1. GAY FLAKES Register e-mail 7/9/01 describing first entry:

Made gay appointment 7/7/01 for 11am next day. NO SHOW, no call, no e-mail

<danman6> i'm a wm,47,6ft.195,married guy, clean shaven, green eyes, brownish/greyish hair, hairy chest

<danman6> my name is cliff, live in benicia, work in petaluma

2. Yahoo's SF Blow Jobs Club message 1310 on 4/10/01 by OralMarin

From IM chats with other SF BJ members, I've learned that many of us have too often found other club members unreliable - particularly for first time meetings. My experience of 50% in missed connections (due to cancellations, rescheduling, no-shows, etc.) may be typical. Most club members shrug off this inability of others to keep appointments, but I believe that connection rates could be improved!

One member recommends a phone call or two before an initial meeting. People seem more likely to keep an appointment when a personal, voice connection is made, rather than with just e-mail or IM. And on the phone, it is easier to judge any hesitations and to resolve questions about the meeting. Of course, if a person is unwilling to give you a phone number, a trust bond has not yet been established, and the likelihood of an in-person meeting is reduced.

Perhaps the greatest reason behind missed connections is the lack of consequences for the person breaking the appointment. Everybody has competing pressures for their time, such as from work, family members, and other groups. Usually, these other pressures come in face-to-face situations. In a conflict, it unfortunately seems expedient to cancel an appointment with someone you know only from IM. After all, what can they do about it? They can't give you a reputation as a "flake," as could the people you meet with regularly. Or could they?

Here is a proposal for some programming work that would build up a reliability reputation for SF BJ or any other Yahoo club members. I'll bet that many other Yahoo clubs have similar problems when members decide to meet one another, and that they too would welcome this sort of reliability rating service.

1. When a Yahoo club member sets up an initial in-person meeting with another member, he would have the ability to ask for a private computer registration of that meeting (with date, time, and both Yahoo ID's). The other member could veto the registration, but the fact and date of his veto would become part of his reliability record.

2. After the scheduled meeting time, either person could add to the computer data on the meeting, with standardized info like:

A. Meeting completed

B. No meeting due to action/ inaction by ______ (Yahoo ID)

3. A rescheduled meeting could be registered as an initial meeting, as in point 1. But data on meetings beyond the first in-person event would not be permitted by the computer. (A person's record should not be unduly affected by experiences with a specific individual.)

4. Accumulated data from above on each club member would be available for review in a separate set of web pages. The ID of those planning meetings with the member would not be revealed. The data would provide useful info on how active, reliable, and talented a member is. Perhaps most important, there would be a real consequence for his thoughtful or uncaring actions!!

Unfortunately, I do not have the programming skills to set up such a system. If other SF BJ club members do, I would be happy to support such an effort. A copy of this message is being forwarded to Yahoo in the hopes that it will encourage a general addition to their clubs programming.

Let our club leader know if you think the pages on this site should be described in the club links webpage!!

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OralMarin's response:

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my club message. On privacy, the whole point of my proposal is take off the mask of privacy for "flakes." Their poor manners would be exposed, whether or not they participated in the process. I do think that enough guys would enter data on flakes to make the system work - because any possible loss of privacy would not reflect badly on the person entering the data. Your point 3 could be valid, but if the new profile (or IM chats) had enough data, a flakes' record could be transferred to the new name.

OralMarin's response: