Improving the Match Feature

When I first joined this site, I noticed that the match feature doesn't work for me (I had 0 results). Still doesn't (perhaps I'm just too unique :p) (now seems to be working as of 6/5). I'm not terribly worried about it, but then it came to mind again when I used the phone version of the site yesterday and saw that it worked for me there. Didn't seem terribly accurate or useful. From there, I got to thinking about what it would take for such a feature to actually give meaningful results. Here I will post some of my ideas, and hope others will contribute as well. I've seen a little discussion here and there, but I feel that it needs a little more attention given this is supposedly a dating site. The socializing part is fun too though :) -Matching based on preferred genres rather than scores on specific anime should give far better results. -Matching based on anime scores isn't very effective, unless the scores are generalized. I don't know the details of how it currently works, but in general anything above a 7 is positive and ought to be weighted equally. Likewise 4 - 6 and 1 - 3, though such scores seem to be far less common. Some give out 10s to anything they like and 1s to everything they don't like, while others are highly objective about their scores. This could help bridge that gap. The database needs to be cleaned up first though. -Matching based on anime in common can be somewhat effective, but only in the context of compatible scores (see previous point). Again, the database needs to be cleaned up before it matters. -Did I mention that the database needs to be cleaned up? -Matching based on past conventions is likely ineffective. Limiting it to future conventions only would make it a little more reliable, especially in the case that a person moves somewhere else and could no longer attend those past conventions. I don't feel this needs to be too heavily weighted in the overall calculations either way though. -Factoring in whether a person is open to/actively cosplays, or is open to/goes to conventions may also be quite helpful. For some this seems to be important. Perhaps there are other such factors that could be considered as well? -Factoring in age would be very smart. Laws differ from state to state or country to country, with ages of consent ranging from 16 to 18 in the US, and perhaps other numbers elsewhere. Factoring in state by state or country by country age of consent would help mitigate legal problems, while ensuring that perfectly legal candidates aren't simply filtered out. -Background checks would be nice, but that may not be a realistic expectation. It would help filter out known sex offenders, murderers, slave traffickers, drug dealers, and other sorts of crazy that are undesirable here. Not that we seem to have a problem with this here, but I'd hate to see it happen even once. It would be sad to make a friend on here and they just disappeared (among other terrible things) because of such a person :( -More complex dynamics like forum activity may also factor in very well. If two people seem to have a common interest in a given thread (i.e. they view and/or post frequently), then there's obviously some common ground there. It would also make posting in the forums even more worthwhile. This could be skewed a bit though as some larger threads are just random banter for fun. Threads with more specific topics would be excellent candidates though. -Filtering out inactive members should be obvious. This has been mentioned before. -For something truly powerful and effective (perhaps a premium feature?), users could be given the ability to flag other users as potential interests. Then from these interests, dynamically calculate other matches that meet similar criteria. This would work better with physical appearance data, but unfortunately that's rather difficult to effectively utilize and is too easy to lie about. You'd almost need to allow users to anonymously vote on each others appearance to build a reliable definition of a persons physical appeal, but that's just cold :\ -Improving the search feature as a more manual alternative to the match feature may also be nice. The results seem to be fairly limited. I would say that other personal features like body type, height, etc should be factored in, but on the one hand you have people that would just lie and on the other those with unrealistic expectations. Seems best to me to just let people browse each other's pictures and decide if they are attractive, rather than throw in other variables that will only fuel the unrealistic expectations and/or lies. Some people probably wouldn't care about these things as much as they think if they found the right person anyways. What sounds good on paper and what looks good in reality can be two different things. Unless of course you live in fantasy land and expect someone who is literally perfect and meets your every criteria. In that case there is no hope for you. If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd be more than happy to edit this post and add them.

"You'd almost need to allow users to anonymously vote on each others appearance to build a reliable definition of a persons physical appeal, but that's just cold :\ " Lol, yes, and some dating sites even go and do this already!