Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
male
reader, Asexy  +, writes (16 October 2007):
 This might help for the URL thing:http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/01/18/435870.aspx
It's "UrlRewritingModule w/ Regular Expression Support for ASP.NET 2.0" -- I haven't checked it out closely but I think it's shareware.
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male
reader, Asexy +, writes (16 October 2007):
(1) ability to delete sent messages in the mailbox (I think the boxes that were supposed to be there have gone missing)
(2) ability to change our password and add a DOB if we forgot to add it while signing up (if it's already there I've missed it, sorry)
(3) once you rate an answer, it would be nice to see the average ratings of other people who've rated it (like "4.5 stars from 3 Aunts!") rather than the "thank you for rating" that shows up. That way rather than saying "me too" when someone already gave great advice, we could just add our 5 star and move on.
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female
reader, stina +, writes (15 October 2007):
 Hey Andrew,
I know that you have added this to a "wish list" for Dear Cupid, but I was just wondering what the status was for font alterations --
IYou said we will not be able to have linking capabilities in things such as our profiles, but will we be able to set our fonts to be bold / italicized?
I think that it would be particularly helpful in the articles. If one has different sections, each subheading could then have a bold or italic title.
Also, if you want a simple banner created for the site to make it look more appealing, just let me know! I'll create one and will not charge you (obviously!). Just let me know the size in pixels. ^_^ I could make several different banners and you could choose one to use.
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male
reader, DearCupid  +, writes (7 October 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the question Hi Penta
That's a bug in the linking code I use. I'll take a look at it again to see if I can figure out how to improve it... if anyone is a regular expressions wizard please let me know!!!
Andrew
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female
reader, penta +, writes (4 October 2007):
 One last one. Is there a way when we're posting a URL for the query string to be hyperlinked too? Otherwise the link doesn't go to the right place. thanks!
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male
reader, DearCupid +, writes (2 October 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the questionHi Penta
Having been involved with online communities/forums for many years... I decided not to allow retrospective editing of posts on dearcupid. It can cause more problems than it fixes. So, it's a decision rather than a missing feature if that makes sense :-)
Andrew
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female
reader, penta +, writes (2 October 2007):
Sorry to keep asking for more stuff, but since you're asking... [grin].
Is there any way we can edit our own posts? (Maybe with an "edited by __" added underneath). I can't tell you how often I've hit "Add Your Answer" only to find that I've mistyped/misspelled something or said it differently than I meant it...
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male
reader, DearCupid +, writes (2 October 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the questionHi Penta
The order problem isn't solve-able because either you or the anon answerer (who went thru moderation) would be out of order.
Order is date written rather than date published, even if date published the anon answerer would then be out of sync.
I think numbered answers are the way to go :-)
Andrew
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female
reader, penta +, writes (2 October 2007):
It might help with knowing which anon poster said what, but it won't help the order problem, lol. But thanks.
It's just weird when someone says "Do this" and you respond "That's what I always do". But IN BETWEEN another post comes up and says "Do this other thing." You hadn't seen the "other thing" post and now the advice is off. That's what I meant by order.
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female
reader, brooke5426 +, writes (2 October 2007):
 that sounds like a great idea!
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male
reader, DearCupid +, writes (2 October 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the questionEach answer will be assigned to a number e.g. this might be 50146 so if you want to refer to another answer, rather than saying something like "to female anon answer below" you could say "to 50145" so people would know who you are referring to.
Would that work?
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female
reader, penta +, writes (2 October 2007):
Hi Andrew,
not sure what you mean by ID numbers. What do the numbers refer to?
-p
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male
reader, DearCupid +, writes (2 October 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the questionPenta
Good point
I'll add a search through a specific aunt's questions, this month.
(ps. you can now browse all your answers as per my previous announcement)
Andrew
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female
reader, penta +, writes (2 October 2007):
Hi again.
You said: "Penta. If you have a good answer to an old question you can just copy and paste the full link and point the asker there."
Yeah, I know that, it's just that once it's off "my" page it's hard to find. Maybe if we can add to the search function the ability to search through a specific aunt's answers?
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male
reader, DearCupid +, writes (2 October 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the questionPenta - there is no elegant solution to the order thing because someone will end up in the wrong place.
I'm tempted to put ID numbers next to the answer so people can refer to those (which will never change)
Regarding ratings. No one person can down rate you... trust me on this. There WAS a problem where the graph would show you had been down rated. This has been fixed and the actual key "number" was never effected.
Andrew
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female
reader, penta +, writes (2 October 2007):
It would be nice if things were posted in order. I know that some are moderated and take longer to post, but then suddenly your answer doesn't apply (maybe you responded to the "last" post, and then there are two posts in-between).
About the rating, I know you've changed the algorithm, but it can take an overnight hit if someone gets mad at you. I saw my ratings drop after responding to one guy (pretty much the way the other aunts did, too).
But what I was asking for (I think [grin]) was an aggregate rating for the advice on the specific page. Maybe once you rate something, the average rating for that question appears (where the "thanks for rating" currently shows) and if you're logged in, then rather than being able to rate your own, you'd see the average score of what's already been rated for that answer.
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male
reader, DearCupid +, writes (2 October 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the questionOk I made another update, you now see all questions answered on your column page as requested by Frank (and many others)... there is a widget to use to scroll through the pages.
Any problems please PM me.
Andrew
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female
reader, stina +, writes (2 October 2007):
Yay! ^_^ Thanks, Andrew!
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male
reader, DearCupid +, writes (2 October 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the questionWhat I've done so far:
* Users can now suggest their own title when asking.
* Stina, I've fixed the problem in the management section which allowed two people to login. As I suspected there was a difference in timeouts so I've corrected that. I've also added a logout button in the mod section (flower girl!) this allows you to logout and return to the main homepage, it also clears the mod section allowing someone else to login immediately (so should help improve question+answer throughput).
More to come.
Andrew
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male
reader, DearCupid +, writes (2 October 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the questionDrastic - ok I see what you mean!
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female
reader, drastic knowledge +, writes (2 October 2007):
 no what i ment was that i could delet it from where i click on my questions not from the site
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male
reader, DearCupid +, writes (1 October 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the questionAnother batch :-)
1. Stina, I'm working on getting more mods but it takes time to recruit them and if I get too many in one go it's hard to manage. I hope things will be better by xmas!
The mod area should alert people not to login when there is someone else active in there. I suspect that the message and the actual timeout are not the same which is when you get problems and two people in there at one time. I'll look into fixing this. I'm also going to provide a logout button which will immediately clear the mod section for others to use. I'm going to do those changes this month.
Ratings with answers and a full list of questions answered I've covered elsewhere. Ditto age on questions/answers.
I didn't progress with video answers because no one seemed keen on creating them... if there is any interest in people doing video answers I will do the change to let them happen, it's only a small change really! Any volunteers email me.
HTML in profiles I'll add this as a "wish" it's a little tricky though with how the site is setup and some HTML tags have potential to be dangerous.
Password change is not yet possible I'll add that functionality in October.
2. DanielEPew I can look at seeing how many 5* ratings other aunts have given an answer but as I've said before here most answers on average get under 1 rating. I'll look again though because it's a good suggestion.
3. Rhythm. There is already a weighting factor in the algorithm (but not for ratings by question asker where I simply present the average of the scores - and don't intend to change this). If you have specific examples of aunts whose ratings you think are "wrong" then please PM me them and I can look into it. I am may raise the number of ratings required before the user has their official "number" and goes on the top aunts list because this is probably the cause of the problem.
4. Rhythm (again :-) I am always reluctant to provide links to "expert" sites because those sites tend to change, they can have their own biases, they change over time and it's something else to maintain. But that reluctance can be overcome if you have example sites you think should be linked to, please PM me and I'll take a look.
5. Trev, interesting idea regarding forum with some criteria before you can join. I'll look at doing this.
6. Oblivia. I thought it worked that way but checked and it didn't. I've changed so that it now also gives follow ups on questions you've answered anonymously... well spotted, thank you!! The ratings formula is secret but is largely just an average of ratings (after careful filtering to ensure that no-one can cheat up or downrating people).
7. Female anon who can't find answers. When you ask a question anonymously you get a secret code. You goto http://www.dearcupid.org/find and enter the code and it will take you to your question. If that isn't good enough then you probably should register it takes like 60 seconds.
8 Loser. Sometimes mods get things wrong and sometimes that feature helps flag up answers that shouldn't have been published. It's not an automated process. Questions are posted on the homepage in date order and at the bottom of the homepage you can browse by year/month/day asked.
9. Flower girl, I'll add that link.
10. Brooke yes that's right.
11. Brooke (2), no, everything goes through some kind of approval.
Ok I'll try and finish off last few comments shortly. Some real good ideas here folks.
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male
reader, DearCupid +, writes (1 October 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the questionOk I've un-sticked here are more followups to the feedback :-) Great work, guys. One more post from me to come.
1. Frank, ages are always present unless the user joined the site before age was a mandatory sign-up question... if asking anonymously age is captured. I'm going to allow people who joined before the age question to set their age, during October.
I'm going to ensure that all questions you've answered are listed from your column page.
2. Superbunny; people will rate according to their feelings I don't intend to stop that. Also, the ratings are designed such that one person can't affect the outcome.
3. Penta. Individual answers get so few ratings (less than one, on average) to make the counting and displaying of those rating meaningless. Given how the ratings algorithm is designed and how the site is used, it is highly unlikely one answer will seriously negatively affect your rating.
4. Jmum, check out my reply above to Penta, think I cover your point.
5. Drastic Knowledge, agree that time to publish questions+answers needs to go down. I don't give a public option to remove questions asked because the whole point of DearCupid is that it is free and public. Without being public it couldn't be free (the site manages to cover its costs by showing adverts). People can PM me to ask that questions are removed but I would ask in return that they don't ask further questions. Logout is just one click away :-)
6. Lilli b. I think ordering by rating would be very confusing because replies tend to form a natural "narrative"... plus, individual answers get too few ratings to use as a statistic for ordering by. I'm going to provide access to the full list of questions answered by an aunt on the column page :-)
7. Richard_Emids, The result is seperated on the top aunts page. Users can leave feedback to a question where they can address individual answers but they can't leave feedback per answer as such. I'm fairly content with this granularity to allow feedback to each answer would probably reduce the amount of folks leaving feedback and adds complexity where I'm not convinced it enhances the site. The forums is just a place for free-form chat. The articles page does need tidying up!
8. Phiatiger, I've considered allowing questions to be allocated to aunts but I have never been able to conceive a process which was sastisfactory. If you have any specific idea how this could work please PM me.
9. CD206. If someone thinks the advice is good I'd hope they'd rate it as such I'm not sure I see any advantage with some kind of split ratings system.
10. Stina!!! Coming in the next post.
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female
reader, Ms.Sweet dreams  +, writes (1 October 2007):
 this site will be popular if u just put some design that make a reader encourage to ask question or be one of us. this site looks ordinary but helpful. i just wish that the ranking will not shown on to reader coz its just insulting for us that some of agony feel down that no one votes for them and the readers think that don't get advice for that person coz he/she doesn't know what she was talking about. i hope i can able to help u to improve ur site.
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male
reader, anonymous, writes (30 September 2007): show age range on main page or have different pages for different age groups so people who understand people their age can talk to each other.
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reader, anonymous, writes (30 September 2007): I would like to see a separate site to help out abused and battered partners (male or female). i do speak from experience as i was a battered, tortured and abused wife for 20 years. I cannot believe i went so long before if got away, so i would be able to give some helpful advice. Often when you are in a situation like this all you want to correspond with is someone who understand and listens to everything that you have to say.
Often people are quick to judge and tell you to get out but honestly, it is not that easy, i know, my own mam even took his side, which was hurtful then and still is.
A separate site where they can key in and have a friendly and helpful ear at hand.
Another point, i can never get back to the main homepage when i do moderator questions. I have to arrow back out or jump out of the whole thing altogether and log back in. What am i doing wrong?
I also think it would be nice to have a site just for moderators to meet up, compare notes or just ask for help once in a while, a little helpful chat would not come amiss.
Do people still rate us? I try and rate all the answers and questions that i read, but does everyone else?
I think you (Andrew) are doing a great and worthwhile job and i just wished i had more time to help out more.
Keep up the good work!!!
Take care
xx
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (30 September 2007): i can see your point of view about the suicide etc but couldn't you just create a page linking to some websites etc or some places they can go for help, as you say you aren't professionals but other people are maybe that page could help them to find the advice or support they need.
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male
reader, DearCupid +, writes (30 September 2007):
DearCupid is verified as being by the original poster of the questionJust a quick note on self-harm / suicide.
We will never accept such questions because as Irish points out, we are not professionals and this is not the right forum for people with serious, potentially life threating problems to get help... for lots of reasons.
Will get back to all the other points on Monday.
Andrew
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female
reader, Irish49  + ♥, writes (30 September 2007):
 I think it clearly needs to be pointed out that approving questions where people are threatening suicide and self-harm, will put this website into asituatin where there could be possible legal 'liability' ramifications . What's to say, that a victim's family won't come back and claim that this site contributed to the demise of their loved one. And the ethical/moral aspects must be considered, as well. We are not professional therapists with the proper training to deal with people, who are troubled to the point where they are considering some harm to themselves. As a moderator I can speak for myself..I will continue to disapprove any and all questions pertaining to suicide and self-harm.
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female
reader, brooke5426 +, writes (30 September 2007):
i dont really think its a good idea to refuse questions because they relate to self harm. i get that nobody here is a professional therapist (at least i dont think any of us are!) but if people are in that frame of mind i dont think its a good idea to deny them someone to talk to or to reject them.
then again, there are websites like the Samaritans and others who are set up specifically for that purpose.
so maybe i'm just talking myself round in a circle here....
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (30 September 2007): Maybe a separate page or area that changes each week (but also then gets archived) that takes a particular focus or topic perhaps some of the really big subjects (e.g. rape or domestic violence etc) so that 'experts' or website links and a lot of additional info can be shared as well as the brilliant aunts input. Just want to say this website is great and a real lifeline for many people. Thank you.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (30 September 2007): it would be great if you livened up the pages with abit of colour!! and it would be cool if anonymous users could recieve an email when someone has posted a response to their question!
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female
reader, brooke5426 +, writes (30 September 2007):
hold on a second, have we stopped approving questions and answers now? or is that just temporary. did i miss something?
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female
reader, brooke5426 +, writes (29 September 2007):
to the female reader who wants to remain anonymous -
make an account, when you post a question it says "you are currently logged in as ..... check this box if you want to post this question anonymously"
so you have the option to post anonymously if you are a member and you will be able to find all of your questions and the responses they got much easier than looking through all of the questions. especially when you dont even know what the title would be.
brooke
xx
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female
reader, flower girl +, writes (29 September 2007):
 Don't know if it's already there, but for the mods is there a quick route back to home page without having to back arrow.
Sorry if i'm being blonde and it's already there.
Take care.xx.
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female
reader, L.O.S.E.R.  +, writes (29 September 2007):
 I think that "Vote to remove unhelpful or hurtful answer" is pointless (and un-democratic) cause there's a moderator who aproves the answers before they're posted already.I know I wouldn't wish to post a question now that I know I'll get censored replies to it.On my opinion ANY reply is "helpful" and if people who post the questions can't "handle the thruth" (hey,it's just an advice,one side of the medal-how can it hurt anyway) they shouldn't post them in the 1st place.
Also I find this site a bit confusing and I'd love to see all of the questions in any kind of chronological order.
It's GREAT site other than that,support to the idea of creating it:))
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (29 September 2007): I think the site is really great, but I have a really annoying problem.
I don't want to make an account but I'd like a way to be able to see questions I've asked and answered without having to go through every question on the site.
How do I remain anonamous and still find all the questions I've asked and answered.
I know you'll come up with something - but it's doing my head in! Pleassseeee sort it out!!!
Thanks (:
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (29 September 2007): i hav posted an answer on here once. I'm glad your gonna make spomething that epopel can make up their own titles just wondered though wouldn't this also help the questions to get approveed quicker because the mderators won't have to keep reading them to think up of a title they will just be able to proof read it if you see what i mean?
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female
reader, Oblivia  + ♥, writes (29 September 2007):
 It would be good to be able to get follow ups on questions answered anonymously (logged in but with the anon box checked)
I also think it would be good to be able to get alerts and follow-up alerts from the Forum site.
Not that I think it is necesaary to have a rating system at all, but now that it is there, how does it work? My ratings can for ex differ from time to time with 0.03 points, how is it calculated? What is the formula?
Thanks for a very good site!
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male
reader, Uncle Trev +, writes (29 September 2007):
How about a forum area for those of us who help out others.
I feel a forum for agony aunts and uncles where we could add views and get to know each other a bit through an area where we could all post for all of us to read. Maybe set a criteria of 25 or 50 replies as a qualification to get into the forum to stop anonymous spite.
Just an idea but I feel this as a concept would be good for all of us wanting to help others.
Maybe also a general open forum where anybody could get involved socially too.
Cheers
Trev
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female
reader, rhythmandblues2 + ♥, writes (28 September 2007):
| 