Are you just looking in your area or anywhere? Last week a psychiatrist from Hawaii contacted me. I assume she saw my profile via Reddit. She said she had never seen a 99% match before she saw my profile. She usually limited her searches to 100 miles. She had answered almost 300 questions.
Also, match % is weighted by importance. If two people have the same answer, but one says mandatory and the other irrelevant, that counts towards enemy %. Friend % is pure, unweighted same answers.
Depends what you mean by “typical match percentage.” The typical highest percentage that people will see? The typical range of highest matches? That’s all going to depend on how many questions you’ve answered and what kind of range you’re looking at.
For someone who’s answered a few hundred questions, I’d say it’s pretty typical to see a few mid-to-high 90s and the rest 80s.
Also, how are you searching/sorting? The default sort *does not *give results with your highest match percentage first. Be sure you’re sorting by match percentage.
brb purging
ETA: What are you doing this weekend?
Do you have a cite for any of this? I’ve never seen anywhere that laid out how the algorithms actually work, and if they’re posting that now, I’d love to read the details.
One of the questions, IIRC, asks if you’ve read about and understand the sorting algorithm. But OKCupid is a bit [del]flaky[/del] dynamic and things tend to show up and disappear. It may have been posted at one point but not any more or more likely they may have put it in one of their blogs/reports at some point.
I haven’t read through it, but here it is.
Q&A with an OkC Employee There’s a lot of interesting stuff in there.
So I’ve had a OkC profile for a number of months, but haven’t been active on it due to sort of seeing a girl I know offline. Now she’s moved away and we’re not doing a long distance thing. This leaves me with messages from the past months I haven’t replied to on OkC.
Doper Ladies - how would you respond to someone replying to your initial message 1, 2, sometimes 3 months late? Is it worth my time? Should I start the message with some kind of disclaimer acknowledging the delay, or just respond like they sent it yesterday?
You can come over and cook dinner for me, if you want. I’ll eat it, if I don’t have something better to do.
How’s that?
Have you been online during that time?
If you have been more or less offline during the entire time, I would send them a reply and say start it off with something along the lines of “Sorry I took so long to get back to you, right after I set up my profile here I started dating someone and hadn’t checked my messages…” IOW, yeah, acknowledge it. I’ve had girls do that to me and I don’t mind it. It tells me that they’re going to put effort into the relationship rather then date me but still keep keep an eye on OKC as well to see if something better comes along.
If you have been online a lot during that time (say, more then once a week). I would reply to the 1 month old emails without mentioning the delay, but anything older then that I would send them an email as if it was a ‘first email’ as opposed to a reply. No one will ask you why you took 1,2,3 months to reply beyond maybe a “wow, I didn’t think you were going to reply” or “Wow it’s been a while I assumed you closed your account” type of thing. If anyone went beyond that and really seemed to pry for an answer, that would raise a (as SFG would say) pink flag for me that they might be a big over bearing.
Me too! But it’s got to involve dead animals.
Should I worry about people who reply to my messages but don’t ask any questions of their own? This has happened to me a few times where I’ll write something then get something back, they answer some of my questions but they don’t ask any of their own.
I’ve gotten so few responses that it’s hard to really tell. I know a few times I’ve written back and never heard anything back, but then that happens with women that I’ve actually gotten questions back from.
Also an OKCupid question, does anyone know if I delete a message it then will not remember if I’ve written someone or not. Usually if I come across a profile it tells me if I have written them or not, but there are some that I could have sworn I had messaged yet it says nothing.
Hopefully this new one will at least net a date.
I usually take that as a sign that they’re just not interested in talking, whether subconsciously or actively hoping you’ll go away while not being overtly impolite. Even if they are interested, it’s an indicator of future conversation habits. I don’t enjoy carrying every single conversation with someone.
It’s also possible they just don’t understand the nuances of online dating. It’s not like sending an email to a friend. There’s a certain amount of subtle coaxing you have to do. If you send me an email the only info I have to work with is what you wrote in your profile, beyond that, all I can do is say things like “Soooo, do you like orange juice?” I don’t think it’s on purpose, I think some people just don’t realize it. Hell, there have been times where I’ve sent a reply to someone and then realized* I didn’t ask any of my own questions, but then I normally send them a second email as soon as I realize my mistake (Oh, BTW you had mentioned orange juice…what are your thoughts on Twin Peaks?).
*and the only reason I realized my mistake is from reading this thread and a handful of random online dating articles on the web. But I don’t think the unwashed masses understand that putting questions in your email makes your chances of getting a reply that much better.
I mean the typical “highest match” % either in the area or not. I’m searching girls 19-28, have a photo, and are single. no ethnic restrictions, etc. sorted by match % the highest is 93% anywhere and 92% within 25 miles. After that it’s a steady decline down to the mid 85’s by the end of the first 10.
i told one of my good female friends about it and she signed on to see what the questions were like. we’re a 72% match (she’s answered 30ish).
like i said, i’m not stressing over it. i like the questions more than the prospect of finding my soul mate. i’m just curious to see if i’m more or less compatible with others than the average doper.
I don’t think I ever had that few questions answered. When I reactivated my account, I reset my questions and answered 300-500 in one sitting. In less than a week, I had over 1500. I have answered over 2500 now. I know Shot From Guns and Mauvaise have answered over 2000 too. EvilTOJ and Joey P have answered over 1000, if not 2000(I paid more attention to the girls’ profiles, so I’m not exactly sure about the boys’.)
I’m at 940ish and sort of hit a wall. The rest of them I’d prefer not to answer in public or think they deserve more explanation then I can give them on a website…or the answers are just poorly worded and there isn’t a good way to answer them. What I have done though is gone back and given written answers to probably at least half of them. Every day I go through and answer a handful of them just to attract a few visitors though.
I think I’ve only answered a hundred questions or so. Back when I did that, there was no option to write any sort of explanation, so I tended to skip over the ones where none of the answers really expressed what I wanted.
When I came back to the site, I replied to the most interesting messages from the past year. My reply generally started with something like, “Sorry it took me to long to get back to you! As you can see, I haven’t been active on the site for <x amount of time>, so I just now saw your PM.” No need to go into why you haven’t been on the site.
Perfect!
Could mean they’re trying to brush you off politely. Could mean they’re self-centered. Could mean they’re just frazzled or flaky.
Questions answered privately still count towards match percentages. You just can’t compare answers.
If you were inactive for over a year, why didn’t you disable your account? Because you still show up as one of my top matches when I search anywhere, I have seen you haven’t been on OkC in nearly a month now. Why have an active account if you’re not using it? I’m just curious.
Creepy
It wasn’t deliberate–I just stopped going to the site. And it was more like four years.
I keep meaning to catch up on PMs, for politeness sake if nothing else, but then I get sidetracked. Also, my dating status is… complicated.