As promised, I hit the Engage.com-sponsored Love 2.0 party last night and asserted my peaceful protests about their website’s rigid category structure. I met the CEO, the Project Manager, the Front End Developer, and the Art Director. They were all very friendly and tolerant toward the tall queer trouble-maker in the black wig, and I was impressed with how amenable they were to my concerns about their dating service.
The question was: Why can’t I be bisexual on your website?
The answers were along these lines (with my reactions in italics)…
- That was a database decision. We made it possible for you to be straight or gay, but bisexuality requires searching the entire database, and that’s a big load on the servers.
- Good news! Enterprise-level databases and servers are capable of handling full searches now! Really…
- You can! You’re free to switch back and forth! You can be one way one week and another the next!
- That’s great that you allow people to be fluid about their identities (really, that’s important, and i’m glad you’re doing it). But I’m not excited about dividing my time into “straight weeks” and “gay weeks.” I want to represent myself on your site consistently and honestly, and not have to make a decision on which group of people is allowed to court me at a time.
- We thought about it, and we’d still like to do it, but it’s just going to require so much code to make it work. It’s very complicated.
- I hear ya. It’s hard. That’s rough. I believe in you, though. You can do whatever you want to do. You have the tools.
- It’s a matter of release dates and product management. We’ve got so much going on, and we’re working on making the site better all the time. We just haven’t been able to get that piece in place.
- I totally understand. I’m a project manager myself. I know this stuff gets messy. You can’t get it all done at once. So… are you working on it?
- I totally understand. I’m a project manager myself. I know this stuff gets messy. You can’t get it all done at once. So… are you working on it?
- I agree, it’s important, and we want to be the kind of site that welcomes everybody. We should have that done by the end of the year, and we hope you’ll come back when the site is more open.
- Fantastic! Thanks! I’ll keep an eye out for the changes! It’s been great talking to you. I look forward to becoming your biggest fan.
- Fantastic! Thanks! I’ll keep an eye out for the changes! It’s been great talking to you. I look forward to becoming your biggest fan.
Seriously, they’ve been really good about this. I’ve had several follow up email exchanges with the people I met at the party, scheming what an ideal site could function like, and discussing the pros and cons of organizational styles. Their VP also responded to my original email, stating she agrees with my point and that they would do their best to get it right.
I’m excited about Engage because they’re merging new ideas about connections with models people are already comfortable with. By the way they’ve responded to my noise, I can tell they sincerely care about making their community happy. They’ve just got some growing to do.
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April 23rd, 2008 at 12:53 am
Oh, please! ;) Guys, build an index on the relevant search columns. Or take the hit of a UNION query.
Really? How hard is it to change a search criterion in a WHERE clause?
Sounds like they need a kick-ass data architect and engineer. I might know one.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:59 am
Hahahahaha! I’ll tell them that I know someone who specializes in that sort of thing who is looking for the right agency.
GOD, it would be nice to have you in there… Queer 2.0 Mafia INFILTRATION!
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:12 am
It’s the curse of that binary, thinking, again, you see. Here’s some more binary thinking for them:
There are those who can model complex, non-binary structures – and those who can’t;
There are those who can implement those complex structures – and those who can’t;
There are those who can make those implementations scale, perform and grow in functionality – and those who can’t.
I wonder which of each of those boxes Engage would tick?
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:32 am
My problem with all this “OMG THE DATABASE ARCHITECTURE” hand, staple, forehead nonsense is that it makes so crystal clear the presumption they’re acting on, that binary sexual identity (and binary gender) is the norm, anything else is deviance from the norm, and can just be put on the “to do” list indefinitely to be gotten to when they can, as an afterthought.
I have the same reaction here that I have to a small designer who complained, in response to me bitching out stores like 5 and Diamond that carry these fucking boutique lines with only XS, S, and M sizing, that it was just soooooo harrrrrd to scale her patterns up, and the use of material was sooooo different, and wahhhh wahhhh wahhh. My (thus far incomplete, in draft format) reply is: Lady, I did not make you draft your initial pattern at a size 2. If you’d started at a size 10, you could have scaled up a few sizes and down a few sizes and had an entire line, but you decided we fatties could just be left until you had time to deal with the complexities of our fat asses, which is to say, a week from Sunday-never.
Feels pretty much the same here.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:40 am
So awesome… glad you did this!
p.s. nice wig, we should throw a wig party!