Fire Dating

FAQ

How can I deactivate my account without deleting it?
Please go to your "Search Parameters" page and choose "no" for both romantic and friendship. This way your profile won't be shown to anyone, since you won't look for anyone.
Why all my pictures are blurred? Can I unblur them?
Blurring photos by default is a privacy feature. Many people want to control who can see their photos. Thus, one can see only their blurred photos by default. When you send a request, the receiver can see your original photo, so that they can make a good decision when approving. Once the request is approved, both sides can see each other's photos.
If you want all other users to see your original photos by default (i.e. unblur all photos), you can do this in Settings > Optional fields - look for "Show my original photo to everyone".
Can I undo the request I sent?
Yes, you can 'revoke' a request, but only after it was accepted. The receiver will still see the request, but they won't be able to send messages to you or to see your profile. Revoking a request does not allow you to resend it to someone else. On how to revoke a request, see the next question below.
How can I prevent (block) someone whose request I accepted or whom I sent a request from messaging me / seeing my profile?
You can revoke an accepted request. To do this, go to their profile page and click 'revoke' in the bottom right corner. You will see a confirmation screen explaining how 'revoke' works. Once you confirm, this will delete all messages between you two, you won't be able to chat and see each other profiles. The other person will see that the request was revoked. Revoking a request can't be undone.
How does the site decide who to match me with? What is the matching / ranking algorithm?
As of September 2020, when choosing profiles to show to a specific user, the site takes into account 5 parameters of candidates (with the following weights):
- When was the last time they visited the website? (35%)
- Distance between them and current user (25%)
- How many optional fields they filled in (20%)
- Do they have a photo? (10%)
- Desired relationship type specificity boost (10%). If I look for romantic and friendship, people who also look for romantic get this boost (i.e. ranked a bit higher than people who look only for friendship). If I look only for friendship, people who look only for friendship get this boost.
Thus, when you open the site, for each profile on the site, each of these components is calculated and combined into one score (using the weights above). Then all profiles are sorted, such that this score decreases. You then see top profiles from this list.
Who are you?
I am just a random guy, named Viktor, living in Munich.
Why are you doing this?
I like making stuff in general (including physical). I had an idea to make this website and last year during a FIRE meetup people got interested, so I decided to give it a try. This is my hobby. I am doing everything myself in my free time. You can see the number of hours I spent on stats page.
This site sucks...
I can't agree more. I am a perfectionist and there are so many things I could improve. But as I said I am doing this completely on my own in my free time, so I have to prioritize. That's why I would appreciate your feedback so much. I want this site to be useful, so I need your input (especially if you don't like the site).
Why do you limit number of requests and profiles per day?
Yes, one can send at most 3 requests and see at most 12 new profiles per day.
This is done for multiple reasons. Let's start with new profiles limit:
- I want to motivate users to start talking to others already today (even if they are not sure whether they are a perfect match) instead of looking/waiting for a perfect match.
- I want to avoid "what if the next person is better" illusion. I believe that infinite matching queues can cause a lot of doubt. Imagine that you meet someone really interesting, but there are still 1000 people to explore. I believe that getting to know the person better is more valuable than immediately trying to find someone better.
- It takes time and effort to really evaluate a profile. Evaluating 100 or 1000 profiles at once is impossible anyway. Thus, if you were shown 1000 profiles, the likelihood to miss someone is much higher.
- First impression is not everything. I actually believe that people should have a conversation before forming a final opinion of each other. You can't have conversations with too many profiles at once.
- One can't easily scrape all the data of all users. This makes user data safer.
As for the number of requests the main idea is to prevent low quality requests. I don't want people to say "what if" and send requests to literally everyone they see. Instead they should prioritize and interact with the most interesting people. In the worst case you will have more requests in 24 hours, so if there is someone interesting left from today, you will be able to send them a request tomorrow.
As the number of couples formed shows, this approach works. Moreover many users found these limits useful.
I'm open to your suggestions.
I changed my search parameters, but I still see old profiles.
Search parameters are only taken into account when you are matched with someone. In other words they determine who you will see next, but they don't hide any profiles you've seen before.
Let's consider an example. You have no age limit in your search parameters and you are matched with Bob, who is 35. Then you change your search parameters to "at most 25 years old". You will still see Bob in your list, but all new profiles will be at most 25 years old.
If new profiles you are matched with don't satisfy your search parameters, this must be a bug, please reach out to me.
I see so many empty profiles without photos. I am worried that there are more filled in profiles, which I don't see, because of these empty ones.
The site takes into account how filled in the profile is when choosing profiles for you to see (see "ranking" question above). Thus, when you see many empty profiles, most likely you have already seen all more filled in ones. Unfortunately the inflow of users is smaller than the daily profiles limit, so you will eventually go through all available profiles. Because of the ranking algorithm, the less filled in profiles are in the end of your queue.
Unfortunately there is no obvious solution to this problem. Making fields required will (a) motivate people to fill in garbage, (b) force people to leave if they don't feel like filling the fields. I've also seen people who fill in their profiles after checking out the site.
If you have a nice idea how to tackle this or you believe that there is a bug and you see empty profiles before filled in ones, please reach out to me.
How does message thread archival works?
You can archive obsolete message threads. This moves them into special 'archived' block on the page (see bottom of the thread list), which is collapsed by default. You can write to an archived thread by opening it through this block. Other person don't see that you archived the thread and can write to you as normal. When there is a new message on the thread (either yours or theirs), it will be unarchived automatically.
If you want to prevent someone from being able to message you, revoke the request as described here.
What is the mission of firedating.me?
Decrease amount of loneliness in the FIRE community by helping to build meaningful relationships (friendships or romantic).
Do you plan monetizing the site?
My goal is to provide as much value to you as I can (for example, by helping you to find your partner or meet friends). Unfortunately, my time is very limited, since this is a side project and I am not FIRE. However, I also don't want to be profit driven, since this would move my incentives away from helping you.
Thus, I don't plan 'monetization', since I don't think this would bring more value to the users. There are donations (see the next question), since here the money is a by-product of me providing the value - that is incentives are still aligned.
How can I financially support the site / donate?
See "Donate" page.