MeetFighters News

Unfortunately, these things happen and you all do a great job with the running of the site.
Thanks for all your hard work in getting it up and running again.

Thank you for the comprehensive report 👍🏻

It must have been very stressful for you Admin,well done for keeping members informed,Joe(Steeleyes)

Thank you for your updates during the outage and downtime of the site yesterday. Helped us to not feel abandoned. Glad problem solved and site back online. All the best for continued success!

Thanks for the update...wish you well. keep up the good work..

You handled this with a great deal of promptness and professionalism. The communication with the members made a tremendous difference. Thank you.

"failure of the cooling system" Translation... Chat got so HOT it melted the main server. lol

I noticed that during the outage of meetfighters I was still able to access watchfighters on watchfighters.com. So either a different data center is used for that or the cooling issue did not affect those applications?

Correct, WF is at another provider, same for MK and CF. As far as we know, the whole data center location went down.

Great communication from your whole admin team. Frustrating to be sure, but we appreciate everything y'all do for us and this community, and this debrief (mmmhhmmmmm i said it) was great too. Thanks again!

I respect the fact you stayed in communication until it was back up and frankly it's the only outage in many many years I've been on this site. I work in IT so I understand outages. Thanks for the reassurance on data security, which isn't even a factor in most web outages.

I would however like to make a constructive suggestion you use your real first name on a message like this. Admin seems a little impersonal given you are talking about your business and how much you care about it directly to the stakeholders like myself who also create content on WatchFighters and have created profiles on all your sites.

Scott <--- my real first name. Not asking for something I don't do myself. Thanks.

Regarding why I stay anonym - for now:
I’ve often thought about revealing my personal account or using my real name. In fact, there was a time when my real name appeared on invoices because it was legally required. This is one of the reasons why we transitioned to operating as a company.

However, it's not as straightforward as it might seem. The internet can be unpredictable, and communities like MeetFighters, particularly within niche groups like gay communities, tend to attract their fair share of hostility. We regularly have to ban or sanction members, and we frequently receive threatening emails, face potential lawsuits, and deal with individuals trying to bring us down — all part of the anonymity the internet allows.

One particularly interesting incident involved a fake legal threat, where someone forged the signature of a U.S. judge in an attempt to have their account reinstated. The situation escalated quickly — I even received a phone call and ended up sending an email to the actual FBI from [email protected]. Honestly, what was this person thinking? No judge in the world would sign a court order within three hours to reverse a ban on a random website, especially one based outside the U.S.

We actually contacted the judge's office to confirm the forgery, and weeks later, the FBI called back, showing genuine interest in finding out who had gone to such lengths to fake a judge's signature. While it backfired on the user (apparently this was not the first time this guy faked a Judge signature and court order), this incident served as a stark reminder of the lengths some people will go to, even for something as trivial as getting unbanned from a website.

The reality is, some individuals can be quite short-sighted or even reckless, and I wouldn’t want anyone with bad intentions showing up at my doorstep. While I do contemplate revealing my identity from time to time, it’s a decision I haven’t made lightly. While it could add a more personal touch to the admin role, there’s a balance to be struck between transparency and personal safety.

At the end of the day, if someone is determined enough, they might be able to discover my identity — but I don’t see a reason to make it easy by serving it on a silver platter. I might at some point. Some people do know me, but that was by my choice.

Thanks for elaborating. It was interesting to hear more about you.

Very interesting and comprehensive report.
Thank you

Thank you for that. I’m really impressed by how you kept us all informed. You do a great job - and I appreciate that hugely. Best wishes

Thank you all for the kind words and the thumbs up! I truly appreciate it. I hoped the news ticker during the outage would be well-received, and it’s great to see that your feedback confirms we made the right decision. Thank you!

You handled the outage well, speed of information and keeping us updated.

It must have been a frustrating time for you, Admin, let down so badly by people you'd trusted to provide infrastructure to support your site which is always fun so professionally. Thank you for doing your best to keep us updated throughout the unfortunate - and unprecedentedly prolonged - incident.

As far as giving out your own name is concerned, I respect your position. The story you recount - mad, spurious threat of judicial intervention - justifies your decision. Despite your "sine nomine" persona, the great thing is that you still manage to make the site a warm, personal place. Whenever I've contacted you/your Admin team, the (anonymous) response has always been warm, efficient, personal.

Thank you!