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Do you want a revolutionary new TMF?

TMF Jeff

TMF owner and co-founder
Joined
Apr 2, 2001
Messages
26,893
Points
63
Do you want a revolutionary new TMF?

Are you annoyed by how small the video clips are here?

Do you wish you could just browse through all the content without having to constantly open new threads and click "next" over and over again?


Do you wish it wasn't so hard to meet someone who loves tickling the same way you do?

Do you wish the TMF wasn't so ugly? Are you sick of sorting through a thousand disorganized emoticons to find the smiley you want? Do you wish the chatroom wasn't so full of fakes, catfishers and trolls?


Believe me, I feel the same way! But I can't fix it alone.

I was 30 when I helped create the TMF and I'm 48 now. In some ways it feels like yesterday, but at the same time it's so far in the past that I can't really even remember many details of it happening. It was literally a generation ago and it's kind of like the TMF has just always existed, like the Internet itself.

Does anyone else have that feeling, like you can't really remember a time when the TMF didn't exist?

Here's a little Forum History Trivia for you - we originally had a rule against any non-tickling discussion, because there was no "General Discussion" forum and non-tickling talk was just cluttering up the tickling discussions. But when 9/11 happened, people needed to be able to reach out to friends in the New York area that they only knew through the TMF, to see if they were alright. And also, it was impossible to expect people to NOT talk about what was going on. So we created the General Discussion forum - and if you go there and click "Last" on the page list, you'll see that the very first posts were on Sept 11, 2001.

Even now, I just got a little choked up when I clicked through myself to make sure I was describing it properly.

We have tremendous history, and what worries me the most is that the progress of the Internet will eventually grind us into dust. Another website could do what we do, but what can never be replaced is the invested time.

People have grown up here. People have discovered or invented themselves here. People have met, fallen in love, married and had children, because of this place.

Those stories are irreplaceable, and that's why we need a revolution - We need to tear down everything about this place that's out of date, and build magnificent new features in their place so that a new generation of tickling enthusiasts doesn't dismiss us as irrelevant. We need to get rid of everything that has outlived its usefulness, while preserving and enhancing everything that makes us special.

What are the things that you think should be preserved? What is essential to the identity of the TMF, and what could be thrown away or replaced?

In my nearly two decades of running the forum, I've put an almost embarrassing amount of money into it - well over six figures. Sometimes it's been relatively easy, and sometimes it's been really hard, but I've always known it was worth it because of the scope of what we're creating.

This isn't a small fan-site with a few hundred enthusiasts. The TMF sees ten thousand unique visitors every day,and over a hundred thousand unique visitors every month. That's a hundred thousand individuals, not a hundred people visiting a thousand times each.

That's what gave me the confidence to launch this Patreon effort - there are so many of us that I'm almost awed by the scope of what we could do if we all started rowing in the same direction.

If every person who visits the forum contributed one dollar per month - What's your dream of what the tickling community would do with over a million dollars a year?

Not everyone can contribute and there are plenty of people who shouldn't because of their financial situation. And that's more than fine - just by being here you increase our reach, and every post adds to our incredibly powerful voice, and builds our history. You can also help by boosting the signal - Remind your TMF friends to become a supporter if you think they can.

If you're already a Patron, thanks!

If you're not, consider becoming one by clicking the link in my signature below.

But most importantly and beyond everything else, thank you for reading this and thank you for being a member,
Jeff
 
I almost don't want to see it change. It's so nostalgic.
Like a time capsule of how this community started.
It is a relic, but it also brings a sense of calming to know it won't change much. Even if the people do.
Sure another site may do it newer or better. But they will never have what you helped create here. Maybe call it like Pepridge Farms remembering a simpler time. But maybe that is all you need.
I mean I can't speak for anyone but myself.
But that is the feeling i've always had Jeff.
You've made something that has withstood the test of time.
And on the internet, That is saying a lot.
I also typed this on a PS3. So i'm a little behind the times....
 
Heh actually yeah I am using a controller.
But I am rather fast with it.
 
Do I want a revolutionary new TMF?

Not really. I like the organization of the current site. It has the features I want, and some I have yet to use (like the chatroom).

I don't recall thinking, "I wish it had this or that".

Most importantly for me, it's home. I've been here since 2005, and for 13 years this has been my home in the Internet. It's restored a sense of humanity that my fetish made me question. I've made good friends here, and read Friday night jokes, and laughed, and wept, and fapped, and shared people's lives. Seeing the place is like seeing your front room when you walk in your home at night; relaxing, comfortable, familiar.

I'm not a programmer, and likely am unaware what features I might be missing. Will I leave if you revamp the place, Jeff? Of course not. I'll probably fuss for a while 'cause I can't find anything, and maybe get to really like some new feature. But a part of me will always be sad not to see the old look. It would be like getting rid of a favourite car; I might like the new one, but...

One big word of caution. Many of us are using older operating systems. I've lost access to some favourite sites that aren't backwards compatible, and I'd be devastated if this site became one of those.

Do what you think is best, Jeff, you run the place. But thank you for asking us, and I know you'll mull over the various opinions you get.

What's most important isn't what kind of GUI we see when we log in. Yeah, we get attached, and some of us are sentimental. But what's really important is that you and others, Jeff, started this place. What's important is all of us who make it what it is. Yes it's a place where we come to share our interest in our fetish, and that's what drew most of us here. But more importantly, it's become a family; a family who care about each other, who look after each other. A family who welcome newbies, and who take the time to guide them into a family, that loves, cares for, and respects each other. A family that is guided and protected by unsung moderators who do the hard, thankless work of keeping this a safe home for all of us. It's that mutual respect that makes this place nearly unique on the Internet.

So leave it be Jeff, or change it. You've probably given the pros and cons more thought than many of us. TMF isn't the interface. It's the community of people who give this place its soul.
 
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The organization of this site and function still needs upgrades due to evolving tech. And since its been coming out of Jeff's pocket since the TMF DID START.. let's talk about family shall we? If we are one... let's not care about the details too much until they actually happen. Shown to us. I can't contribute myself. But I would in a heartbeat if I had it to give.

If something doesn't go over well, or at ALL... he probably would be willing to change certain things back if there's enough clamor. This is more anout the upgrades the site needs to handle more storage and function. if nothing else maybe a new chat along with the site tech upgrades. We are all SICK of dealing with the bad yolks that slip in here constantly.

And btw, he's not looking to change the design. I myself showed him different looks just on color change. He's not for the look changing hardly at ALL. I can show you what I showed him. lol. I doubt anyone would really like it either but it was fun to mess with. :)
 
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I've been here since 2001 and, yes, I'm an old fart! But that being said, Ive seen sites change so dramatically that I can't use them anymore. And that's what I don't want to see happen here. The young people here could adapt, but those of us "older" generation, no way! What I'd like to see, is a gentle change. One that incorporates the needed change, without going overboard. Something that we "older" people could get the grasp of with a little assistance. Does that make any sense?
And as far as donating, is there some way we could give the token $1 a month (or more) easily, say with an automatic deduction or something? I'd go for that!
 
In a few months I should be able to chip in a few dollars every month. And if the forum needs more storage space and a few tweaks here and there I'll be happy to support that. That said, I agree with most of what Ebunbury, Omaha and robmic posted, being one of those old farts myself.
 
Jeff - I too am an old fogey, got a few years on you. Nothin' wrong with wanting to revamp the site if you deem it necessary. As others have said, don't make it drastic. And, I'd be glad to donate, but the (once) major retailer I work for has recently decided to shutter the store I work at, so I'll have to wait and see what happens in the next few months. Still, appreciate your running of the site.
 
I think one of the main charms of the TMf is it’s humble design, it’s not the most complicated and most elaborate website in the worlds, but it’s simple design makes it accessible to even the lowest tech savvy folks. I’d be saddened to see it go
 
Short answer: yes to all!

I remember when I showed the TMF to a Vanilla friend who works in web design one day. The first thing he asked me was:

"Is this a paid subscription-based website?"

When I said no, he whistled in admiration and said:

"Well, whomever's running this thing, he's making you a huge gift. These forums don't come exactly cheap, not to mention there seems to be a lot of content stored there."

It was back in 2007. Wikipedia existed only for a few years and Youtube had a running time limit for its videos (I think it was around 5 mins?). The Internet has changed; the TMF had a few upgrades, but not many.

I am not one to say what should be changed and what shouldn't. I trust you'll make the right call(s). I just hope for two things: 1) that you'll keep this a friendly place for all non-English speakers and 2) that you won't get rid of something I like.

One thing that I think you could throw away immediately is that "microwave" smiley. Eversince it has appeared, I have found myself super disturbed by it :p
 
Any changes that need to be made behind the scenes to keep TMF running, I fully support. If there are new features people want, that's great. I like the overall look, but would probably get used to a new one. I just don't want this site to become one of those my older system and operating system aren't compatible with. Patreon is a good example; it just shows a white screen on my system, with content never loading. Jeff, how else may we support TMF financially, besides Patreon?
 
Another thing: whatever you do, please, I beg you on my knees, do not, I repeat DO NOT introduce captchas for login!!!! I hate those things; they are so freaking annoying.
 
Hello everyone, I start by saying that this forum, for me is unique, I really thank you for existing.

I am a member of this the beginning, I am from Brazil. so sorry for the mistakes in English.

I publish almost always and I contribute with photos and previews of my producer, I only get some small sales, thanks to the faithful friends of the forum.

I saw that you created a page on the Patreon website. So. I'll tell you what happened to me this month there. I may be wrong, but this month, I needed to cash the money my patrons gave me, exactly $ 50. coindidently 2 days they canceled my account there. Why? I posted 2 times a month, public material and material for the patrons, in fact, it gave me the impression that they do not want you to withdraw your money. here is only this information.
 
I'm going to answer some specific comments in a minute, but before doing that I want to address the Chorus :)

I almost don't want to see it change. It's so nostalgic.

I like the organization of the current site

It aint broke. Don't fix it. Just my 2 cents.

that being said, Ive seen sites change so dramatically that I can't use them anymore. And that's what I don't want to see happen here.

I agree with most of what Ebunbury, Omaha and robmic posted, being one of those old farts myself.

As others have said, don't make it drastic.

I think one of the main charms of the TMf is it’s humble design. I’d be saddened to see it go


You guys have the exact same concerns that I have - and as proof of my credibility, this is something I sent to CapturedDoll recently when she sent me some possible redesigns for the forum's appearance (If she hadn't already mentioned it was her, I probably would have anonymized her and just said "a member.")


TMF Jeff said:
I'm not a web designer myself, but I've read a lot of books and articles about it, and the gist of what I've learned is that for every creatively bold decision you make, that's a viewer that you might send away because they find it off-putting. Especially with a well-established website whose members have decades-long expectations.

The look of a website has to align with its purpose, and the purpose of a forum is to enable sharing of content - in essence, the forum exists to spotlight the members, not claim the spotlight itself.

Even though we're all sick of how it looks, the TMF still does its job very very well... This is an extremely successful forum, so we want to identify and protect what works and only change what we think has to be changed.



... I may have spoken too soon when I said "We're all sick of how it looks," but I hope you guys can see that I recognize how important it is to not make change just for change's sake. :)

So let me get specific about what I think needs "fixing."

  • There are a LOT of confusing buttons and options in some of the forum's tools. For example, if you "Go Advanced" when making a post, you can find yourself down a very deep hole full of poorly explained, badly laid-out functions.

    Most people probably look at that mess one time and immediately click away, but there's actually some awesome functionality buried in there - for example, every image you've ever uploaded is saved in your portion of the TMF database, and you can access them through that advanced toolset. If you lost an old image that you've ever uploaded to the TMF in the last 20 years, you could find it there, if you know how to navigate the labyrinth.

  • Another example is the smiley list - it's a mess and there's no easy way to fix it. Like a lot of things on this software it was never designed to handle the volume that we're now asking of it. It's too much of a disorganized mess to ever hope to unpack and organize - it just needs to be thrown away and redone from scratch.

  • Same thing with the Private Messaging system - in the original build, the limit on saved messages was 200. That's how small they expected the userbase of a vbulletin forum to be. But we have so many members that what we really need is something closer to an email system, with sorting and filing and enhanced searching.

It's the things like that, that we're all used to, or have learned to ignore, that I worry are going to be increasingly off-putting. I imagine some 18 year-old who was born with a cellphone in their hand coming here and just staring open-mouthed at this insane array of options... and then I imagine that person shrugging and wandering away, maybe never to return.

A more modern version of our interface could have the same options, but present them in layers - show you what you're most likely to need up front, and then give you more as you require it or ask for it. Dumping every option onto someone all at once on a massive control panel is an outdated way of doing things.

Even if it's not off-putting and discouraging, which I think it is, at the minimum it's certainly not welcoming and user-friendly. And it really should be.

When we started the forum, I gave no thought to what it would be like twenty years later. But now that we've somehow managed to miraculously survive, I do think it's important to look ahead to the possibility that we might still be here in ANOTHER 20 years.

So the one thing we can't do is just make zero changes and do what I did, which was to just sort of blindly hope that everything would work out and then get incredibly lucky :)

But I'm glad to hear how many people seem unified in wanting the cosmetic changes to be minimal.

Personally I think the forum needs to be brightened up a bit, because I think all this grey is kind of depressing. Even the blues have a high amount of grey in them. But if some people find it more "neutral" than "downbeat" that's a really good reminder that it's all in the eye of the beholder.

Maybe what we'll do is have a switch that lets you revert between the "classic" color palette and a newer one. Or between multiple options even.
 
And as far as donating, is there some way we could give the token $1 a month (or more) easily, say with an automatic deduction or something? I'd go for that!

That's exactly what Patreon does, it charges you for whatever you sign up for on the first of every month. They deduct a fee for themselves and then on the fifth of the month, they pay the remainder out to the forum.

They've been around for years, it's a very well-established and reputable site.
 
Any changes that need to be made behind the scenes to keep TMF running, I fully support. If there are new features people want, that's great. I like the overall look, but would probably get used to a new one. I just don't want this site to become one of those my older system and operating system aren't compatible with. Patreon is a good example; it just shows a white screen on my system, with content never loading. Jeff, how else may we support TMF financially, besides Patreon?

This is an important reminder about older systems, and I'm going to make sure to keep it in mind. If you or anyone else finds us at any point leaving your computer behind, be sure to be vocal about it because it will have been an accident or mistake. Or else it will have been something we had absolutely no choice about, in which case I'll at least be able to explain why it's being done.

As for supporting the TMF in other ways, right now there's nothing else available. I used paypal to take an advertising payment for the forum once, and they immediately issued lifetime bans to me and the person who sent the payment.

People have suggested venmo and I might eventually get around to that, but this isn't like an emergency fundraiser or anything, and I don't want to suddenly have the forum finding ways to take money out of people's wallets every time they turn around. So if you can't use Patreon, don't worry about it. Eventually I'll try to add other ways, and in the meantime there's absolutely no pressure to find an alternative way to contribute.
 
Hello everyone, I start by saying that this forum, for me is unique, I really thank you for existing.

I am a member of this the beginning, I am from Brazil. so sorry for the mistakes in English.

I publish almost always and I contribute with photos and previews of my producer, I only get some small sales, thanks to the faithful friends of the forum.

I saw that you created a page on the Patreon website. So. I'll tell you what happened to me this month there. I may be wrong, but this month, I needed to cash the money my patrons gave me, exactly $ 50. coindidently 2 days they canceled my account there. Why? I posted 2 times a month, public material and material for the patrons, in fact, it gave me the impression that they do not want you to withdraw your money. here is only this information.

I have no idea. To the best of my knowledge, there's no way to "cash the money your patrons gave you."

On my patreon at least, they pay me out once a month on a day of their choosing. If there's another way to do it, I'm not aware of it. And I certainly have no idea why they cancelled your account.
 
Firstly, Amazing Job Jeff. I cant Express my gratitude for this website/forum enough. As much as people dont want change, i believe its a nessesary act moving forward. The site is simply outdated and some people will dislike that change but will soon get used to it.

I honestly believe, if compatability were improved, along with a tech upgrade, this place will feel upgraded but still the same old tmf. How you impliment these things, whether its overtime, in an instant, is a decision for you, in my opinion. Its your site, your baby, and I believe you'll make the right call!
 
Even though I'm one of the younger members (Only joined in 2015 and didn't start using the site for something like another year) I can agree with everyone else that I think the site (Aesthetically at least) is fine the way it is. Though on the technical side it does sound like it could do with some work.
 
This is an important reminder about older systems, and I'm going to make sure to keep it in mind. If you or anyone else finds us at any point leaving your computer behind, be sure to be vocal about it because it will have been an accident or mistake. Or else it will have been something we had absolutely no choice about, in which case I'll at least be able to explain why it's being done.

As for supporting the TMF in other ways, right now there's nothing else available. I used paypal to take an advertising payment for the forum once, and they immediately issued lifetime bans to me and the person who sent the payment.

People have suggested venmo and I might eventually get around to that, but this isn't like an emergency fundraiser or anything, and I don't want to suddenly have the forum finding ways to take money out of people's wallets every time they turn around. So if you can't use Patreon, don't worry about it. Eventually I'll try to add other ways, and in the meantime there's absolutely no pressure to find an alternative way to contribute.

Venmo would be a great option! It's not like PayPal where you could get flagged for adult content or whatever. It's easy to setup, super user friendly, simple and would allow people to make one time donations or donate as often as they want and works with their budget. And it's super easy to cash out.
 
It definitely needs a new search function. Half the time it brings back 'no results found' even though there clearly are results!
 
It definitely needs a new search function. Half the time it brings back 'no results found' even though there clearly are results!

Great point, I forgot to mention the search engine.

This software was never designed to handle a database as massive as ours, which is why the search is so wonky.
 
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