I liked OkCupid's question system, but since that place has become unusable there is no good way of meeting people online without investing considerable effort sifting through discord servers and whatnot. I had high hopes for Matrix, but Matrix turned out to have a fair share of rooms full of really mentally ill people set on evading moderation.
I'm not talking about romantic or sexual dating, that is not the aim. So far I've only met one person online who proved to be a consistent friend.
The whole conundrum is so troubling to me that I have started thinking about building a crude matching algorithm and using that for a FLOSS chatting site that doesn't have pictures, bios, searchable profiles and all that jazz. Just: 'yes'/'no' and 6 pt scale questions. Maybe also a contrast mode to discover radically different people. The biggest obstacle here would be certain legal questions (especially around liability.)
Before I start doing that I want to ask if anyone here knows of a decent site to meet people.
As a gamer: For only online communitys i'd say MMO Guilds are still a thing and can be a gateway into existing friendsgroups. VR Chat was doing ok in that regard too a few years back, no idea where they stand now. A guy i know spends most of his evenings there and has had several real live meetups with a group thad bonded there. A bit niche maybe. I have had regular contacts that build trough gaming and people inviting me into their discord servers (yes, yes, i know...), which lead to me joining some online Pen and Paper groups that often lead to releative good ways of finding cool people, because you tend to learn a lot about them when doing pen and paper.
If you're not into online gaming but are ok with board games, there are several open meetups, at least in my area.
And finaly, local communitys are a thing. We have groups here that meet regulary and go pick up trash in the forest, for example. Or abowling, art or what ever club.
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