OkCupid is a free-of-charge social networking and dating website which features member-created quizzes and supports various modes of communication: blogs, instant messages, emails, and "winks". It is one of the largest dating sites on the web.
OkCupid users are presented with questions (most of which are authored, submitted, and vetted by members) about various topics such as politics and tastes page by page, and given a list of up to four answers per question to choose from. They are also asked "How would your Ideal Match answer this question?", and then "How important is their answer to you?", with degrees of importance for the latter listed as "irrelevant", "a little important", "somewhat important", "very important", and "mandatory", each respectively assigned a greater numerical value. The site uses the numerical values to calculate "friend", "enemy", and "match" percentages between any two members of the site based on how many answered questions those two users have in common (referred to as their "intersection"), with higher intersections supposedly producing more accurate percentages.
There is a very active journaling/blogging community on OkCupid as well. Members have the option of saving favorite users' profiles and then "stalking" them, which allows them to view all of their new journal entries, as well as comments on others' entries.
The journaling community frequently arranges meet-ups of OkCupid users in various areas of the world and people travel, sometimes from ...
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If you ever want to pop back into the e-dating scene, give OkCupid a shot. Never hurts to try! The company's actually based around the Bay Area, so there are tons more Bay Area members on the site than in other parts of the States.
And I'm sure you could meet people in college classes, plenty of people do, I just haven't been one of them, but that's just me! Maybe you can sign up for a photography class at CCSF :P
It is hard to believe that was only posted earlier this month, especially in light of recent disturbing developments on OKCupid. I've been on the site for over four years and seen so much progress... and now... so many changes and not for the better...
Well, where to begin?
About buying a larger mailbox. That feature was disabled when they disposed of all of our activity points. Yes, those of us who donated money, as I did, ($20/month for over 18 months) or edited lots of profiles, (which I also did, over 700 at last count) earned activity points which have now been entirely wiped clean. Those points would have purchased an ad free site or a larger mailbox but you can no longer do that at all because there is no longer such a point system in use, nor is there a donation page.
Destroying our sense of community, part 1:
A couple or three years back OKCupid had a friending system whereby you could list your comrades. This gave the site a sense of community. They disposed of that and were not even kind enough to save us a simple text file of who we had listed. It was a like a train wreck and none of the bodies were carrying ID.
Destroying our sense of community, part 2:
OKCupid then disposed of its own interpretation of the "Testimonials" feature that such sites as Plenty of Fish and Match.com have. OKCupid called the feature, unfortunately, "Comments". Because they called them "comments" instead of what they were meant to be, a lot of jerks posted comments like "You got really big melons! Wanna frak?". Fortunately most users ignored those comments and accepted ones that read like, "I've known Sylvia since High School. She's a good friend and a great dancer!". OKCupid disposed of that feature as well, and then the afore mentioned activity points.
The last straw:
The most recent disposed of feature to get my goat is the WTF. WTF, which was as poorly named as all the other features stood for "What To Fix". It allowed two people who liked each other but suffered poor match scores to compare their personality match answers and determine if their differences actually constituted anything serious or if perhaps, as sometimes happens, they both feel really strongly about the same issue but one of them misread the question and weighted the question strongly FOR when they meant to be AGAINST or vice versa.
OKCupid *very* recently disabled the WTF feature. I posted about this latest irritation in a couple personal journals as well as a couple OKCupid communities. At the rate OKCupid is deleting beloved features, it is only a matter of time before they deleted the journals as well, so I'll direct you to my posting on Live Journal instead, which contains a link back to the OKCupid journal if you are interested in posting links to it there as well.
"WTF" wasn't missed immediately because, while as necessary as the airbag or spare tire in your car, it is is something that you use rarely. So unless you are very serious about a person you just don't have a reason to open it. Every day I encounter more people who either used it or at least knew it existed and are now upset to learn it is gone.
I wish to say that even as fast as OKCupid is sabotaging itself by disabling these well loved features for no apparent reason, they are still head and shoulders ahead of Plenty of Fish. I've met only an handful of people who insist POF is equal or better than OKCupid and those people were all rather lame people who complained that OKCupid required too much thought or effort. I agree, OKCupid does require at least the standard number of functioning brain cells! OKCupid could even be considered an intelligence filter. Creepos stand out way better on OKCupid than on POF because, for one thing, "creepos" don't answer a whole lot of match questions. (They CAN'T. It's "Too hard"!) On a site like POF the creepos look pretty much like everybody else, and it gives them "ad edge"
I've posted a comparison of the two sites in chapter 19 of my Guide to OKCupid, within which I list a lot of the shortcomings of POF, not the least of which is that POF would never permit anyone to post such a comparison on its own site. Yes, if you so much as post the word OKCupid in your profile or even in a private email to another user, POF deletes the words. You can't even send your phone number in a private email. Seriously, you have to spell it in words, ie, "Eight Six Seven Five Three Oh Nine".
Certain other changes on OKCupid, such as the way the journal editor works means that it is now a great deal harder for me to edit and update my now 29 chapter guide to OKCupid. You are welcome to read it as it is now, increasingly out of date by the day. You can find it at tinyurl.com/guide2okcupid
Why?
If you want my opinion, I have a theory. When I first joined four years ago, most of the staff was comprised of single and or poly people who had an actual stake in the functionality of the site. Now that the staff is almost entirely made up of users in committed relationships, the attention has shifted from function to form, and perhaps to marketability toward potential advertisers. I've written to them, even received responses. They listen but they don't appear to be as interested in my opinions as they have been in the more distant past. The other problem is that althought the initial appeal and continued appeal of the site has been toward geeks, it is apparent they are trying to dumb the site down to make it appear less challenging to POF-type users. They don't realize that they are losing the geeks faster than they are gaining the POFs. AOL is proof you can't win at that game.
What you can do:
OKCupid probably has the most talented staff of its entire history. What it lacks is the vision of its past. I think part of what derailed it was that because they stopped responding to users, as they once did, people including myself gave up on trying to offer them guidance. I feel that if we all give them a shout at once, something to let them know that we are concerned, they might just possibly resume their previous course.
If you are an OKCupid user and you are disgruntled over the many not-for-the-better changes the site has suffered in the past couple years, you can write to their feedback department *here*, and know that whether or not they will heed our concerns, I am now convinced they are at least reading. I feel they need to hear from as many people as possible if there is any hope of restoring the site to what it so recently was; The site that was, as Devora has so eloquently, although inaccurately described in her post.
How you can help me, personally:
I hate to sound like a rat leaving a sinking ship. It is through no lack of effort on my part. I've put countless hours into trying to reverse OKCupid's suicidal behavior. If you can't help me save it, you can at least give me your best tips as to where I can go instead.
So, if anyone would like to refer me to a site which they feel works "sort of like OKCupid", I'm in the market! I'd even be willing to pay for a site that is only "as good as OKCupid used to be", I'd even settle for "No worse than it is now", as I'm so dissappointed I can't even bring myself to "update" my guide for the removed features.
Contact info:
If anyone cares to look me up, I'm currently user DCMerlin both on OKCupid and LiveJournal.com as well as here for that matter. :-)
Thank you for your extremely thorough and very well thought out comment. I really think that you should copy and paste your comment into a new review though. That way, it can get more exposure, and people can actually comment and rate it. Just a suggestion! ;)
I was just curious because I couldn't seem to access it the last few times that I logged onto the site, but does OkCupid still have that "stalker" feature? That was kind of weird, but fun and interesting at the same time.
Now personally I'd like to go on record right here as having SUGGESTED something like this idea, not once, but TWICE.
Believe it or not some years ago I wrote to them suggesting that it appeared to me their system was bogging down and that I simply suspected they could used some hardware upgrades. I surmised they were on a shoestring budget and I suggested that they allow those of us who can afford to, to donate funds to their site. I suggested they take credit cards. About the only other things I suggested was that they offer such subtle rewards as a larger mailbox for having donated and a badge that would show up on our profile to indicate that we support the site.
The badge I suggested actually had a couple of purposes. Sure a badge makes a person appear just a bit kinder and more generous, but it also separates the men from the boys, so to speak. Spammers are EXTREMELY unlikely to donate, at least not more than once, and at the rate they create new profiles it would get old fast. Also OKCupid could refuse to take the same spammer credit card more than once!
Think about it, you can post all sorts of nonsense in your profile but when you attach a credit card to your account it makes you a LOT more traceable. I realize under age users might have have access credit cards, but it is extremely unlikely they would be donating money to a dating site without their parents knowledge. I felt that was a really good solution.
They took my suggestion and to it they added a couple features. One was Ad free browsing for the price of a monthly fee. I admit, for some people with dialup connections that's a really good idea! The other features was a point system which would record the portion of your donation not used to purchase these features for yourself which you could in turn use to buy ad free browsing or a super-sized mailbox for other people. I thought that was really nice. Of course like most other good things that's gone the way of the DoDo.
In the defense of OKCupid I wish to give credit where credit is due. OKCupid has actually improved in five ways I can think of: 1) They now allow us 10 photos per profile instead of 5.
2) You can arrange the sequence of your photos in your profile simply by clicking on them and dragging them up and down.
3) We are now permitted slightly longer captions under our photos.
4) The mail is now "threaded" 5) We may now add "filters" to who may email or IM us by such criteria as how many match questions they have answered, now low their match score is with relation to our own, how old or young they are, how far from us they live, etc.
I *did* warn you they would be small ways. I mean with relation to the features they've removed it seems difficult to imagine the means by which they arrange their priorities!
In my previous rant, I neglected to list a few other things they did to make the site less pleasant:
1) We may no longer block offensive people from commenting in our journals.
2) While they still permit us to post URLs/Links in our profiles, they delete any links you post in the first section of your profile, up at the top, and worse yet, they don't WARN people their links will be deleted. This gives newbies the false impression it is impossible, while frustrating the frack out of experienced users (including even myself).
3) and while this may not even be a "removed" feature, it sure has heck feels like one. Well, you know how they added "forums"? The forums are totally unmoderated. I mean, you an create a forum entitled, "Men who pick their noses and the women who love them", but if someone starts posting about his bowel movements, you CANNOT screen or delete those posts or ban that poster from your forum. As there are not clearly posted rules regarding these things, it is rather amazing the abuses are not even worse. So while I would not say that this is a "removed" feature, I certainly consider it a "Shoulda been there in the first place and still isn't" feature.
The second time I suggested OKCupid take money was about a year ago and I suggested it in the form of not even so much donations as a simple means to tell the spammers/scammers from the legit users. I personally believe that if a user is so sick of that nonsense they would use it as a reason to leave the site, they should have the option to filter users by who has made a $5 donation with a credit card!
Now, the GOOD news is that since I posted to Lunch.com, I've been taking part in a new forum on OKCupid called, "New Site Design: How to request a WTF report". It dates back to the original disabling of the feature but predates the complete annihilation of the ability to access the feature through light to moderate hacking.
I believe this forum should be viewable to okcupid members and non members alike and I invite LUNCH.com readers to go take a look. While there are the odd confused users who don't really know what WTF is, and some totally lost users, so far this forum has as yet remained on topic. As I explained above, that probably won't last for long without moderation, but for right now it is an inspiring demonstration of how strongly people feel about getting this feature back.
The link I've provided takes you to the post of a user who is speculating about the purported ratio of those who take part in the forums as compared to the supposed 1.4 million registered users of OKCupid. This is yet another example of one time that OKCupid should have just kept its mouth shut! As you will see, my response underscores the need to take into consideration how many of these "registered" users are ACTIVE or interested or ever log in, or even remember their own password for that matter. How many times have any of us opened an account somewhere and totally forgotten the password.
If you answer ONCE and then multiply that by the number of people who have ever heard of OKCupid, well, OUCH! I'm not saying that at a purported 1.4 million users, OKCupid's claim is any less valid than the EQUALLY INVALID claims of Match.com or Yahoo personals or Plenty Of Fish. I am saying that if they are going to do something obnoxious and say that the portion of users active in the forums represent only about 1% of registered members on the site, they are inviting people like me to pipe up and mention when when you consider how many are inactive, AND HOW MANY ARE ONLY ON OKCUPID FOR THE TESTS AND QUIZES, it is really not fair to delete an important MATCHING feature for LACK OF USE against the total number of people on the site. It would be far fairer to compare the number of people in the forums against those who appear active, and social and... well, IN THE FORUMS. Yes, I think they should only count those who have ever taken part in the forums as "Xocially Axtive".
It's nice to see another OkCupid fanatic around here (though I've been less of a fanatic in the past couple of years). I'd love to read a review about your experiences some day! Something tells me that you have some great stories to share about OkCupid :) @dalydose recently wrote a review here about eHarmony, too. By the way, thanks for editing my OkCupid profile, I just noticed that right now and had no idea that you could do that!