One of the main problems with using a dating site is sorting the wheat from the chaff.
The main emphasis in dating sites is matching people with common interests, e.g. "you like walks on the beach and stuff?, so do I!, lets go out on a date". Common interest may be a good thing for conversation on the first date, but probably matter less for the long term prospects of a relationship.
To quote Gregory House: "Sevens marry sevens, nines marry nines, fours marry fours. Maybe there’s some wiggle room if there’s enough money or if somebody got pregnant."
I think dating sites should cut to the chase. Basically you're pooled with people in your league.
To use the dating site you would send a large number of photos of yourself (or maybe just a link to your facebook page), as well as a short description of who you are and what you do. A team of impartial moderators would spend about 10 minutes looking at your profile and then rate you between 1 and 10 (for the sake of fragile egos, you would not be told your rating). The rating would take into account as many relevant factors as possible such as looks, age, income etc. The rating could be based on an algorithm, or simply by the 'vibe' the moderators get.
The site would then direct your profile into your 'league', and each league would then operate as a regular dating website.
Hopefully this would result in a higher efficiency than a regular dating site because: a) users would not waste their time pinning hopes on potential partners out of their league, and b) users would not get discouraged with the the number of low quality potential partners.-- xaviergisz, Sep 27 2009 - for promoting such superficial "rating".
- for quoting House. grrrr-- dentworth, Sep 27 2009 Since there are many different axes of desirability, surely it would have to be a multidimensional co-ordinate? Money, style, domestic, professional, spiritual, intelligence - so person A scores (7,3,5,9,9,2,1) - then you are matched with people nearby in x-dimensional space. Isn't this how dating agencies already work?-- pocmloc, Sep 27 2009 Ooh, I've got just the jingle.
"Lowered expecta-ations."-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 27 2009 Makes sense to me, so [+], but I've never used a dating site.
Sadly, where I live, the people who ride public transport are those who can't afford to drive.
I don't think a 1-10 rating is really that superficial, but then I think of myself as at least an 8.
This site could even offer advice about how to raise your rating: earn more $$, learn to do something amazing, increase muscle definition...The site could even have links to affiliate sites that help people do the recommended things! It seems like a dating website would be a natural place to give advice about becoming more attractive.
To address concerns of "shallowness", I propose a second site, where the 1-10 rating is done on the basis of how good a person is. i.e. a doctor or aid worker who saves peoples lives' daily would score high, a lazy person would score in the middle, and a weapons engineer would score low.-- sninctown, Sep 27 2009 as a proprietor of a site whose had several users couples get married, I'd have to say that this is a "built-in" feature in any specialized site with a community feature, as the audience self selects along common inteests, and , as is typical for such audiences, finds it easier to communicate online than offline-- theircompetitor, Sep 27 2009 Obviously I have some knowledge of what you speak of, having found and lost love here, through this site. Though not a dating site, it was the meeting ground, nonetheless.
Isn't this exactly what "plentyoffish.com" does? Except you don't have to leave the site, it just directs you to the tens, etc. If you are rated a ten by many, then you would seek out the "tens" of the other gender. I think it does sort people out by the "vibe" moderators get. But I could be wrong about that.-- blissmiss, Sep 27 2009 This raises the issue for me of whether there is really a league, something i've never been able to work out. It seems to me that even if there is, someone high up on that league might have unusual tastes and therefore appear to prefer people with a lower rating. They might also be missing out on different kinds of relationships. I've also never been able to place myself on the league at any point in my life.-- nineteenthly, Sep 27 2009 [+] I like this because I don't always have friends around to tell me, "Give it up. She's out of you league." Sometimes when I get acquainted with a woman, by the time I realize that she is out of my league, I'm in over my head with trying to keep up with her level of living.-- Jscotty, Sep 27 2009 I rather think some kind of multi-axis spider chart would be a better fit for this, with dimensions of flexibility, spontenaity, financial organization, energy, decision-making, etc. I'd bet that eHarmony and others do this.-- RayfordSteele, Sep 27 2009 [UB], maybe i'm just so far below where the league starts that i can't even see it.-- nineteenthly, Sep 28 2009 So if I tried to join this club, would I be disappointed if they'd accept me?-- RayfordSteele, Sep 28 2009 I suspect that this idea underestimates the roles played by circumstance and bluff.-- pertinax, Sep 28 2009 Is a good looking partner really the foundation for a long, happy and stable marriage? Pick any couple that has been married for at least a decade and ask them... Dating sites need to get real and start promoting the kind of partnerships that will lead to love and not mere lust. I suspect that physical data and photographs hinder dating site efficiency. (fishbone for this superficial idea)-- vincevincevince, Sep 28 2009 I think superficiality is inherent (and a fundamental flaw) in any form of online dating and my idea is not aimed at eliminating it. Having said that, the role of the moderators is not just to rate purely on the basis of looks, but also take into account the wit, intelligence, goodness of the users based on their descriptions of themselves. Of course there is no universal, objective rating of a person (one man's 3 is another man's 7), but I think this coarse filter will work pretty well (given the limited amount of information available).
The idea is to limit the pool of potential partners. Although counter-intuitive, people usually make better choices when presented with fewer options (I can't find it now but there are at least two TED talks which discuss this point).
This means the dating site operator has to do some work to 'value add' to their service to provide realistic expectations to their customers.
Hey theircompetitor, what's your website?-- xaviergisz, Sep 28 2009 + ['miss] for mentioning plentyoffish - that site does quite a lot to match people up by various criteria... all for free! As for deciding who's in your league and who's not.. thats a tall order. As others have mentioned, your league is a multidimensional quantity. But + the idea, since I agree that in general, people are best matched to someone who is neither a lot better or a lot worse-looking than they.-- afinehowdoyoudo, Sep 29 2009 >"looking at your profile and then rate you between 1 and 10"
[-] What to do with people who have IQ above those numbers?
// Indiettah dereque? Xiaver misgev! (Amharic)-- pashute, Sep 29 2009 //A team of impartial moderators// No, no, no. That's much too boring. Instead, I propose that anyone who registers for the web site also has to register their parents and then the parents get together and sort it all out between them. You know, like they used to!-- DrBob, Sep 29 2009 random, halfbakery