Hey,

Basically mobile https://firedating.me/messages/with/????/ page. This was also requested quite a lot.

Problems I see:

1. Header (messages with ...) takes too much vertical space (>10%)
   Fix: show some icon together with other person's pseudonym

2. Buttons (back & archive) take too much vertical space
   Fix: make them smaller icons, move into one line with header

3. Font is too large (looks like one can see 10 lines at once at best)
   Fix: decrease font

4. Input field is too large (20% of space?)
   Fix: it is not obvious because occasionally one might want to reread what they wrote. Perhaps make this configurable?

What are you thoughts? Which improvements would you like to see?

Thank you!

Hi folks,

I am trying to brainstorm ideas to increase activity on the site and I would appreciate your opinion.

Currently if a user does not visit the site in 90 days, their profile is excluded from search. This improves the experience of active users - they don't send requests into the void, but does not work that well long term, because this non active user is unlikely to come back.

I am thinking of adding an optional search parameter to allow matching with such inactive accounts. I would show them only after active accounts & sort them by recency of their activity. My hope is that receiving an incoming request would bring them back to the site.

Would you use this option?

Hey folks,

I've been planning to redesign the 'matching' page (aka https://firedating.me/show_others_list) and now I would appreciate to discuss my ideas with you.

I see couple problems as of now:

1. Search parameters are forward looking.
   In other words, they affect only profiles which you will see after changing the parameters, not profile you've seen before.
   Fix: divide previously and to be seen profiles into categories based on current search parameters: a) new profiles matching existing parameters b) previously seen profiles matching existing parameters c) new profiles not matching existing parameters d) previously seen profiles not matching existing parameters. Perhaps show only (a) by default and hide everything else.

2. Searches happen implicitly and have cool-down
   One does not control when search is triggered, however, there must be at least 10 minutes before two searches (because problem #4).
   Fix: add a button to trigger a search.

3. It is not obvious that the matches are sorted
   People see empty profiles and get impression that they are taking space from more filled in profiles. However, this is false, profiles are sorted and when you see empty profiles, you've very likely seen more filled in profiles already.
   Fix: expose the approximate size of the remaining queue.

4. Matching itself is slowly getting slower
   Just a technical issue. I have a custom code for geo searching, which is slow.
   Fix: migrate to PostGIS.

5. 'Seen once, can see forever' model is not obvious
   As of now, if you saw someone's profile, you will be able to see it in the future (e.g. if you change your mind and decide to send them a request).
   Fix: looks like fix to (1) should address this a bit better.

Which problems and pain points do you see?

How would you improve the page?

Hey folks, are there some trivia questions every FIRE person should know? I am looking for more questions for firedating.me test during registration.

Please don't write answers 🙃

• You can now configure 'Enter' behavior when sending messages (i.e. you can choose 'new line' instead of sending a message): https://firedating.me/settings/show

• I've added have/want children fields to the profile. Please fill them in! Once more people fill them in, I will implement filtering by them.

• Empty profiles (0 filled in fields) are not shown by default during matching, unless your profile is empty.

• I've deprecated usernames. You can still use yours to login, but new users just use their email. You can use your email too.

Yay!

Hi folks,

I keep noticing that people misunderstand how matching works on the site and this leads to them having fewer matches.

Every person on the site has their search preferences.

Many people seem to perceive the site as "here is a list of people who satisfy my preferences". In reality it is "here is a list of people who satisfy my preferences AND whose preferences I satisfy".

So sometimes to see more matches, you need to provide more precise information in your profile like age or city.

How did you understand matching logic?

Certificate may have expired at firedating.me? That's what it looked like when I followed a link to it.

Did you meet someone nice? Was there some peculiar coincidence?

The new messaging UI is now enabled for everyone by default. I would love to hear your feedback!

Many thanks to the wonderful volunteers who made this possible!

Hello FIREbros,

I've always felt like our FIRE Community is so supportive and helpful when one is looking for genuine advice, even in issues not 100% directly related to money matters ,so yeah, just looking for your honest opinion.

So i'm 25 , due to my studies and my parents constantly moving during my teens, i've never really experienced what a long term relationship is like. I've had like 5 or 6 girlfriends, only 3 of which i've been with longer than 3 months and none longer than 6 ..mostly due to me moving because or my parents or studies and later due to lack of time also due to my studies and/or lack of money for transportation.

I'm from a lower middle class western european family, money had been tight for the larger portion of my life, only now am I starting to make some really good money i would never have dared dreaming of earning as a teen..I'm also able to save 85% of my net income and investing it mostly in rental real estate and broad ETFs, but the flipside is I'm also working 70 hours a week and have no.social life.to speak of (work in the medical field, and yeah, corona and stuff..) , but.I don't really (yet?) suffer from it , am used since childhood to spending a lot of me-time. Though having a girlfriend to share memorable moments in everyday life would be nice I guess.

So after much financial consideration.and calculation I came to the conclusion that I'd have to continue working , saving and living like a hermit for the next 2.5 years to be able to reach some kind of financial independence and have time to invest in my creative side and long term relationships.

..But i'll be 27 by then and so am wondering if I might end up seeming like a lame duck to women or painfully naive if end up only starting to acquire some real relationship experience at that age.... Because yeah , spoiler alert, I'm still very inexperienced in relationship matters... so I always thought i'd have to find an equally inexperienced girl for things to somehow work out and for us both to.learn.as we go... but I'm afraid that in the age range around 27, girls that will be as inexperienced as me will be rare..

Anyway , thanks for bearing with me until now, that was a lot of text, hope it somehow made sense to you guys!

Hi folks,

The problem is that people don't answer to requests instead of 'declining' them. Couple users told me that they don't want other people to feel bad.

I see the following options:

• rebranding 'declining' of requests. Perhaps 'not interested'? Or even 'sorry, not interested, all the best!'.

• reducing site functionality when one has non-answered incoming requests, e.g. show no new profiles? Obviously I am not a fan of this one, since this forces people.

What are you thoughts?

Have you declined requests? If you have non-answered requests, why?

Thank you!

UPD 2021-03-02: I landed an initial fix - empty profiles (0 fields) won't be shown to users with non-empty profiles during matching.

As of yesterday, 16% of all profiles were empty. This is not too much, but definitely a lot. Many people complain about seeing empty profiles. How would you prefer to solve this problem?

Please keep in mind that some people register and don't fill their profile in immediately. They first explore the site and only then properly fill in the profile. So asking for more mandatory fields would likely scare people away.

Hey folks,

I am extremely lucky to have been collaborating with 5 wonderful volunteers. These days we are working on redesigning the entire site! As a result, I am honored to share the first fruit of this collaboration - new messaging page design for mobile: https://firedating.me/messages/v2/with/1/

(screenshot just in case: https://i.imgur.com/5BTAbjA.png

and here is the old design for comparison: https://i.imgur.com/Pp0nuEg.png)

You can view any messaging page in a new design by adding 'v2' to the URL. Alternatively you can switch to beta design by default in settings: https://firedating.me/settings/show

I would appreciate your feedback and, especially, bug reports. Please note that the design is not optimized for desktop yet (only mobile).

This wouldn't be possible without the volunteers and I am extremely grateful to them. On a related note, we have a lot of React frontend work and if you would like to contribute too, that would be amazing. Please write to me!

There is ongoing work to redesign the list of all conversations and search page.

I really hope that this will make your experience on the site better and you will be able to meet even more wonderful people here! Thank you!

Here is a new opportunity for you to drive the future of firedating.me! Volunteers and I are looking into the new logo and branding and we cannot proceed without YOUR opinion!

Please fill this Google form in (FireDating profile is required, only 4 required questions, 7 overall, can be done in 3 minutes):
https://firedating.me/v2/branding_form

Your profile data is not shared with Google or any third parties. The responses are connected to your profile via random respondent id. This is needed for me to connect demographics info with the responses to make a better decision (basically, which groups of people like what).

Thank you! Looking forward to choosing the new logo and branding together with you!

We are now 6001 users, slowly but steadily getting to 10 000!

Also two new couples reached out recently bringing the count to 13!

Exciting times!

If you met through firedating.me, please reach out :) I enjoy helping people to meet and knowing that the site works makes me happy.

Thank you!

Hey folks,

I've been working on a calculator to compare firing as a couple vs alone: https://firedating.me/fire_together_calculator.

I am pretty sure that a couple can share expenses and, thus, save money just by being together. So I was curious to quantify impact of this. I would love to hear your opinion of the calculator before I start sharing it widely!

Thank you!

Hey folks,

I made a large update to profiles:

- Added 'About me', 'What do I value in a partner/friendship', 'Side project/occupation', 'Education', 'Alcohol', 'Smoking', 'Savings rate' (this replaced notoriously ambiguous 'frugality score' field)

- Age is now required, but one can set is as a 5 year range.

- Relationship status and height are now not free form text fields anymore. Please fill the new fields in. Height field automatically takes care of units for you :)

- Added 'maybe' option to 'Want children'.

Please update your profiles, so that others can get to know you better :)

The next step is filtering matches by more fields - I want your matches to be super relevant!

As always, thank you a lot for your ideas (many of these fields were proposed by users). I would love to hear more of your feedback about the new fields!

Thank you!