Admin's blog

I have made a small update to the statistics page: it now treats states in the USA and Canadian provinces as one country (previous California and New York appeared as separate entries in the top countries list). I also added a new column showing each countries contribution to the site.

Here are the statistics as of the 23rd of May, 2012:

There are some interesting things there that give me a new insight into the site's demographics:

• Almost 2/3 of our members are from Europe.
• There's a grand total of 14 members from Africa.
• Previously I had thought UK had the largest membership. Turns out with all the states combined, the USA is even bigger. Of course, the 1000+ guys there are spread across a continent. All in all, America accounts for 1/4 of the site's members.
• The UK guys are twice as generous as their USA friends.
• Italians are a frugal bunch. :P

That's it for today...

Running a site like this has many rewarding and some less-than-rewarding moments.

The less-than-rewarding moments usually involve dealing with crazy people. Or, as the case may be (thank God), one crazy person. Truth is, I think I'm lucky that of the 900+ people who have ever registered on this site, there was only one that really made me wish I had never started operating AllFighters.info. The reason I'm writing "was" is that I have just used the Admin's Banhammer for the first time since the site started 5 months ago. This person has been the most destructive one to our site ever.

I'm not going into rant mode, but the gist is this: our terms of service quite clearly states that this site is not for harassing other members in any shape or form. Yet this person took it upon himself to write and revise a bad recommendation 13 times within a month, write blog entries about the object of his malice, and lace his own profile introduction text with colorful terms regarding him, such as "gnat".

All the while I try to reason with the guy. Try to ask, plead, beg for him to stop, and all I get are self-righteous tirades, condescending assertions of his superior moral position and aggravating refusal to acknowledge that what he's doing is just plain wrong. Despite my hopes that the guy might be reasoned with, our final exchange involved a deal: He'd clean some personal attacks on other members from his profile in exchange for me deleting a bad recommendation he got from a member whom he has managed to chase off before. So he did clean up his profile (carrot worked), and I removed the bad recommendation. Imagine my surprise when, two weeks later, he goes and posts the same old crap back on his profile.

So after exchanging a total of 61 infuriating and utterly useless messages, I just gave up. I guess, he won.

One good thing has, however, come from this fiasco: I now have a procedure for dealing with the rest of his kind, should they rear their unwholesome heads again. The procedure is simple:

1. Send a warning message, explaining the problem politely, referencing exactly what the problem is and asking for acknowledgment. If clarification is asked, it is given in followup messages.
2. If the warning is not acknowledged, or the member engages in further abuse, the profile is moderated for a period of 7 days. After the period is over, the member needs to read and accept the site terms of service again to reactivate his profile.
3. If abuse continues after moderation, the profile is deleted permanently.

Comments are welcome.