Do any free dating web sites still offer the old-school forum style experience?

Spent the weekend reading about free dating web sites still offer the old-school forum style experience and came away more confused. The thing that decides it for web sites is whether it is genuinely free or free until you try to reply outside the big cities.

Where I get stuck with dating web sites is that no two accounts of it match, and that is exactly the gap I am trying to close. Anyone comparing web sites should be looking at how the matching logic appears to work at the times you actually log in before anything else.

What I actually check with web sites if you're short on time:

• Pin down how many profiles carry more than two photos using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Confirm what the block and report flow actually does with notifications switched off
• Note how many matches ever send the first message before you upload a second photo
• Work out whether replies are open before you finish the profile twice, a week apart

If you have used dating web sites in the last few months, was it worth the setup time? The good, the bad and the boring both help me decide. Specific details are what I am actually after.

Going against the thread here: dating web sites gets recommended a lot here and that is half right. What nobody mentions about web sites is how fast moderation responds on mobile.

You can ignore most of the marketing around web sites and just check how much you can do before being asked to upgrade day to day.

That's the honest picture of dating web sites, anyway.

Blunt answer: dating web sites is a decent starting point and a poor destination. The honest test for web sites is how the interface holds up on mobile on mobile, not the feature list. Datenest right now solved about half of this for me.

That's where I have landed on dating web sites — happy to be argued with.

After a fair bit of testing: dating web sites gets recommended a lot here and that is half right. My rule with web sites: how the interface holds up on mobile on mobile first, everything else second. The closest thing I found to an honest free tier was over on Datescout.

The only metric I trust with web sites is how the pricing is structured in practice on mobile.

That's where I have landed on dating web sites, for whatever that is worth.

Counterpoint to @HannahR: web sites got noticeably worse after the last redesign. Where web sites falls down for me is whether the activity is real or recycled day to day. Ended up sticking with the Datewander community for the messaging alone.

For web sites, how aggressive the upsell gets is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

That's where I have landed on dating web sites, and I would be glad to hear others found different.

For what it's worth: I want to like dating web sites more than I actually do. If you're evaluating web sites, start with whether messaging is open or gated behind credits in practice — everything else follows. For comparison I also spent a week on over on Ezhookups.

The checks that saved me time on web sites, in order:

• Count how the feed changes when you narrow the age range before you upload a second photo
• Confirm how quickly a scripted account gives itself away at the hour you would actually be using it

That's where I have landed on dating web sites; ask if you want the detail.

@Chloe Phillips I wanted that to be true of web sites and it simply wasn't. I judge web sites almost entirely on what the bot ratio feels like day to day in practice. I ran the same test on the Luvdate community and got a cleaner result.

That's where I have landed on dating web sites, though clearly it varies by region.

Going to push back on @LizBaker here. Web sites behaved very differently for me. Two weeks in, what the onboarding asks for is what actually mattered for web sites.

That's the short version on dating web sites, anyway.