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Making Message Center Better
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Making Message Center Better  Every day members send about 600,000 emails to each other. That's about 20 million emails a month. Our message center is pretty old and we've noticed that the ratio of emails sent to emails responded to could probably be better. A lot of the emails that never get a response are from men who don't know how to read a profile, some are spam, but I'll bet a lot of email is ignored simply because of the message center itself. Some things I'd like to see: - To be able to find a member and email them from the message center - A way to star or flag an email - A way to make an email unread - A folder to organize your Sent messages (nas recommendation) - A preview of the email without opening it - Unlimited storage What about you? 1) What bugs you most about the message center? 2) Ladies, you get a lot of email. How do you organize it all right now? What could we do it make it easier? 3) Are there any long standing bugs we are missing out on fixing? |
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1) Currently, the on/off bug with my auto-reply (which is apparently working again now, thank gods). Generally, that as a standard, I can't reply at times, despite my copious points. 2) Being able to create folders, or flag messages would be immensely helpful. Like most women, I get a lot of mail - I do read it all, but very little of it is worth hanging on to. Unfortunately, deleting each message is cumbersome and slow... so I end up with a mailbox essentially full of 'junk' mail (the 'hi baby I'm in town let's meet' messages). 3) Can't think of any off hand, ta for asking. cheers! m
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Some refinements would be nice, but not necessary - and because your thesis statement is wrong, nothing you implement will work to cure the problem. "A lot of the emails that never get a response are from men who don't know how to read a profile, some are spam, but I'll bet a lot of email is ignored simply because of the message center itself." No. A thousand times no. Only three factors limit replies, and two of them you can do nothing about. 1) Mail so poor it doesn't deserve a response. You can't do anything about that. 2) E-mail recipients that either don't want to or will not reply. Nothing to do there either. 3) Standard members who would like to reply but have run out of responses for the day. You could up that, but you'll turn some of this category into the second if you do.
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One complaint I have heard of for years is a standard member will pay 100 points to view a profile and another 100 points to send an email, yet if they are new enough, if and when that person replies, they can't read that email. Now, I get the delay in being able to read emails in order to push for folks to sign up, but since they've paid the points, they should be able to read those emails. This has really frustrated a lot of people and since they are new to the site, they figure if they pay the points, they get contact. One way contact doesn't really fly, does it? They don't know they've essentially wasted those points until they find out they can't read a response. I love the idea of flags on emails. Just to clarify on the sent emails. There is already a folder. I have extra folders that I have created and I want the option to save any particular sent emails into whichever folder I designate. Currently, they have to sit in my sent folder only. If you can get the feature added to make a read email marked unread, please be sure to add the option to organize them by read vs unread. I would love to have better design to safeguard against accidentally hitting the quick reply button when you mean to hit the delete button. Man alive! I spent half a day emailing my friends and apologizing when I did that once. Thank goodness I had cleaned out a bunch the day before or it would have taken me two days of explaining. As for the tacky emails we get, can you program a screen that pops up and just blares out "READ THE DAMN PROFILE FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE" and then blinds them? Ok, temporarily blinds them. Or better yet, gives them a little jolt of electricity? It works for training dogs, yanno! Btw, for those that don't realize it, there is already the option to create extra folders and label them how you like.
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I don't get much mail so no bigger trouble, added a new folder 'no way' for the uninteresting messages as the guys tend to come back, better see what said earlier... and therefore in the inbox only relevant mail. Would love to organise alphabetically sometimes though... easier to search. BUT instead of saving the mails for a longer time, for me better solution could be: to add a space for personal (secret) comments in the profile. Meaning: 'He mailed, I replied, he didn't bother to reply. He tried again 5 months later' 'The same guy as handle Ifoolyou who stood me up' Would like more options for the quick reply, things like: Read the profile. I live on another continent, moron. Thanks for the lovely mail but no thanks. Please chat with me in my blog. I have already replied to you but got no reply... For these replies, I'm sure people would have a lot of ideas... And: you could of course add a line before people send the mail, like you did in the past about the contact info, this time just 'DID YOU READ THE PROFILE? Read it still one more time...' Only universal or also in Scotland Where to start my day or is it month Of course I39ll change I39ll do whatever you like Heatseeking missiles  Squirter's life
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I'd rather you spent your time sorting out the full site blocking rather than messing around again with something not as important
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MY OPINION.... you FIRST off are sending out messages to MEN mostly that say "get laid tonight GUARANTEED" and then have "sex starved sluts" also and the men signing in SEE this. They EXPECT to get insta-sex so they write that way. How on EARTH you want them to behave differently after you posted that crap. OF COURSE they are going to get ignored MOST of the time with "let's f*ck" emails. NOW you expect them to suddenly READ profiles?? COME ONNNNN get real here!! You need to then put IN THEIR INTRO EMAIL 'not' welcome to the site alone, but INSTRUCTIONS on how to behave on this site. I am NOT saying sex is bad or wrong, but NOT everyone here is looking to do anyone everywhere with no prior contact. Some are just spamming every woman on the site hoping to get lucky and that just ruins it for everyone else here. I am so sick of "if you are not here to screw get off the site bitch", you need somehow to explain that your advertising is JUST advertising and that we as women are NOT pre-paid whores here for them to come and pick out and use and we have no preferences what so ever!!! That is just a fantasy, and most of us women are not happy we are being advertised that way to begin with. And you making it a "guarantee" even with your rules for it posted, MOST don't read that, they only see the guarantee of getting laid. With that thought, why should they read any profile?? See my point??
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The ability for people to attach photos that total more than 1MB. Right now there is a woman trying to send me a photo and she's having trouble -- I suspect that it's because the photo is more than 1MB in size. Not everyone knows how to use image editing software to make their file sizes smaller -- and let's face it what digital camera takes a picture smaller than iMB in size? If the site wants file sizes small then the email client should do the conversion for their members. The biggest thing should be a policy change -- instead of having standard members contact as a separate feature -- it should be included as part of a Gold membership -- allowing anyone the Gold Member sends mail to to respond to that mail.
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12/17/2009 11:39 am |
You can stop policing e-mails,deleting their content before they have been read.I think it is up to us to determine what is appropriate and what isn't! This has happened to us more than once and we do not appreciate the interference.
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12/17/2009 11:48 am |
My sent message folder don't work I created a folder for the best messages received to be, and answer later, but that doesn't work either. I would like to be able to archive, so when I want to, I can go in there and browse on the guy's profile. I know, search...But, I can't search on profile, because I'm a Standard Member and if e-mails disappeared eons ago, then too bad... I guess, that's it for now. Thanks for asking, hope to see some of the ideas put in working. Happy people, don't have everything; they make the most of everything coming along their way.
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being able to organize sent messages into various categories. As in sent to friends, sent first mail, sent to arrange meeting ect.. and better quick replies, like "read profile please!", "must be in same city!" ect... Enjoy life while you can!   
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What about some kind of response ratio rating. I get tired of flirts being sent and after taking the time to write a message and get no response. Wouldn't it be great to know if someone actually responds to messages sent?
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12/17/2009 1:24 pm |
Here are my suggestions and feedback: Get rid of the Bulk mailbox and that whole process. I am an adult. I said so when I signed up for the site. You don't have to screen other people who send me their personal information and I don't need a baby sitter to control whether I do or not. The Bulk email box requires the member to jump through hoops to retrieve the message. That is WRONG. I know the reasons for scanning emails with software. You may want to eliminate site links being sent as well as getting rid of emails that deal with "forbidden" topics. But somehow I feel this could be handled better. Right now, I don't use certain punctuation because it gets misinterpreted. For example, sometimes I might want to type something formal like mister so and so or doctor so and so. If I do that and use the abbreviation mr with the period after that and what follows might be misconstrued by your reviewing software as a forbidden link, when the space between the mr the dot and the name is removed, the message winds up in someone's bulk email box. Get rid of that stinking pitch to upgrade that appears after every three emails. It is not only annoying, but it makes my inbox hard to deal with because of the visual clutter. I know you want as much revenue as possible. But all you are doing is pissing people off and making them not want to upgrade. Redirecting people to the upgrade page when they try to use a paid member only feature is fine. But perhaps a redirect to the upgrade page when the ten per day email has been exceeded is enough of an incentive to upgrade. You need to fix the handling of the email message when an incorrect verification number or no verification number is entered before the send button is hit. What happens now is that I get an error message AND the entire text I typed is deleted. You have no idea how annoying that is. Also, drafts don't seem to work as expected. If I save something to a draft, it doesn't necessarily get sent when I go back, complete it and try to send it. More often than not, I lose all my typed and saved to draft text. There should be a way to form a custom quick reply. It can be limited as far as characters go. I understand that you don't want that to be a real message. But the quick response with a saved copy of it, like the way subject line works might get more people to actually respond to messages even if it's to say no thank you. I find that sometimes I need to use the one that says something similar to "thank you but I am not interested" but that whole phrase doesn't apply. And it makes the recipient angry that I implied they expressed interest in me when perhaps they were only complimenting my profile pic and live on the other side of the world. I agree that the overall look and feel of the email system is kind of clunky. The things I suggested above are things that need to be changed. The look and feel is up to your designers. I have very little expertise in that. But I do recognize something I like when I see it. OH and you need to make something really clear to all members but especially Standard members. There doesn't seem to be a limit on the number of Quick Replies a Standard member can send. This is a good thing because it allows unlimited, easy responses to EVERY email sent. I can't begin to tell your other members how rude it is not to respond to EVERY email whether it was a nasty piece of garbage, a childish piece of garbage or you just are plain not interested. The unlimited quick replies makes it easy to sort, use check boxes and do mass replies that at least give the appearance of politeness. Why should you respond to obnoxious one liners with a quick response? Because two wrongs don't make a right. And that person who gets a ton of no thank you email might just change his or her tune. And what about the emails that harass you, call you names and otherwise torment you? The proper response to that is to block them or turn them in to the Abuse team. All those features are already in the email system But I guess making them easier to use and more obvious might make it all work smoother. And for those who think deleting or quick responses to a lot of the "junk" messages is cumbersone and slow, let me say this. It isn't. There are check boxes. You can read your entire inbox, check the little check box along the side of the ones you want to deal with all at once, send the quick reply and delete them with two more mouse clicks. It isn't that hard right now. Perhaps making it more obvious would help the members out who haven't figured out that it is not that much more trouble to be polite. I am only going on about this because I get tired of reading the Advice Line questions that ask if there are any real people on the site or why do I never get responses from anyone I email. It takes two to Tango. I appreciate that the site is trying to do something with the email system. But it takes polite members to lead by example and make a better environment for everyone. Thanks for the soap box Mr Community!
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12/17/2009 1:47 pm |
Ladies. Please realize that this site does not belong to you and you alone while men have to scrape at your feet. Myth proved wrong. Some men in here are as popular if not more popular than you are so put a sock in it. Lot's of the ladies on here and other sites send nasty, tacky, and unbelievably offensive emails to myself and other men all of the time as men do allot more than they should themselves. The difference is that we don't bitch about what the women do so much but we should. We evolved into becoming more tolerant of women's bad behavior through time if you haven't noticed. With that said, this site belongs to men and women. The truth to that is that the men and women on this site should act more like 'adults', hence the name 'Affairlook', instead of winy little children. We could have a no bitch clause for the ones that try to call themselves ladies and while I'm at it for the men, who I really don't believe are grown men at all, who wine in here all of the time. A bunch of titty babies. You do realize that I am refering to the one's that do this and not everyone. There are many wonderful members on here also that I have no complaints about. Is there anything that you can give to free members that they can have during free episodes on the site. This would help them feel that they may want more, just for enjoying the site, rather than being so miserable that they have to join and then realize that they should have been more educated on how the site works first therefore scaring them off by their own ignorance. Maybe there can be a small tour for new members on how to use the site and read profiles before they send messages and some advise as to how to talk to the women on here and give them a better reason to feel like ladies. Another part can tell ladies to act like ladies instead of telling men off they are not interested in like they are trash and control their behavior too because that is also unacceptable behavior also. A little tutoring tour wouldn't hurt for everyone who genuinely wants to be a member. It would actually make the person feel like they eared a reason to be here after I'm sure. A free month wouldn't work though as I see some change profiles everyday and play lots of games with the rules. Street 'cred' I give them or is that a 'hustle'? No free month for newbies. It would just make it worse. I quit gold membership's a long time ago because I was forking out an extra 20 dollars a month on top of the membership fee for non members to contact me first and see my profile. Shit! I paid the gold membership now what. I guess it was a trick now I'm being lead deeper into paying more and more. At least give us a gold membership when we get a membership instead of a half ass "let's call it gold" and charge them for other crap membership and add add add like the banks that break people today after we become active with them and can't keep their customers. I'm an sure that if 'you' are the banks that own this then nothing will ever come of this and you'll just keep changing the names of sites and ruining a good name as usual. Wrong turnover rate plan. It always fails in the end. This has gotten ridiculous with all of your web sites and eventually you will fall to whoever challenges you with other web sites owned by financial backers who want to put you out of business and make some real money with real ideas for members. If it's Gold then make it Gold and quit with the trying to empty our pockets more and more with new bullshit. People aren't totally stupid and it only takes one smart guy, "brightmorninstar", to lead a community into a battle so let's get this site more comfortable for it's members before you lose them all to another one day and are out of a job. Arrogance will poison 'anyone'. As far as the email idea is concerned. You should have asked a deeper question for paying members and those of us who used to be and won't do it again because of the crap we get when we are ignored. I was a member of Alt before. Paid good and received allot back. I don't pay anymore because of the problems that were never dealt with. I would have paid here if I would have gotten a chance to see if the site actually worked before I committed to giving over my 'well earned money' which you really need to examine that statement about earning your money from the people that pay the bills here. BrightMorninStar [blog BrightMorninStar] Visit me and invite. I changed username.
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12/18/2009 1:34 am |
Takes 3 or more tries before the pictures I attach are uploaded successfully?
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After reading the comments here, how about including a way to recognize if an email is from someone that matches the member cupid settings. Not necessarily filter it though. I realize the stars were suppose to do that, but they never worked right. Also, in the midst of the playboy's comment, he mentioned taking a "tour". What if the site created a tour for members where they read things like the article Molly recently posted on first emails. If they complete that, they earn a mail privilege, even if only temporary?
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that little replied icon that shows up in next to a message once it's replied to -- It would be cool if you could click that icon and be taken to your reply in the sent messages folder.
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12/19/2009 11:51 am |
My message center works fine for me as it is now
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1) What bugs you most about the message center? Why do we see "greater than" symbols all down the L.H. side? It would look nicer without them. I'd also like it if my cursor would automatically appear in the right spot when I reply to an email. Giving us the option of composing our own short "Quick Reply" would be nice. 2) Ladies, you get a lot of email. How do you organize it all right now? What could we do it make it easier? I only open mail from friends and when I can tell by the subject line that the email will not be rude and that the person sending it has read my profile. So I have no need to organize my email. I'm also a standard member, so I actually can't organize it in any permanent kind of way using folders. 3) Are there any long-standing bugs we are missing out on fixing? Not that I can see. Occasionally, emails will go missing from my inbox, but that hardly ever happens, so I wouldn't really call it an ongoing bug. An old bug that seems to be fixed now is that the stars showing our cupid match-up with the person sending an email used to be inaccurate. But they seem to work now. All in all, I quite like the email feature here. I hope you don't change it around too much. It's nice to read all my email on one screen and have each email open so quickly. Honestly, there's very little you could do to make it measurably better.
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oh! I like that. We've talked about that before. Seems unfair to women somehow though. They get so many emails that they don't want to respond to. That's kind of where I get stuck with the idea. Would a read ratio be valuable? Like, Community has opened 98% of his emails.
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I have noticed that MANY people don't realize that an "autoreply" and the "quick reply" ARE NOT THE SAME THING!! I can't tell you how many profiles I have read stating that women are just flashing off "autoreplies" and not taking the time to read anything but 'sending' this out. A 'quick reply' is something we actually pick and choose to send. The "autoreply" is like an answering maching and CONFIRMATION that an email has reached the person you sent it to!! IT IS NOT A BLOW OFF... well unless you set up your answering maching so to speak with a message that is saying so. I don't think people realize that when they sign in that it is an 'option' to set it up and the men just think women are clicking an 'quick reply' to get rid of them. Many men are not even READING the "autoreply" which is the same complaint they are giving to women that we are not reading their emails!! Again, I base that on the number of men complainging that women are 'sending autoreplies' and not realizing it is NOT a 'quick reply'. Possibly you can find some way in that introduction email or that 'tour' of the site to UPFRONT tell the men that it is NOT a blow off and it is NOT a 'quick reply' that women actually have taken the time to WRITE this answering machine message and it is confirmation that their email WAS received!!!! I definitely like the idea of adding "You didn't read my profile" to the 'quick reply' list.
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Once I view an email..and click off ..it diappears...what's up with that? Not sure if that is something new or what...have been on Affairlook for years...it just started happening a few months ago. I tried moving them to folders..but that didn't work either...I miss not being able to go back are re read emails..
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1) More options for quick replies would be nice... The user who posted the suggestions below was on target. Would like more options for the quick reply, things like: Read the profile. I live on another continent, moron. Thanks for the lovely mail but no thanks. Please chat with me in my blog. I have already replied to you but got no reply... Email me again & I will block all communications from you. 2) The INBOX new email notification on the menu bar rarely works properly. Often, after reading a message, it will still indicate new messages are present after I have read them. 3) Sometimes when I DON'T read messages, just delete them without reading, they are still present in the message center after it 'refreshes' when it is supposed to delete the message. 4) I'd like a folder to keep a few of the email messages I'd like to save indefinitely. 5) I too would like more control over the ability to sort / view my email. 6) Maybe not your department, but I think standard people should be allowed to sent 3 emails per 24 hours. There should be some functionality available to them to at least entice them to upgrade. if they can't use the site to begin with, I think they will be less likely to cough up the cash for a membership. 7) Please fix the persistent bugs within the site we keep discussing here before developing any more bells & whistles or add-ons.
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I have to agree on the 'quick reply' vs 'auto reply' comment. I had no clue it wasn't just one of the click here get rid of his butt things. Thanks for the xplanation. I wish I had a few of the quick rplies myself though. Like "I am not falling for your scamming ass" lol
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I'm a little late for this and don't know if it's been addressed yet or not but: What has been bothering me the most is that I have my email OFF except for those who meet my cupid settings. Guess what??? It doesn't work that way. Most people can't email me, but I still get email from men in my area who do NOT meet my cupid settings. What's up with that? 
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love the pic
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