Frequently Asked Questions

This is the help text and set of FAQs. We hope it's exhaustive, but if there is anything that is not clear, or if you would like additional help, please send Cupid a message, or contact the team.
Please select one of the following topics for more information...

Introduction

Privacy, Anonymity, Security and Ettiquette

Userguide: explanation of features

Miscellaneous topics

Legalese



Introduction


What is WarwickRomance.org.uk? - an Introduction

WarwickRomance.org.uk is a Love, chat and personals site set up specifically for students of Warwick University. It currently has 0 active members, and since we began, 8 people have signed up! Members have exchanged over -8,855 messages so far. It is the most popular student web site in Warwick by some margin, getting around 15,000 page-views per day. The site is Completely Free to use. We hope you enjoy it......

There is an Introduction for New Members here.

Why is online Romance so important?

Love is the most important thing in life... and it's so hard to find that many spend their lives searching. But it's quite improbable that you'll meet your soul-mate just by chance. There's even an academic paper on the subject, based on the Drake equation.

Finding Love in the modern-world is even harder than it used to be: technology and social-networks connect us to our existing friends in remote places, while often excluding the potential for making new friends who are nearby. Meanwhile, the "stranger:danger" paradigm, combined with typical "British reserve", conditions us to be wary of approaching that handsome/gorgeous boy/girl in the street/shop/lecture/workplace and just asking them out. One can be lonely in a crowd, and once the pool of of colleagues, and "friends-of-friends" is exhausted, the non-nightclub-goer needs a technical solution: WarwickRomance.org.uk.

Some may demur I'll just meet someone in The Real World ™, but the options aren't mutually-exclusive: using a computer to assist your search doesn't reduce your chances offline!

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Who pays for WarwickRomance, and why do you do it?

WarwickRomance is the Warwick University branch of ruo3.org, which is run in Warwick by Robin and Cupid. RUO3.org itself is based in Cambridge.

We do it because we enjoy it, it's a challenge, and we get to meet new people. It's also good CompSci fun, and is our contribution to student welfare and happiness. We hope it helps - we know it can be rotten being single :-(    If you find it useful, we'd very much appreciate your help running it.

What's the catch? There really isn't one...we're just being nice :-) There is no "data-mining" or advertising; we won't sell your data, and there are no "premium features" (such as the common bait-and-switch tactic of 'join for free, pay to communicate').

WarwickRomance is a non-profit making student society, run philanthropically, and at no charge. Initially, the costs were not large, although with the purchase of a server and our own domains, they have now risen significantly! These have been met in Cambridge by Richard and John. Posters and fliers for publicity are expensive and we are also meeting these costs ourselves. Nevertheless, if you feel tempted to contribute, we would appreciate it a lot!

For more details, please see the about us page, or you can contact us via the feedback page.

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Signing up: Nicknames and Email addresses

Signing up is easy! We are delighted to welcome you: join here. Please read the terms of service first (they're very short and friendly).

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Email addresses

We are sorry if this restriction of only '@warwick.ac.uk' email addresses is inconvenient. We have decided to do it so that we can guarantee that people are members of the University, in the interests of security. If you think this is unreasonable, or if you think we should make an exception, then please do email one of the Warwick University team who will do their best to help. (For instance, visiting members of the University may not have a University email address.) We will, of course, keep your email addresses confidential.

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For whom is WarwickRomance intended?

WarwickRomance.org.uk exists "specifically for students of Warwick University." The raison d'être of the site is to help Warwick students to meet other Warwick students, and WaRo's greatest strength is that people can actually meet each other in person, because of the localisation. WarwickRomance is principally intended for undergraduates and postgraduates, but is also open to any other members of the University, and to recent alumni, currently resident in Warwick. The site is not intended for residents of Warwick who are not associated with the University, nor for members of other universities. We believe that we owe it to our members to insist upon this.

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How does WarwickRomance support gender/courtship diversity?

Introduction: Falling in love is really hard and confusing, even for the people who fit into the the traditional "blue-for-boys; pink-for-girls" roles (if falling in love were easy, this site wouldn't need to be here at all!). But it is far more complex than that. The diversity spectrum is very great; some examples include:

Community: we want to be absolutely clear: everyone is welcome to use and participate in WarwickRomance.

Userguide: if your situation is uncommon, then please don't be offended by the (over-)simplification of some of the categories. Please pick the nearest match, then use the free-text part of your profile to explain more about who you are and what it is that you seek. You will probably want to use these settings (on the edit/settings page), in order:

  1. Sex: pick the nearest match (male/female) as a "base-class", then follow the profile-creation wizard. [Note that the base-class cannot be unset (this is a technical limitation), but it can be overridden.]
  2. Seeks: choose male,female,either; useful for straight/gay/bi people, defines the main 6 categories available in list and search.
  3. Gender: choose free-text names for how you identify and what you are looking for. "I am: ___ seeking ___".
  4. Category: {Cis, Trans_AND, Trans_XOR}. For trans people, this can override the {sex,seeks}category above:
    • Cis: "I wish to be categorised according to the setting of {sex,seeks} above."
    • Trans (AND): "I wish to be listed both as 'other' and under {sex,seeks}. My trans-ness is a part of my "[fe]maleness".
    • Trans (XOR): "I wish to be categorised only within 'other'. I reject {sex,seeks} as inappropriate for me."
    • Trans (≡): "I am trans and wish to be recognised as {sex,seeks}, not other". → Select the 'Cis' option.
      [Note that this is a choice of your identity, not biology, so the 'Cis' option includes both "I am cis" and "I am trans and wish to be recognised as {sex,seeks}, not other". People in the latter category are choosing not to distinguish themselves from the former, so we don't draw an internal technical distinction either.]
  5. Pronouns: change the pronouns we use about you. E.g. "Name has set xyr photo to be private".
  6. Relationshiptype/Looking-for: what relationship you seek. Helpful for Ace (asexual) and Poly (polyamorous) people.
  7. How-to-date-me: explain your own needs and desires. Useful for Survivors who may wish to establish different norms.
  8. Profile text: everything else, including your personality and interests. Not everything in romance is to do with gender :-)
  9. Privacy and anonymity: if you are not "out", we will protect your privacy/identity as well as we can.

Technical: When Cupid originally wrote the site many years ago, he didn't know or understand sufficiently. Therefore, we have some outstanding bugs which we are working through. This technical section may also be of use to explain exactly how and why it works as it does. We ask for your understanding and patience. If you have a suggestion for how we could/should do this better, please do tell us. We do try to do the right thing; if we fail, it is because we need help to see better though the eyes of others.

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I've just joined...what do I do now?

Welcome to WarwickRomance.org.uk! You will have a great amount of fun here! There is an introduction to this site here, and further help is available on the rest of this page. Hopefully, everything is reasonably self-explanatory. You probably want to begin by clicking 'Edit' and filling in some details about yourself. Then, choose 'View profiles' to browse through the the headlines in each category. If you click on a person, you'll see their full details, and have the option to send them a message. Messages are sent through the site, and are optionally forwarded to the recipient by email. Your identity and email address are never visible to other members of the site.
Good luck...

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What should I write in my personal description?

The most important thing is that you do actually write a description - if you don't, you are far less likely to be messaged by other members. In the immortal words of 'Little Miss Leprechaun', "blankness begets blankness". Should you wish, you can later choose not to display the profile. Here are a few of our tips:

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Why is it so important to write a personal description?

Whatever you do, write something about yourself, and what you are looking for. We cannot stress how important this is! Seriously, those people who "don't want to have a profile" are the very ones who would most benefit from doing so. Here's why:

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What is the policy on content?

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Privacy, Anonymity, Security and Ettiquette


Privacy and Anonymity

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Safety and Security

Safety and security for the users of WarwickRomance.org.uk consists of two parts: personal safety (anonymity, arranging meetings) and computer security (passwords, spoofing etc).


Safety and Security - Personal

We are in consultation with, and have taken action as a result of recommendations from the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory's Security Group to give the best possible protection of members' anonymity and privacy. As a result, WarwickRomance is, by some margin, the strongest link in the security chain. Please see the disclaimer for the "small print". We would like to offer the following advice:


Safety and Security - Computer

Here are a few points about computer security. This is written for WarwickRomance, but it's applicable generally.

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Why is there a box around messages and profiless?

The box which appears around the text of each message and profile on the site is not just there to look pretty.

Text enclosed in a box like this means that its contents are written by a regular user rather than by a administrator.

For example, an administrator will never tell you to log off in a message sent through WarwickRomance - if, as happens very occasionally, an administrator needs you to log off to administer the server, it will be announced in the banner at the top of the page. Also, just like a bank will never phone you up and ask your for your credit card details, no administrator will ever contact you asking for your e-mail address, password or any other personal details. [Such actions are known as "social engineering".] Please also read the FAQ on computer security.

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Etiquette

The "Netiquette" of using WarwickRomance is largely based on "Do as you would be done by." However, there are some things which are specific to an online forum, and which are worth mentioning:

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What constitutes acceptable behaviour?

Online, one's instincts for social norms are slightly hampered. This is partly due to the nature of the medium (in text, no one can perceive cues from e.g. body-language); partly because people are anonymous; and partly because, since this is a personals site, it is perfectly normal to "chat up" strangers. Fundamentally, the most important thing is to be polite, and to behave in the same way you would "in real life". Remember, you are talking to real people, with real feelings! Do as you would be done by.

Likewise, you have to use your judgement, and read the person's profile. If they say they are looking for 'flirtation and more...', then it's OK to 'flirt' back. If they are not, (or if the profile is empty), then you must not.

For example, consider the site as being like a virtual jazz club. It is the same as the real version in every way except two: talking to strangers is encouraged, and people (usually) have a description which you can read before you begin to talk to them. The threshold for approaching a stranger is much lower, but the person you are talking to is just the same as in "real life".

Note: It is not acceptable to send messages with random offers of sex, not even polite ones, unless the recipient's profile makes it very clear that she would appreciate such a message. You won't get a positive answer, but you will diminish her enjoyment of the site, and this in turn will reduce your chances. You may be kicked off for offensive behaviour. Should you receive such a message, please don't just assume it's normal. Such behaviour is unnacceptable; if it does happen, please do report it.

Offline interactions with people you meet here are outside of our control and supervision. However, anyone whose impeccable deportment on this site serves merely to mask less-than-perfect behaviour offline will be unwelcome to continue to enjoy our hospitality. Gentlemenly behviour is expected!

When you meet in person, it is important to respect boundaries; be aware that, for some people, their limits/personal-space are much more cautious than others, and that not everyone has the same model of courtship. Communication is the key... remember to pay attention to, and listen to the other person, and, critically, remember that the other person is not telepathic: if you do feel uncomfortable, use your words rather than hoping that your "signals" are being picked up, however obvious they may seem to you. Obviously, "stop" means Stop!.

You should also read the policy on content, the etiquette, and remember that obnoxious behaviour will be dealt with, usually by bannning the offender from the site.

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How do we deal with obnoxious behaviour?

We really hate to say this, but, now that the site is so large, it is almost inevitable that there are some instances of "inconsiderate" behaviour. We trust members of our site to be courteous, civilised and honest. All members are effectively our personal, albeit virtual guests, and we expect them to respect our hospitality! Regrettably, this trust is sometimes breached, for which we are very sorry. Because we cannot review each profile, (and your messages are private!), if something is offensive we will not necessarily know about it. That is why there is a link "Is this profile/message rude or offensive? Please tell Cupid" on each profile/message. (You can only see this if you are logged in.) Please do report things - we are a community, and it is in everyone's interest - the administrators will act as soon as we can. Fortunately, such instances are rare, and WarwickRomance should usually be highly enjoyable for everyone :-)

In the event that you receive an offensive message, we ask that you let us know as soon as possible. This is important - we can only act if you tell us, and otherwise a very few people can spoil things for everyone else. Please don't delete the message so that we have evidence. Ideally, please use the "Is this profile/message rude or offensive? Please tell Cupid" link, which will automatically preserve a copy. We will then, as quickly as we can, ask the sender for an explanation (we try to be even-handed); depending on their response, we will consider what action to take. As appropriate, we will ask the sender to modify their behaviour, or we will delete the offender's account and block them from the site. Once a member is barred from the site, then (unless we have made an error), the ban is permanent.

It is also possible for you to block messages from a particular person: please see how to decline.

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How to decline ?

Naturally, not everybody is compatible with everyone else. So, you may find that having met/chatted with someone, you no longer wish to continue. In this case, it is always better to be direct and say honestly "I'm sorry, I'm no longer interested", than to drop subtle hints or fail to respond. This is kinder to the other person, sparing them from hanging on in uncertainty; it also prevents you from being nagged because they assume you are just busy, and persist unaware.

If you are simply receiving more messages than you can cope with, you may wish to become invisible in the top bar. You may also choose to accept messages only from people whom you already know, and have already corresponded with.

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But I didn't sign up - what's going on?

Occasionally, we receive perturbed emails from people who did not join WarwickRomance.org.uk but are surprised to discover that "they" have an account. Here are the possibilities:


A word to friends and would be practical jokers. If you want to encourage your friends to sign up, this is very laudable, but please recommend the site to them, rather than actually signing them up for an account. Would-be jokers, please refrain: such jokes inevitably fall flat, and the resulting complaint wastes a significant amount of time.

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Spam and viruses appearing to emanate from WarwickRomance

If you receive spam, or email viruses appearing to emanate from WarwickRomance or @ruo3.org, it isn't from us! The sender's address is being spoofed - and unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about this, except to warn you that if you get email with executable or zip attachments from "us", don't open them. The SMTP email protocol inherently trusts the sender to give their real address - unfortunately, this means that lying scumbag spammers and virus authors can fake the sender. It is common for compromised (virus-infected) computers to be used as spam relays, and usually, they scan the victim's address book for email addresses to set as the sender. Unfortunately, because so many people have received genuine email from us, and we are in their address books, that means that a lot of the spoofed email "comes from" us too. So please, just delete any such messages that you receive, and if you are one of the people with the misfortune to have a "trojaned" computer, please get it fixed before it sends out even more spam.

You can often identify the address of the real sender of an email by clicking on 'View -> Headers'. Their IP address will usually be visible as the first (lowest) entry under "Received:". You can trace IP addresses by doing a whois query. Genuine messages from us will contain our name and IP address within the received field: it will look something like this: Received: from www.ruo3.org (78.118.18.178.in-addr.arpa [178.18.118.78])

[An aside on email viruses: Outlook Express, especially on earlier versions of Windows, entirely deserves its reputation as a virus delivery agent, which happens to also act as a (not-very-good) email client. If you are stuck with MS Windows, please keep it patched, run antivirus software and a firewall, and use an email client such as Thunderbird or Eudora instead of Outlook. Ideally, you could switch to Linux instead.]

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What is a spam-block?

Since we don't especially enjoy the Internet version of a particular type of canned meat, we have munged our published email addresses to prevent them from being harvested by "spambots". This is done in one of 2 ways: either by requiring you to press a button (most spambots are not that intelligent), or by appending a version of "no spam please" onto the email addresses given: please simply remove it when you mail us. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Trivia: "Mung" is defined by The Jargon dictionary as "Mash Until No Good." It later became a recursive acronym, meaning "Mung Until No Good."].

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Userguide: explanation of features


How does the email notification system work?

In the Edit your profile page, under 'Advanced Configuration Settings', there are 3 choices for email notifications:

There are some occasions where emails will be sent to everyone, whatever the value of this setting. These are:

You will not be notified by email if you receive an "uninteresting" system message such as "User X has deleted their account".

If you are not receiving any mail from us, please check the section Why am I not receiving email?.

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HTML formatting of profiles and messages

HTML formatting tags can be used to add variety to descriptions and messages, by changing colour/style/layout, adding smileys: , and àçcéñtèd characters. Tags can either be entered directly (e.g. "<b>bold text</b>" ) or, for the most common ones, use the HTML "widget" (click the B button). Accented characters are entered like "&eacute;". Use the spell-checker to preview your HTML.

The HTML guide has an explanation of HTML, a complete list of possible tags and smilies, and a test area. All invalid tags will be rendered as literal plain text.

Tags:<b>  <i>  <u>  <strong>  <em>  <sup> ; <sub>  <strike>  <s>  <pre>  <tt>  <big>  <small>  <font (attributes: face, color, size)>  <h1> - <h6> (attribute: align)  <hr>  <br>  <p (attribute: align)>  <center>  <blockquote>  <ul>  <ol>  <li>
Smileys:<smile>  <laugh>  <happy>  <grin>  <sun>  <glasses>  <heart>  <heart2>  <hug>  <wink>  <tongue>  <frown>  <sad>  <surprise>  <shock>  <annoyed>  <mad>  <devil>  <dizzy>  <sleepy>  <bed>  <jester>  <party>  <birthday>  <xmas>  <pumpkin>  <rose>  <cat>  <cat2>  <cat3>  <dog>  <tux> 

Photographs may be uploaded and stored on our server; you can then choose whether to embed them in your profile.

Note: certain tags cannot be used, because they pose potential security risks. For example, </table> (breaking out of the user-content area), <mailto:> (email), <img> (image), <script> (javascript) or <a> (links). These tags will be treated like pseudo-tags (eg '<irony>') and rendered in plain-text. For more details, see the HTML guide.

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Photographs

A Photograph can be displayed with your profile if you wish. This is a great way to stand out from the rest, whether you are male or female. In the words of one female member of the site:

"Since the photo has been up, S[...] has indeed been a very popular girl...I recommend it to anybody who wants quick results. It also serves as a good screening mechanism (the guys who have been replying have, on the whole, been a LOT more attractive than the ones before I posted the photo!)"

Furthermore, in a recent poll on this site, only 5 out of 463 members (1.3%) selected the option that "physical attraction is irrelevant to me".

People who have photographs are denoted by a "camera" icon next to their nickname in the list of profiles:

has photo - This person's profile has a photograph, and it is visible to you. (Hover over icon for preview)
has photo, not visible - This person has uploaded a photograph, but it is not visible to you. You can see it on request.

Photo privacy: in a poll, 205 out of 463 (44.3%) asked for the option to restrict photographs to other members, other members with photographs, or to specific other people. We did as you asked, and so once it is uploaded, you can choose who may see your photograph. The options (in the settings page) are:

If the photograph is private or mutual, then you will have an option to "attach" it to messages you send through the site. Tick the "Include my photograph with this message" the checkbox on the sendmessage page to attach your photo.

The photo visibility setting also controls whether or not you appear in the photo gallery, and who can see your photo there. Your photo is a part of your profile, so if your profile itself is set to be non-displayed, then the photo will not be shown.

Photos hosted on WarwickRomance are always excluded from search-engines, however, if you have used the same profile picture elsewhere, you should know that it's possible to search the web by image file.


Details: please see the photograph upload page. Photos must be approved before posting: here's why. Uploading multiple photos isn't currently possible (it's planned soon). However, you can combine several pictures into a single composite montage.

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Key-Words

Key-words allow people to search through profiles, looking for things you have in common. It's also a good way to mention all the random things that you didn't write into your profile because they are unrelated to each other, and would disturb the flow of your prose! Your keywords can be searched by other people, and will appear below your profile.

If you have keywords in common, they will be highlighted in bold. Please enter keywords and phrases separated by commas. (The order is unimportant: the keywords will be sorted alphabetically). For example: "raindrops, roses, kittens, copper kettles, warm wollen mittens, brown paper packages, string".

Keywords are also searchable, so, for example, if your profile mentions that you like cats, include 'cat' as a keyword too. It's OK to duplicate information.
The Keyword comparison is quite clever: it knows that 'kitten' and 'kittens' are the same, and that a 'Dog' is also a 'dog'. But it doesn't know that an 'Echidna' is similar to a 'Hedgehog', nor that if you 'skydive', you have survived the experience of 'skydiving'.
When you view your own profile, you will notice that all your keywords are in bold, because you (the viewer) have keywords which all match yourself (the profile).

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Organising messages

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Correspondence with one particular person

The correspondence page allows you to review your entire correspondence with a particular person, ordered chronologically. You can also have this thread emailed to you, or move the entire correspondence with a person into the trash.

In order to help you keep track of messages, your correspondents are highlighted when it is "your turn" to write back, i.e. the most recent message in your correspondence with them was sent by them, not from you. The icon used is a tennis ball: 'Reply owed'.

Note, the correspondence page only displays (and counts) messages in your inbox and sentbox, but not your trash. However, it does check your trash when calculating whether it's "your turn" to write back. (Once you have permanently deleted a message, the correspondence page no longer knows about it).

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Reply-quoting in messages

In the course of a detailed conversation, it is often useful to be able to quote all, or part of the previous message in your response. To do this automatically, please choose the link "Reply, quoting original message " on the read-message page. This will pre-load a copy of the original message into the message-editing form, after indenting it using '>'. You can then delete the lines (or parts of lines) which you don't want to quote, and insert your reply. When you send the message, the server will automagically interpret which lines are new, and which ones are quoted; it will then format the original parts differently, leaving your additions unaltered. In order for the server to know this, please assist it by ensuring that every block of your new text is separated from the quoted blocks by at least one blank line.

There are two different options for reply quoting: "conventional" quoting and "re-flowed" quoting. The message-editing stage (which you see) is identical, but the server's automagical re-formatting of the original part of the text (for the message recipient) is different:

When you compose your reply, the only thing to remember is to put the blank lines between the new and the old text. It isn't necessary to manually re-wrap the quoted text after editing it. (If you use html, avoid '<font>' and do not break a tag over a line. Also, don't insert stray '<' or '>' characters). Here is an example:

Note 1: if you forget the blank lines above/below your message, the server will guess that the edge lines are part of the original, not the reply.
Note 2: HTML tags are removed from the quoted text. So when you reply-quote someone, all of their original formatting is removed. (You can still add tags to your reply.)
Note 3: for convenience, the 'Reply' links automatically default to re-flowed quoting (unless you choose 'unquoted').

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Encrypted messaging

Introduction

On every system that exchanges messages/email, the users must implicitly trust the administrator of that site (and of all the network devices and ISPs en-route) to respect their privacy, and not to read their messages. Snooping on messages is deeply unethical, and we recoil at the idea. We don't do it, [except when specifically asked to intervene by the recipient if a message is reported as offensive], and we think we are worthy of your trust. But it's a power we are reluctant to have, and don't want, not even in principle. We believe in protecting your privacy... but you shouldn't have to just take our word for it: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? The solution is to use public-key cryptography: (specifically PGP, implemented by GPG).
Messages are encrypted by the sender and decrypted by the recipient: our site then has no access, not even in principle, to the private text of your conversation.
Likewise, if your messages are forwarded to your email account, that mail-server cannot read them. Encryption protects your privacy with mathematics, not just law and personal morality.

This is rather technical! If you do take no action, everything will work normally: the site will behave exactly as it always has, and you just won't be using the optional encryption feature.
For most people, most of the time, you just don't need to worry about this: your private messages are perfectly well protected even without encryption. PKI is a way to iron-clad your privacy, not a requirement.
Typically, messages on this site are confidential, but not "super-secret". Encryption could be important in conversations between people who choose to keep their sexuality private (i.e. are not "out").

Sending encrypted messages

Sending encrypted messages is simple: just use the "encrypt" button on the send-message page. This option appears when someone has configured their profile for inbound encryption.
Before sending the message, remember to save a local copy of the plaintext (on your own computer) if you want to keep it.
Once the message is encrypted, only the recipient can decrypt it; nobody else can (not even the original sender). This means that your sent-box/correspondence will contain only the encrypted text, not your original message. (We could change that, but it would then defeat the whole point: though the recipient's copy of the message would be secret, we'd be able to access access the sender's unencrypted copy!). [In the case where both parties have public keys on the site, this problem is solved, by encrypting a copy for both parties].  • Don't use the spell-checker: it sends the uncencrypted text across the network (though it isn't stored by us).  • Optionally, you can use the recipient's public key and your own copy of GPG, and copy-paste the encrypted text.

Receiving encrypted messages

To enable your account for receiving encrypted messages, just add a (dedicated) public key on your settings page (see instructions below).
Note that certain features of the site are incompatible with encrypted messaging: notably reply-quoting and HTML-formatting; it also means your correspondents won't have convenient access to their sent-messages.

Technical Details

GPG instructions:
• First, install GNU Privacy Guard: this is free software, downloadable for Linux/Windows/MacOS. Look at the instruction manual.
• Create a public-private key pair with GPG: gpg --gen-key. You should create a dedicated key-pair for your use of WarwickRomance.org.uk, even if you already have one. Your user-ID for the key can be seen by everyone, so we recommend that you use: "Your WaRo Nickname (WarwickRomance) <your_waro_nickname@example.com>", so as not to reveal your personal details.
Email addresses "@example.com" are intentionally un-routable, so you can use them disposably. If you choose to use your real email address, that's fine (if it's intentional): it will allow you to sign the keys with a keyserver, but you'll lose pseudonymity.
• Once you have a private key, export it in asci-armored format: gpg --armor --export. It should look like this:
• Then, save the key in your settings. (You can remove it later by deleting the key). We'll share it with anyone who wants to send you an encrypted message.
• Don't lose your private-key, or you'll never be able to decrypt your messages.
• To manually encrypt a message: import their key, encrypt the message, and copy-paste the ciphertext into the send-message box. Remember to keep your own local copy if you want, because your WaRo sentbox will only contain ciphertext, which nobody but the recipient can decrypt.
• To decrypt messages, use gpg --decrypt --no-mdc-warning. (the modification detection code isn't supported by the javascript library we used).
• Recommendation: test everything in correspondence with yourself.

Theory:
Public-key encryption, with current versions of GPG and algorithms is unbreakable [as far as anyone knows: if you could find a way, you'd probably win a Nobel prize for mathematics]. But the system is only as good as the implementation; here's what you need to consider:
• Because your identity is pseudonymous, you have to delegate key distribution to us. That means that we could, technically, engage in a man-in-the-middle attack, intercepting, decrypting, and re-encrypting text. You have to trust us to pass on the same public key that you provide to us... of course, feel free to verify this for yourself at any time.
• When you provide a public key, this contains a textual identifier, such as "NAME (COMMENT) <email@address>". You should create a dedicated key-pair just for your use on this site, and not include your real-name or email-address. Otherwise, you are giving out your personal information to everyone (which is OK if you want to do it, but don't do it by mistake!). On the other hand, if you do use a widely-known key, which you publish on a keyserver, this can mitigate the MITM problem. If you use this key elsewhere, people can google for it, so it "leaks" information.
• We still know who you are, and which members you choose to communicate with. Your profile (necessarily) remains unencrypted, and visible to other members.
• PGP is a perfect system for secure communication between two people who already know each other, and have physically exchanged keys. We're using it between two initially unknown, anonymous contacts: in this context, it's good, but not perfect (see above).
• Assuming that you trust us, we can guarantee forward-secrecy, protection of the server and backups (even against theft of the physical server), and security against snooping (aka "lawful-intercept").
• Our in-browser PGP encryption is based on this: feel free to view-source to see the javascript we use.
• Encryption using Javascript in the message form (rather than explicitly using GPG and copy/paste) has some further caveats: use your own copy of GPG if you wish.
• Note that our server only ever stores a single copy of messages: a given chunk of text is stored once, and only the metadata is duplicated between sender and recipient. So we don't store an encrypted copy for the recipient, and an unencrypted copy for the sender! [If we have public keys for both parties, the text is encrypted once for each.]

What are the catches?
• There is a trade-off between security and convenience. If you use encryption, the sender must perform the extra step of encryption, and the recipient must decrypt.
• Senders must keep a separate copy of your sent messages: once you've encrypted them with someone else's public key, you cannot decrypt them again. [If we also have the sender's public key, this problem is resolved, by encrypting for the sender too.]
• Some features of the site will work slightly less well: automatic reply-quoting, spell-checking, and HTML message-formatting will break, and the correspondence feature will be awkward to read (especially for sent-messages).
• If you receive an offensive encrypted message, you needn't reveal your private key to report it; selectively reveal a single one-time message key with gpg --show-session-key; gpg --override-session-key {key}.
• If you lose your private key, you can't (ever) decrypt the text.
• Adding a public key is just a request to the sender that they encrypt the message; they may choose not to do so.
• If we (in future) write a text-search feature, this won't be able to search within encrypted text.

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Spell checking

For your convenience, there is a spell-checker. To use this, click on the link "check spelling" that appears next to the text-input for a profile or message. This will cause a new window to pop up, containing the text of your original message, with the errors highlighted. When you have read this, close the new window, and return to the text you were editing. For example: .

If you are having difficulties, please note that the new window requires Javascript [test] to be enabled in your browser. Also, some broken pop-up blockers block pop-up windows even when you have explicitly requested them by clicking on a link. If you manually attempt to open this in a new tab/window, it won't work. The spell-checker also acts as a preview, to help validate any HTML tags you include. The spell-checker is set to British English, and is occasionally wrong!

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How does the Invite system work?

This is great fun (and the piece of code of which we are most proud :-) ). If you have a crush on someone, but don't want to tell them just yet, use the invite system. This invites them to join WarwickRomance.org.uk - they will receive an e-mail saying that somebody (they will not be told who...) has invited them to join. It is exactly like sending a Valentine's card, but the recipient has a chance to respond to the anonymous sender by sending you messages on the site. The way that this works is that an anonymous communication channel is set up between you when they reply - not even your WarwickRomance nickname is revealed. [show maths]. You can include a short message with the invitation, if you like. Good luck, and enjoy....
N.B. Your invitee must have a '@warwick.ac.uk' email address. For more information, click Invite.

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How does the LoveWeb work?

`

For more information, click LoveWeb. This is a centralised "flirt register" of who fancies whom. If a match ever occurs, we put you in touch. If you list someone who is also a member of WarwickRomance, they will be notified "someone fancies you", but they will NOT have any way to identify who fancies them, except by listing the people who they themselves fancy. [show maths].
Note: To use the LoveWeb, both you and the object of your desire must have an email address ending in ''@warwick.ac.uk''. It is to your advantage to sign up with your most obvious email address, if you have more than one.

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What's the difference between the Invite system and the LoveWeb?

One is a game, the other isn't. If you Invite someone, then they are always notified (non-members are emailed), and they can reply to you. If you use the LoveWeb, then you both have to correctly guess each other before any contact can be made. Also, the Loveweb only notifies current members of WarwickRomance, or those who subsequently join; it does not send out emails. So, flirt with the LoveWeb; send flowers with the Invitations !
Update: There is now also the Valentine Code which is for writing into actual Valentine's cards.

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What is the Valentine's Code?

This is a one-time code for writing into Valentine's cards. Have you ever received a Valentine's card where, despite wanting to, you couldn't guess the sender? Then this is for you.

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How does the (magnetic) Photo Gallery work?

The Photo Gallery
Some people belive in "love at first sight", and this is for them. The photo gallery contains pictures of all current members of WarwickRomance.org.uk. who have uploaded photographs; simply browse through the pictures. Remember, though, that not all people choose to display a photo, and you may find some very interesting people in the list of members or by searching.


The Magnetism feature

Magnetism is that ethereal quality of mutual attraction that initially draws people together. Thus, the magnetic photo gallery provides a way to test for mutual attraction. For each person, you can decide yes/no/maybe as you browse through the gallery.

People can also see who has said 'yes' to them, but they cannot see who has said 'no' to them (by design, a 'no' is indistinguishable to the viewee from someone having simply not looked at their photo yet, [show maths]).

There are a few different icons used: here is a key:
magnet The other person is "magnetically-attracted" to you i.e. has said 'yes'.
magnet with keeper Mutual attraction: you have both said 'yes' to each other. What are you waiting for?
yes You have said 'yes' to the other person. (click the image to cycle yes/no/undecided, and its border will be highlighted appropriately.)
no You have said 'no' to the other person. Note that they can't distinguish between your 'no' and 'undecided'.
undecided You haven't yet decided about the other person (you don't have to tick either box if not sure).

Filters can be used to show only specific cases, e.g. click 'attracted, undecided' to view only those people who have already said yes to you, and whom you now need to consider.

Magnet icon in profile: If someone has said 'yes' to you, then the "magnet" icon will appear in their profile when you view it (this is private: it only appears when you are the one looking at their profile.)

Notifications are not sent out when you click 'yes' to someone (though this may change). They must either look at the magnetic gallery page, or view your profile to find out. Notifications will never be sent out when you click 'no' to someone.

Tooltips are frequently used: if an icon or link seems unclear, hover the mouse over it for an explanation. Try it here.

Credit: The modification of the photo gallery into the magnetic one was inspired partly by www.HotOrNot.com.

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Real-time chat

The chat system allows real-time chat between members of WarwickRomance. Click the "Chat" link and a new window will open, containing the chat program. You should then see a chat area which is gray - at the bottom is a bar into which you can type. You will be able to invite other people who are online to join you by clicking on their names. If you can't see everything, please scroll down!


Technical: The chat system uses Websockets, a feature natively included in all recent browsers: test.

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Poking and Tickling

What's a Poke?
No, we don't know what it means to 'poke' someone, any more than Facebook do. We do, however, let you arbitrarily Verb people. The link to poke/hug/tickle/verb a person is located on the same page as their profile. Pokes do trigger email notifications, just like normal messages.

What's a Poke War?
A poke war is the online equivalent of a pillow fight. You can normally only poke someone twice in a day, unless they reciprocate, in which case, you may indulge in poke-warfare. Scores will be kept.

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Public discussion and debate

This is based on the discussion forum at Slashdot, although it is much more basic. The aim is to allow members of WarwickRomance.org.uk to publicly discuss a topic. These topics are currently chosen by Cupid (although suggestions are welcome), and the principal aim is to obtain your feedback, suggestions and ideas as to how we can make the site even better for you! Please contribute your thoughts!

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Advanced tips for using WarwickRomance

Here are a few tips that may make WarwickRomance easier for you to use:

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Changing the style of WarwickRomance

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Top Right: How do I become Invisible? Busy? What's all this about felines?

Normally, when you log in, your name will appear listed in to top bar. The advantage of this is that people are likely to strike up conversations with you. The disadvantage of this is that people are likely to strike up conversations with you!

Naturally, everyone wants to be talked to, and there is a lot to gain from the serendipity of chatting to people at random. But the problems with real-time conversations, especially if your category is outnumbered, is that there is a lot of pressure. Some people receive more messages than they can respond to, and are prevented from writing fewer, longer messages to the people in whom they are most interested, or having the time to search the profiles properly. Essentially, it turns the site from 'E-mail-like' to 'Instant Messaging'. As a result, we decided to make this customisable for each user: you can change the settings from the 'visibility' option in the left-hand menu. There was a lengthy discussion about this, which you can read more about here.

Why are we talking about Cats? Well, we needed a name to describe people who are present, but move around silently and unobserved. This is a perfect description of a feline! We did consider "ghosts", but they aren't as cute. And, apologies to dogs, but wonderful though dogs are, subtlety is not their strong point.

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What do the icons (Flag, Quotation, Tennis Ball, Magnet, Champagne,...) mean?

We use some icons to show message status etc. These all have an explanatory tooltip, which appears when you hover the mouse over it: [Try it: ].
In stealth/secret/mobile modes, the icons are replaced by simpler versions, such as [F] or *.

Icon Alternative Meaning
Flagged , Unflagged [F] This message is/isn't flagged. You can choose which messages you want to flag: click on the flag icon to change it.
Tennis ball: reply owed [R] "The ball is in your court": it's your 'turn to reply' to this person.
threadedthreadthreaded “...” This denotes a thread of conversation: go to an earlier, or later message in the sequence.
threadedbrokenthreaded “...” This denotes a broken thread: the next/previous message in the chain has been deleted.
horse-shoe magnet [M] This denotes that the person is "magnetically" attracted to you.
horse-shoe magnet with keeper [M+] Magnet with iron bar: this denotes that the attraction is mutual. (Can you tell that this was chosen by a physicist?)
champagne glass [@] This denotes that the person is listed with an invitation or a request in the May Ball section.
has photo, not visible [c] This denotes that the person's profile has a photo, and that you are able to see it. (Hover over this for a preview)
has photo, not visible [?] This denotes that the person's profile has a photo, but that it is private, and you must request to see it.
no file This denotes an error: the expected photograph file cannot be located. It shouldn't normally happen.

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Help! I'm getting more messages than I can cope with!! What can I do?

It's great that people are interested in you, but sometimes good fortune can also be problematic: itt can at times be very difficult to cope with a large volume of messages, so here are a few things you can do. If you are writing to someone who is in this situation, please read the following to understand the setting they have chosen. Options:

If you wish, you can choose to correspond only with people you already know; other people will be unable to contact you. This is far from ideal, but it is a much better alternative to rushing away entirely because of the volume of new messages. You have 3 options, controlled by the "Do you welcome new messages from everyone" setting here. These are:

These settings do not effect your existing correspondents who are able to write to you as normal. If you are receiving messages from them, and are not interested, you should decline.

For the curious, here are some fine details, which you can safely ignore. Correspondents (for these purposes), are considered to be anybody to whom you have ever sent, or from whom you have received a message. If any copy of the message remains on the system (even in your trash, or in their trash), it counts. If you are accepting 'Just one message', then if they have sent you exactly one message [only messages within the last 6 months count], they cannot send more; if they have sent none, they get one chance to impress; if they have sent more than one, they count as a correspondent and can continue to write. However, once all copies of a message have been permanently deleted (by both sender, and recipient), the server no longer knows it ever existed. [In contrast, the correspondence page only cares about your own copies of the messages.]

Administrators are, necessarily, unaffected by this restriction; they also cannot reject messages. This setting does not apply to channels. There is one slightly odd consequence, which occurs if you switch from 'No' to 'Just one', or vice-versa: anyone who has sent you exactly one message, and to whom you have not replied, will find that their permission to write to you is inverted.

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Degree-rescue mode: limiting the time chatting online

Like all good things, WarwickRomance.org.uk does have a tendency to become somewhat addictive. And, as even chocolate may loose its charm when enjoyed to excess *, thus also for some people with this site. Help, however, is at hand, in the shape of something weirdly similar to a Westminster parking meter [i.e. useful, but also rather annoying]. If you check the "Parking Meter" mode box on the Edit page, then your online sessions will be limited to a maximum of 30 minutes at a time, with return prohibited within 1 hour. Once this time has expired, you will be automatically logged out. Note that this setting, once invoked, is irrevocable, for what would be the purpose of a temporary aid to willpower?

We also have created a "Degree Rescue" mode, intended to assist with revision. This allows you to block youself from logging in again until a certain date of your choice, eg the day after your finals. This setting is also irrevocable.

You may also wish to change the other controls, also on the edit page, and set some, or all of: 'Online Visibility'='Cat-like'; 'Display your Profile'='Unlisted'; 'Email Notification'='Rarely email me' and 'Accept New Messages'='No'.

* "If Music be the food of Love, play on. Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die." - Shakespeare

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How do I hide my profile from a particular friend, or an ex- ?

Sometimes, people are wary of bumping into a particular friend, or an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend on WarwickRomance.org.uk. As a result, they are reluctant to write a detailed description of themselves, which in turn reduces their enjoyment of the site. To help with this, you can now control precisely who may (and may not) view your profile.

The options, which may be selected from the 'Display your profile' setting on the edit page are these:

What is an 'email-stem'? An email-stem is the part of an email-address before the '@' sign. For example, an address of 'r563rg@example.com' would have the stem 'r563rg'. To hide from multiple people, simply give a list of email-stems, separated by commas. The reason for using the stem is that often, people have multiple valid addresses; for example abc12345@cam.ac.uk and abc12345@hermes.cam.ac.uk are the same person. We match on an email address rather than a name because we don't necessarily know people's full names when they sign up; also email addresses are validated when we send out the initial password, whereas we can't check a given name is correct.

What information does 'hiding' actually hide?
This hides pretty much everything, except your nickname. Your profile page will say 'Sorry, NAME does not have a profile at the moment'. You won't appear in the list of members in a given category, nor in any search results. Also, if your entire profile is hidden, then your photo (which is part of the ad) is also hidden.

What information does 'hiding' not hide?
Your nickname is still included in the list of active of nicknames. It is still possible for anyone to send you a message. Also, the site admins can see your full profile. Lastly, your name is still listed in the top right when you log in, unless you change the (separate) visibility setting.

Aside: this is designed to preserve anonymity both ways. You can't make use of this feature to discover or verify someone else's identity: it won't leak information as to whether the block is active, or latent. So, for example, you can't use it to match an id number to an email address, or to check whether someone else is actually a member. All you can do is specify that if person X uses/used WarwickRomance.org.uk then they can't/couldn't see your profile.

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How do I change my Nickname?

By design, the nickname on the site is immutable, since it would be a huge source of confusion for people if the names of their correspondents suddenly changed! However, if there is an exceptional case, or you've only just logged in for the first time, or if the change is just a typo, please ask Cupid, and he will manually change it for you in the database.

Normally, the only way to change your nickname, is to deleting and recreating your account. If you are going to do this, we suggest you take a copy of your profile and any messages that you want to keep. Also, we'd advise you to mention this to your correspondents.

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Deleting your account and Nickname

If you do not log in for 24 weeks, your profile will time-out, or 'expire': it will no longer appear in the list of profiles, or the list of all members.
Your correspondents will still be able to read and reply to your messages, although you will only receive one email notification). Unless you hide your profile, correspondents may see it when linked from a message, but others will not.
If you hide your profile at any time (by setting 'Display your profile' to No' in the settings menu), it will not appear in the list of profiles, nor will anyone be able to view its contents.
Your name, alone, will be included within the list of all members.

If you delete your account, this will remove (almost) all your details, for EVER. Upon deletion, everybody with whom you have corresponded will, if they have retained any of your messages, be informed that you have deleted your account, and will have that correspondence consolidated into a single archival message. It is good netiquette to inform them first that you are leaving!
Please do give a reason on the deletion page - this is read by Cupid, and allows us to monitor how we are doing, so we can improve. Your old nickname will be reserved for you for 3 months, so you can have it back if you change your mind; also this prevents confusion if somebody else should choose the name you recently used.

You can export an archive copy of your data as a zip or tar file. This is designed to help couples eventually tell their children the happy story of how they first met :-)
This collates the same data (with the same access permissions) that you could obtain by sequential screenshots, but with greater convenience and improved formatting.

Note: everything about your account can be changed, except your Nickname and Email-address - if you want to change that, you'll have to delete the account and recreate it.
(This is for security reasons, and to prevent confusion; ask Cupid if you think we should consider an exception.)

The menu for deleting (permanently closing) an account is in the configuration settings of your profile (next to the email preferences and password-change). For the deletion policy, please see below.

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Miscellaneous topics


Common mistakes to avoid

There are a few mistakes that we have seen people make. These aren't strictly errors, but they are likely to cause you to get less out of the site than you otherwise might.

  1. Focussing all one's attention on people who are in the top bar on the right. It's very tempting to only chat to people who are currently logged in, because they are the ones who are most visible, and because they are the ones who could reply right away. This is fine, but remember that everyone else will be talking to them too, so you may be less likely to receive a reply. Furthermore, there are a huge number of other people who are not logged in at that moment, some of whom will be perfect for you! It is worth taking the time to carefully read the profiles, and write a long message to someone who is "just right". Or, use the search function.
    Also, some people simply forget to log out (but just close the window); they will remain in the top bar for up to 15 minutes before timing-out.

  2. Not writing a profile, or only a very short one. This means that you are less likely to find what you are looking for, because it cannot find you! It really is worth taking the time to write a few lines about yourself (or even just list some keywords) - because that way, people whom you will like will contact you. The extra clarity will also help to filter out what you are not interested in. For ideas on how to avoid blankness, here are some tips on what to write.

  3. Not giving us feedback. Whether you have a suggestion about how we could improve, trouble to report, or a success story to share, please tell us! That way, we can continue to improve. This also goes for technical errors: Cupid is regrettably not omniscient, so if you see something failing to work, please shout!

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Access from a mobile phone or PDA

If you use a smartphone, you may prefer to access the mobile-version of WaRo, which is optimised for a smaller display and lower bandwidth. The site is the same, but the layout and style is optimised and simplified.
For example photographs are displayed as thumbnails; only the first few messages in your inbox are shown; there is less CSS/Javascript, and the layout is designed for a smaller-screen. A few features are simplified, though you can still access the regular site from your device. Mobile-mode is designed for a modern (2010-era or newer) smartphone, such as an Android, iPhone, or Windows-Mobile; older devices with really tiny (<3 inch), non-touchscreen displays won't work very well.

If you go straight to the home-page, mobile browsers should be automatically detected; otherwise you can bookmark this link:
  https://www.ruo3.org/warwick/login.php?email=ME@EXAMPLE.NET&style=mobile (obviously, with your own email address!)
[This long URL takes you directly to your login page with the least typing, and the greatest speed.]

If you have an Android device, we have an app for you. Feedback is most welcome.

Feedback on the mobile site would be really helpful. If you can develop an iPhone app, or can find a way of programatically sending SMS messages inexpensively, we'd like to hear from you!

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Troubleshooting problems and weird behaviour

There are some things that occur on this site that may appear weird. Sometimes, they are bugs (in which case, please let us know immediately, so we can fix them!) However, there are some things that may be unexpected, but are not exactly errors at our end:

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Why am I not receving email?

Emails from WarwickRomance do not always arrive when you expect them to. This can occur for a variety of reasons. Here are some of them:

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Reporting Bugs

We do test WarwickRomance.org.uk extensively. However, it is continuously under improvement, and things change. If you see something untoward, broken, unclear, or that could be improved, please let us know. Cupid always tests everything, and never releases anything until he is sure that it is correct. So if you spot an mistake, or the site prints an error message, you can be certain that we don't know about it (or we'd already have fixed it). Please, please tell us.
[For the curious, here is why computer errors are known as "bugs".]

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Browser requirements

We believe that you should be able to use WarwickRomance with the web browser of your choice. We do not rely on anything browser-specific, and we do extensive testing with Mozilla, Firefox, Konqueror, Lynx and Links. The browser functionality requirements are therefore rather straightforward. We aim to make the site fully functional even with a basic web-browser, such as Netscape version 3 (!), although we use many newer technologies to enhance it. If possible, we recommend you enable all of the following:


Tabbed browsing and Mozilla/Firefox

On WarwickRomance.org.uk, sometimes clicking on a link causes it to open in a new window. This is for your convenience: for example, clicking the "HTML help" link when writing a message will cause it to open in a new window so that you do not lose your current message composition. However, in most web browsers (Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Chrome, Safari, and (finally) even Internet Explorer), which support Tabbed Browsing, you can do even better: simply middle-click (or Ctrl-click) on a link, and it will open in a new background tab. This is really useful if you have a list of pages to visit, and wish to select certain ones. For example, when viewing the profiles, middle-click those of interest to you. They will all load in the background, ready for you to look at in sequence. It's easier to demonstrate than to explain.

Some other reasons why we like Mozilla-Firefox are that it is standards-compliant, has a great email program, has pop-up advert blocking, supports extensions (Adblock/Flashblock in particular), it's fast, stable and secure, and it is Free (as in both beer and speech). It also uses less bandwidth, since tabbed-browsing means less re-loading, and, unlike M.S.I.E., it caches stylesheets (css). This makes everything faster. Firefox is freely available for Linux, Windows, and Macintosh: download here.

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But how did it get that way? (Controversies)

Some of the design choices for the site have been slightly controversial: while we do our best to make things perfect for everyone, there are a few cases where we cannot. In such instances, there are valid reasons for each of the alternatives, and we've simply had to choose. Here, we shall try to explain why it got that way.

Hiding from the Top Bar / Invisibility / 'Cats'

One of the most common requests we received was for people to be able to hide themselves from being visible in the top right when they are logged in. This feature was originally discussed at length, publicly debated, and we decided against it. However, upon further reflection, we decided to implement it as an experiment. This experiment proved to be a success, and as a result of collecting your votes, we have decided to keep the feature. Over the course of a week, a total of 337 people voted, with a split of 49%-51%. However, by category, there was a marked difference, with 75% of Females in favour, and 75% of Males against. Furthermore, although it has been contentious, only 2.5% of people are actually using the feature! Therefore, we've decided to keep it. Here are some of the arguments:

Arguments against an invisibility option
Such a feature would be useful, but was discussed at length, and has several disadvantages. If we were to disable the top-right list entirely, people would lose a very useful feature, and it would make it hard to chat online to people currently logged in. If we were to make it optional, the feature would become confusing and complicated (and inaccurate); it would also focus even more attention upon those who did not opt out. [Exception: on their very first login, new members are initially invisible to give them a moment to look around and create a description before messages arrive. Once they send their first message to someone, (or when they log out and in again), this "cloaking device" permanently deactivates.]

Here are a few of your selected comments:
* "During the odd idle moment, I've been able to chat with some fantastic people whom I might not have talked with simply on the basis of their profile. Removing it altogether would take away the spontaneous fun that just can't be had browsing through the long lists of the 'View profiles' section." * "By introducing the option of invisibility, you'd find that fewer people were logging on because they can't see that their friends are online - it would make for a much less direct means of communication, at best." * "Let people decide for themselves what works best for them. There's nothing to be gained from removing functionality that some people find useful." * "There is a 'tipping point': at the login screen, you can see who is online and who is not; part of your decision to log in or not may be based on the number of people online. When numbers have increased beyond a certain 'tipping point', more members are willing to sign in in the expectation of a conversation. Introducing an invisibility option may actually decrease the number of people logging on."

Arguments in favour of an invisibility option
On the other hand, there are some disadvantages to the top-bar display. It can create significant pressure upon the people in the current minority category, sometimes causing them to leave as a result. Also, because people tend only to chat to other people who are logged in, fewer people are encouraged to produce detailed profiles, and those who are not logged in all the time tend to be ignored. Also, while chatting is pleasant, it is often a very inefficient use of time: it might be more fruitful to search for someone perfect by looking through the profiles! Sending messages only to people who are currently logged in is a common mistake. Also, people should have the choice to use the site in their own way; whereas some people have chosen to leave entirely because of the excess "pressure". Here are a few of your selected comments:
* "Well, people who are hiding simply have to take the initiative and get messaging people who they actually want to message. I can see their reasoning - who hasn't been in the 'oh, so-and-so's online, I want to go online to speak to Bloggs but i don't feel like it now I know so-and-so's there' situation?" * "It might even prove beneficial to remove the top-bar display entirely." * "...I am much more interested in replying to people's ads and looking for a boyfriend than chatting, and have got little out of spending ages corresponding randomly with people who happen to be online when I am....I think it is crucial for the female users of the site to have the option of not disclosing their online status. Because there are usually so many more men online, logging in can feel like dipping your toe into shark-infested waters...I find the site more pleasant when I can conceal my identity at will..."

As a result of the votes, and of your opinions, we are going to keep the invisibility option as it now stands. Cupid would still welcome your opinions, but please bear in mind that there is a very large weight of arguments on both sides!

Ordering of profiles defaults to Random

When you look at profiles in a particular category, the default ordering is now random. It used to be ordered by most-recently logged-in [you can still choose this if you click the link]. This is so that it is fairer, when you browse through the profiles. Otherwise, the people who log in most regularly get all the attention. This is unfair to those who haven't logged in most recently, and may be unhelpful to those who have (because they may receive more messages than they can reply to.)

The "Category mismatch" warning

If you are in category MsF, and try to send a message to someone in FsF, (or if you are MsM and try to send a message to someone in MsF), you may be interested in them, but they may well not be interested in you. Therefore, when you send a message, there is a notice to this effect. Social interactions are usually well received, however romantic attentions are usually very unwelcome across a category mismatch, hence the request to consider carefully whether the message will be wanted before you send it. In most cases, this works well, and has been helpful, however, we have received one comment to the effect that this is discriminatory. We respectfully disagree: while we despise gender discrimination, this is after all a personals site, and it would be unreasonable to expect people to set aside their own gender preferences in this context! As to which categories constitute a mismatch, for example, MsM -> FsM is not a mismatch, while FsM -> MsM is not usually a source of annoyance for the recipient.

Account deletion delay, aka "deletion goggles"

Accounts cannot be deleted immediately: there is a delay of 24 hours. We'd like to explain why we do this... it's not just to annoy you!

It is perhaps worth expounding upon that last point. If it's too common for people to suddenly vanish, this hurts their correspondents. The entire community becomes more reluctant to invest time and emotional energy in making connections that might snap at any moment. In turn, this harms you, or at least, your past self, as someone who wanted to use WarwickRomance.org.uk to meet someone.

For example, consider that A invests a lots of time coresponding with B. One evening, in a moment of 'alcohol-fueled clarity', B decides to 'give up on love' or 'meet people in the real world' or 'devote herself to her work'. B hypothetically immediately closes her account, vanishing permanently without even saying goodbye. This hurts A, who, becoming once-bitten-twice-shy, is less likely to again take the emotional risk which is necessary as the first step in falling in love. (This in turn, indirectly harms future-C and past-B.) The delay exists to strongly encourage B to say goodbye (and perhaps exchange contact-details) before leaving. Hence, we must slightly inconvenience you now (as B'), for the reflected benefit of your own past-self (A).
[...and yes, this explanation was written by a physicist.]

Please feel free to send Cupid a message if you have any thoughts about this process (or the trans-temporal externalities): your feedback is always welcome. We do value our members, but this policy isn't because we're desperate to hang onto you! It has been quite carefully considered, as a way (albeit imperfect) to balance the needs of different people. Should you need to close an account urgently, please ask for assistance.

Alternatives: make your profile invisible (set display your profile = no on the settings page); reduce email-notifications, or decline new messages. Or use degree rescue mode.


Joining the various websites - why not?

It is sometimes suggested that we should merge, for example, the Cambridge and Oxford sites. The reason we have not done this is because we think that locality is important. In our view, the entire point of chatting to someone is to then be able to meet them - and this is far more practical if they are a 5 minute walk away than if they are 3 hours away by train!

Photographs have to be approved before they can be displayed

When you upload a photograph, it doesn't go live immediately, but must first be approved by a moderator. We didn't originally do this, but now do. The vast majority of photos submitted are perfectly fine, and are approved instantly. But occasionally, despite very clear guidance on the file upload page, people don't upload a photo of themselves that clearly show what they actually look like. This would be especially unfair given that some people choose only to make their photo visible to others who also show their photo. Other problems include photos that are very indistinct or zoomed-out so far that the person cannot really be seen, attempts to upload avatars (we've had a tesco shopping bag, and a very cute duckling), use of a celebrity photo, infringement of someone else's copyright (where the photo is obviously watermarked), or, very rarely, something indecent.

There is no indication of when a message has been read (read receipts)

Sometimes, we are asked to provide the sender with an indication of whaether a particular message has been read by the recipient. This would indeed by nice for the sender to know. However, it is often information that the recipient would rather not provide, since it pressures them unduly. A similar situation is the use of automatic "message-read receipts" in email: we find such requests to be impolite, and always set our email clients to discard them unanswered. If you have not received a reply to your message, it is acceptable to send a follow-up ("did you get my message about..."), after a suitable delay. [See also the faq on etiquette.]
For a similar reason, we don't display the exact times when a person was last logged in (on the view profiles page), but we introduce a degree of jitter.

Why is the set of options for 'additional attributes' limited?

In the Additional attributes section of the profile, options are chosen by a , which has about 8-12 possibilities. We are often asked to add more options: why not?
This question has also been asked as:
The intention of this feature is to divide people into 5-10 roughly equal-sized groups on each category, for the purposes of searching, and having relatively common groups. Categories can't overlap, and it has to allow for searching by pre-defined criteria. Otherwise, it would become unwieldy and less useful. For example, consider searching for someone interested in "The Arts". At the moment, the search criterion is Subject='Humanities'. It wouldn't be fun having to run 6 consecutive searches for Subject='English' OR Subject='History' OR Subject='Music' OR Subject='French' OR Subject='German' OR Subject='Classics' (...and oops, we missed out the unfortunate student of Italian!)

That said, you can always put more details into the main text body of your profile. Also, we do always welcome your feedback, and we will always consider ideas, especially if you have an idea for a new category.

Why do we only have traditional "male" and "female" options for gender, rather than a broader spectrum?

Firstly, if this applies to you, let us be absolutely clear: you are welcome and valued in the WarwickRomance community. For information about people, please see the section on diversity; for technical information about the technical (programming) issues, please read on...

Not everybody self-identifies strictly as "male" or "female": there is a whole spectrum of masculinity and femininity, gender and sexuality. So, why do we use the labels "male" and "female" rather than embracing the full spectrum of gender possibilities?
When Cupid originally wrote the site many years ago, he didn't know any of this, and so, for historical reasons, we have the underlying dichotomy of sex={Male,Female} and trichotomy of seeks={Male,Female,Either}. We're very sorry we got that wrong, and have worked to fix it. (This fix is now mostly complete, but there is always more we could do.)

Furthermore, we also want to be inclusive of Trans (transexual/transgender) people, which adds complexity, because some trans people consider trans as an "alternative" gender to M/F, while others consider it an additional dimension. This means that if we made "other" an alternative to M/F, we would deny the identity of the second group. On the other hand, we don't support "unspecified", because we would ultimately have to display unspecified somewhere, which would be, de-facto, under "other".

That's why we now offer the following settings, which are not necessarily mutually exlusive:

When signing up, you should pick the most nearly-appropriate choice of male/female for yourself, and then elaborate on the details subsequently. The settings above allow you to override the M/F default in most cases.
You can change your gender from M ⇆ F on the edit page, but you need to request the administrator to enable this for you; unfortunately admin-intervention is necessary, because occasionally people think it's amusing to masquerade as a fake profile, and that can cause significant distress. Also, please understand that the T&C requirement to "sign up with your correct gender" is directed at those who would create fake accounts for the purpose of "trolling". It isn't intended in any way to catch out those for whom heteronormativity doesn't apply.

How might it be completely fixed? It would be very tricky to do, because gender is such a complex topic, and we could easily fall into the trap of trying to solve the problem of putting people in the wrong box by infinite proliferation of boxes! Therefore, we try to provide a reasonable set of common options and a degree of flexibility, and encourage people to use free-text to describe themselves more fully. In addition, there are some mathematical problems that would need to be solved (example: if the default complement of 'straight-male' is 'straight-female', and the complement of 'gay-male' is 'gay-male', then what is the complement of an arbitrary shape in a 4-dimensional coordinate system?), and some remaining technical ones to do with logic, code-structure, SQL, and user-interface, and then testing it from all perspectives. Finally, there are some historical reasons: the software contains over 500 locations where sex is assumed to be a boolean variable (i.e. that "Not-M" implies "F" and vice-versa), and re-factoring this would be exceptionally time-consuming (and probably not entirely helpful - given that some trans-people identify as "trans-ness is a subset of my [fe]maleness" while others identify as "trans-ness is an alternative to [fe]male-ness"). Also, if the range of categories became too large, nobody would ever be able to search by category, or to get a near-match. [Similar granularity problems arise in the boolean field "smoker/non-smoker". What about the person who just smokes very occasionally? Other, common wrong-but-useful assumptions occur with names and email addresses.]

Our design principles here are:

Outstanding bugs related to gender:


The # "favicon" for stealth mode

OK, we admit it: it's a very geeky in-joke. It's meant to signify invisibility, and be at least fairly unrecognisable to passers-by, especially when the window is minimised. In computer programming, "comments" are parts of the program intended only for the programmer, but effectively invisible to the computer.
/* For example, this is a comment. */
# This is another one.
We're not going to spoil the hidden reference on the Correspondence page by revealing it here...

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Asymmetry and Game theory

A short mathematical diversion into Game theory may be of interest here (for those who haven't encountered it yet, this is fascinating), as it is informative about dating strategies. More directly, consider the following cases:

In general if Alice and Bob both use the above features of WaRo here are the possibilities:

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How can I ever thank you?

Well, thanks for asking :-) Here are some things you can do:

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How should I link to WarwickRomance from my website?

Thank you very much - that is most kind. Please make sure that you link to the correct web address, which is: http://warwickromance.org.uk (the 'www' is optional). You are very welcome to use our logo for the purpose of linking to us. (Obligatory legal bit: this doesn't give you the right to misuse it out of context in any way you wish.) If you email Cupid to let us know, that would be appreciated too. Thank you.

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Suggestions, Feedback, and Feature Requests

If you have a suggestion, we really want to know about it. Tell Cupid your idea. If there is a feature you'd like to have implemented, we'll consider doing it.
(A recent example of such a feature is the new archive export page. In this particular case, the user who requested it agreed to sponsor it by donating £60 to Amnesty; we like combining our interests in this way).

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I have a question that isn't answered here.

If you need more help, then either send us a message though the site, or you can email Cupid. We'll do our best to help you, and respond speedily. If you have any ideas for additions to this FAQ, please do pass them on. You can contact us via the feedback page.

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Legal


Legal

Terms and Conditions of Use

Welcome to WarwickRomance. We hope you enjoy it.

  1. WarwickRomance is provided for your enjoyment, and made available to you at no charge. In return, we expect you to respect our hospitality, and follow the etiquette.

  2. Do not create profiles or send messages which are offensive, obnoxious, misleading, crude, cruel, false, or "spam". Serious abusers will have their account terminated without warning; they will be blocked permanently, and will not be permitted to return. We do try to be fair; however our decision is final.

  3. You are expected to provide accurate information. In particular, you must sign up with the correct gender, and using your own, personal email address. If you upload a photograph, it must be of yourself.
    [The "correct-gender" rule is aimed squarely at would-be trolls. If you are non-heteronormative, transitioning, etc, you are, of course, explicitly welcome.]

  4. Communicate clearly, honestly, and with respect. In other words, "be excellent to each other". Note that people have different models of attraction and of courtship, and different boundaries; conventions don't always apply.
    [Listen to the other person. Also, remember that the other person is not telepathic, so use your words rather than relying on non-verbal "signals" (which the other person may not correctly perceive). The word "stop" always means "stop!"].

  5. Copyright: we don't require copyright-transfer, or assert ownership of your data, but obviously, if you post a profile, message, or photograph, you are implicitly giving us the right to store and publish that content in accordance with the normal functionality of the website.

  6. Do not create spam. If you misuse our site to send bulk messages, we may publish your name and email address so that complaints may be directed to you. Likewise, we may do this if you abuse the site with false information, or otherwise cause distress to other members.

  7. Data protection: by giving your data to us, you implicitly consent to its use for the purpose of this website. We take great care to protect your private data (and so we are compliant with the data protection act). [We are exempt from the notification requirement of the DPA, as a not-for-profit: we still comply with the rules (we would do so anyway on principle), but don't have to pay a yearly fee to the ICO.]

  8. Cookies: we don't participate in any form of user-tracking (eg 3rd-party analytics, targeted-advertising, etc). While you are logged-in, we use a temporary and benign session-cookie (PHPSESSID), which we discard after ∼ 24 minutes. [This cookie is 'strictly necessary' for the site's core functionality, so the ICO sensibly considers this exempt from the requirement to nag.]

  9. If you are successful, please let us know - this is what makes it all worthwhile. You could also consider helping out on the team, or making a small financial contribution.

  10. In the event that you get married, we think it's only fair that you send us a piece of wedding cake :-)
    [Seriously, Cupid likes cake... we're not kidding about this one!]

  11. We welcome your opinions and feedback. Please do read the documentation first though :-)

Disclaimer

  1. This site is not in any way affiliated with Warwick University or any other organisation. All correspondence regarding the site should be made directly to us (see the feedback page for details).

  2. This site is provided "as is". We accept no responsibility for issues arising from your use/misuse of it, including but not limited to:
    • Relationship or conflicts which may arise between members.
    • Offensive content or inaccurate or defamatory information in any profile or message on the system.
    • Damage to your computer through any virus, software or files that may be transmitted through this site.

  3. There is no warranty of any kind for this site, including but not limited to the fitness of this site for serving any purpose, its reliability, its availability and its functionality.

  4. We trust the contributors to the site to be honest and the onus is on you as a member to provide accurate information. In cases where this trust is breached, we reserve the right to take appropriate action as determined by us, the administrators of the site.

  5. Please note that comments posted on the site, whether they are profiles or private messages, are 'owned' by the poster. They do not represent our own views, and are not explicitly authorised by us. They are enclosed in a box to denote this. We cannot read all profiles when they are posted, therefore we may not be aware of any abuse that they may contain. If you would like to report abuse, please email abuse@ruo3.org and we will investigate as soon as we can.

  6. Reasonable steps have been taken to ensure that confidential information (private messages and e-mail addresses) are not available to other members. However, no liability can be accepted for the consequences of information theft.

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