't an issue for me (apparently, no one ever reads it), I ALWAYS get messages from white men asking me if I like white men. The answer is YES, but just because I'm open to dating white men doesn't mean that I'm going to be interested in EVERY white man who contacts me, so it's kind of a silly question. Just like a woman might be interested in YOU, but not black men in general, so if you filter to only find women who you think are a "sure thing", you might miss out on some others and then the "sure things" might end up rejecting you for some other reason anyway. Welcome to online dating! :) | |
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| Racial Preference option.
Posted: 5/14/2012 9:05:30 AM | | Unless you are the poster child for the picture of "perfection" then you aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea on a dating site. Whether it be race or with me body type since I'm a BBW. The site could set up filters that users could set up on their profile allowing only their preferences to make contact. This isn't something that they would need to charge for. They make enough money off of advertisements all over the internet. | |
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| Racial Preference option.
Posted: 5/14/2012 10:33:10 AM | | OP, I don't see where you're being prejudiced because of your race, dear. You have equal access to the site and just as much right as do I to reject those whom you don't feel is a good match. If you don't want to date a certain race, don't respond to these women. Remember, they have as much right to refuse to date black men, as they do to refuse to date any men they aren't attracted to. | |
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| Racial Preference option.
Posted: 5/14/2012 10:43:32 AM | "This isn't something that they would need to charge for."
They probably need to charge for anything that's going to substantially negatively impact their page views (and therefore ad revenue). Preference filters would impact their page views probably unlike any other. Match has preference filters, and as a result, I meet the qualifications of less than 10% of the women on that site. POF's only real filter that affects me are the age and distance mail settings, which reduces the number of women I can contact on POF to about 50% of the population. If POF had the same preference filters as Match, and they were no-contact-allowed filters (whereas with Match it's just a strong recommendation), the amount of messages I would/could send would be reduced by more than 80%.
Now you can't really extrapolate that across the entire population since my physical characteristics place outside of 3 standard deviations (in other words, I am atypically undesirable) but undoubtedly if everyone had access to such filters, site traffic would tumble by an amount significant enough to ruin POF.
Figuring out how to charge for filters is a complicated matter. There are a lot of people who probably would want their filters to apply to those who contact them in an absolute fashion (like mail settings now) or it would not be worth paying for, but if too many actually paid for such a feature, users (paid and unpaid) would become upset that there would be so few profiles they could contact that they wouldn't think the site was worth using and either stop paying (paid) or just delete their accounts (unpaid). Which is why my idea above is probably a better solution.
"Remember, they have as much right to refuse to date black men, as they do to refuse to date any men they aren't attracted to."
I think, much like me and many other guys, he's less concerned with prejudiced attitudes or individual preferences than he is with site efficiency: wasting time contacting people that would never have anything to do with him due to characteristics that, according to the site, are quantifiable. I waste far less time on Match than on POF because Match's preference listings tell me whether or not I have a shot with each woman. Which is not to say all or even ANY of the 10% that don't disqualify me by their preference listings for those characteristics are going to respond positively to me, but you simply waste far less time emailing Match's 10% than you do emailing POF's 50%. | |
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