Exclusive AMA (Ask me Anything) with MetArt

[Met-Art]

But then where do I send my penis pictures?

OK back to the AMA!

Anders will continue to take those, don't worry

 

[Sevrin]

There are a few models on MET with tattoos, Mila I and Malena Morgan being two high-profile examples. But then, Malena could have a smiley-face on her forehead and still be one of the hottest women in the business. The lovely Rudy from several years back also had at least one.

 

[Vanilla Bear]

We do look for natural models, without tattoos or piercings, etc. I am NOT a Met-Art model though

Would you rather pose for MetArt or the Playboy yourself?

 

[solrage]

Alex the CTO here.

A lot of servers and a lot of hard drives! We have a sysadmin that spends a good portion of his week just swapping out hard drives and rebuilding RAIDs. Our largest servers we build for content importing and preparation use 40 terabyte arrays.

Storage didn't used to be so cheap and hard drives were a major expense in our tech budget. Before SSD caching came about, we used to use the fastest platter hard drives possible on the MetArt member servers to ensure fast delivery (15K RPM SAS). Now that storage is cheap, we'll keep adding new storage slice servers (the 40 TB boxes) so that we always keep the highest resolution originals in a permanent archive.

Also I just noticed your username (solrage) -- you're a great commenter on SexArt. We really appreciate members like you who appreciate the work that goes into the production. Cheers!

-- Alex (CTO)

Thanks for the information, Alex! Man, I thought I had a lot of space with my 8TB Raid Array! 40TB arrays are just.... is there a "mind blown" smiley? I guess this will do: :suicide:

Yeah, I am solrage on SexArt and Met-Art. I commented a lot more before the flood that ruined my last Raid array (and iPad, fence, roof, etc.). Luckily, insurance paid for everything, but I did get backed up on MA and SA sets/videos to see, so now I'm playing catch up!

It's great that storage is getting cheaper, isn't it? A long ways from the days of this:

 

[solrage]

We coordinate models with photographers and photographers also introduce models to us for approval. You'll notice that some models do very well when introduced to the site - which is no small feat to accomplish among the thousands of models we have. Some models don't perform as well. We listen to our members and bring back the models they love. We definitely work with the models and photographers to arrange more content production.

Thanks for the information. I do admit I often find it sad when I find a model that I love--usually from a while back--that only has one or two sets, but I can understand how that happens. Too many beautiful models, not enough time.

 

[PinkPanther21]

I was wondering where Met-Art is going with your network of sites? You've got quite an interesting collection, with Holly Randall, ALS Scan (my favorite site on the internet), Viv Thomas, Michael Ninn, etc. How large and eclectic a network are you all aiming for? What should we be anticipating in terms of your network?

 

[solrage]

Gah, I don't want to hog up all the questions/bandwidth, but one doesn't get this opportunity too often... so, what the hell, two more questions of a more personal/philosophical nature:

1. Have you told your family/friends about working in online porn/erotica? If so, was it difficult to tell them and what did they think?

2. What do you say to critics of erotica/porn that say it's anti-feminist and reinforces misogynistic attitudes such as men thinking it's OK to objectify women?

 

[Met-Art]

I joined FreeOnes after seeing the link to this discussion on MET. I've been a yearly member of MET for a long time now, and still think the photo content is great. The best sets, imo, are the ones that are not just nudes, but also include photos of the models in street clothes in public. There can never be enough of those.

One of the things that I really liked about MET when I was a new member in 2006 were the exclusive cam model shows. I saw my first cam shows on MET and spent a reasonable amount on the old MET-Cams once the pay-cams started. I liked that we could see photo sets on MET of the same models who appeared on cam. In 2010, you switched to a Streamate clone, like we see everywhere *cough* and the MET models we knew went elsewhere. My cam dollars followed them.

Are you considering returning to exclusive (like Diesel) now that there is a network that can bring in sufficient traffic to sustain its own cam site featuring models we see on the MET network?

PS: The feet with the pink toenails.

Hi Sevrin, so glad to hear you are a long time member and that you saw our news post on MetArt about this AMA - glad to have you join us!

We have featured several exclusive cam shows on MetArt and SexArt over the course of the past year and they are certainly well received. We also have exclusive MetArt models on our current streamate cam site, www.metcams.com, but you are correct that there are not routine or exclusive cam shows at this time with them. The growth of our network is opening up many new opportunities and live cam shows with our models is certainly one of them. Feedback from our members is valuable in determining the features we offer, so we really appreciate your post here on this topic.

 

[Met-Art]

Calm down lads, let's not turn it turn it into a dick-waving contest because the professional in the porn biz is a pretty lady. Someone will end up taking it too far and talking about hard they're going to beat it, and it's not Jill's job to hear all that.

I love that this post was made by someone with the name 'MrSStiffy'!! Thanks for your comment.

 

[Met-Art]

How has your time selling porn to (mostly) men changed your understaning of male sexuality and what do you do to make men choose your site over others?

I have learned that men really crave sex - nothing changed really - I already knew that. Male sexuality cannot be lumped into one vague term...men (and women) have extremely varied sexual preferences, sex drives, desires, etc.

What we focus on is never compromising on QUALITY combined with consistent new site updates (4-6 per DAY on MetArt) and always, always putting our customer's satisfaction at the top of our list. Our reputation supercedes us in many cases and we strive to keep that reputation spotless. These key things are what I believe pushes a potential customer to make the jump to becoming a site member.

 

[Roald]

I have learned that men really crave sex -

.....

lol what gave that away?

 

[FreeOnes_Anders]

Anders will continue to take those, don't worry

 

[Sevrin]

What happened with the rankings on MET? Some models were consistently in the top rows, and now all of a sudden they are all at the bottom of the page, replaced by models with only a few sets. Lorena B, who is in the top one or two on Sex Art and TLE isn't even in the top 150 anymore, nor is Iveta B who was #1 for ages. Caprice and Malena were #1 at some point, and are two of the biggest names you have, but are now ranked way down the page. I'm not complaining as a fanboy of any particular models, but I noticed a big shift for a lot of models a month or two back. Are you trying to promote newer models, or are more people voting now, or did you change the way scores are calculated, and weighting more recent votes more highly? You may want to rethink that, since MET has great content that is older than 4 months.

Why is EB so messed up? There are models under different names (Eve and Ariana), and there are names like Iveta and Sveta with two different models under the same profile. I was a member there briefly once or twice back when it was MET-Models, and had some of the same content as MET-Art, and always found it treated like a stepchild of MET-Art.

Sorry about asking serious questions, but I had my first monthly sub back when it was Most Erotic Teens and Andrea was the icon of MET, and I hold the site to a pretty high standard.

 

[Met-Art]

What happened with the rankings on MET? Some models were consistently in the top rows, and now all of a sudden they are all at the bottom of the page, replaced by models with only a few sets. Lorena B, who is in the top one or two on Sex Art and TLE isn't even in the top 150 anymore, nor is Iveta B who was #1 for ages. Caprice and Malena were #1 at some point, and are two of the biggest names you have, but are now ranked way down the page. I'm not complaining as a fanboy of any particular models, but I noticed a big shift for a lot of models a month or two back. Are you trying to promote newer models, or are more people voting now, or did you change the way scores are calculated, and weighting more recent votes more highly? You may want to rethink that, since MET has great content that is older than 4 months.

Why is EB so messed up? There are models under different names (Eve and Ariana), and there are names like Iveta and Sveta with two different models under the same profile. I was a member there briefly once or twice back when it was MET-Models, and had some of the same content as MET-Art, and always found it treated like a stepchild of MET-Art.

Sorry about asking serious questions, but I had my first monthly sub back when it was Most Erotic Teens and Andrea was the icon of MET, and I hold the site to a pretty high standard.

Alex, CTO here:

Your observations are spot on. The details on how we compute model ratings has never been discussed but I'm glad to give you some insight here.

When the site first started, over a decade ago, decisions were made not to count user ratings that were below a certain threshold. The thinking behind that being that you can't really say any of our models are a "1" on a scale of 1 to 10 so why are people rating them a 1 or a 2? The decision was made not to count those very low ratings.

Recently we decided to reverse that decision and slowly roll back the ratings so they accurately reflect how people vote and also instantly change the ratingts on the site to reflect your vote. Before these changes it could take up to an hour for your vote to appear as calculated. The effect of this was, as you saw, a gradual change in our model ratings as we now include every vote that people make. I believe this is a more accurate rating system and that people aren't calling models a "1" but they are telling us how much they like the girl on a scale of 1 to 10. After all, if we believed our models are only 8s 9s and 10s, why do we even offer the lower ratings?

All in all I think this has resulted in more accurate and truthful representations of our top models and top content. But we are not weighting more recent votes or any votes more highly than any others.

 

[Met-Art]

Thanks for the information, Alex! Man, I thought I had a lot of space with my 8TB Raid Array! 40TB arrays are just.... is there a "mind blown" smiley? I guess this will do: :suicide:

Yeah, I am solrage on SexArt and Met-Art. I commented a lot more before the flood that ruined my last Raid array (and iPad, fence, roof, etc.). Luckily, insurance paid for everything, but I did get backed up on MA and SA sets/videos to see, so now I'm playing catch up!

It's great that storage is getting cheaper, isn't it? A long ways from the days of this:

Alex, CTO here:

It certainly is. I remember my first 10MB hard drive, too! My personal media storage now is 18TB of drives in a 12 TB RAID and it cost a fraction of the 10MB. The 40TB storage slices we build are RAID 6 or 10 so actually made of much more than 40TB.

 

[Ovidius]

Alex, CTO here:

Your observations are spot on. The details on how we compute model ratings has never been discussed but I'm glad to give you some insight here.

When the site first started, over a decade ago, decisions were made not to count user ratings that were below a certain threshold. The thinking behind that being that you can't really say any of our models are a "1" on a scale of 1 to 10 so why are people rating them a 1 or a 2? The decision was made not to count those very low ratings.

Recently we decided to reverse that decision and slowly roll back the ratings so they accurately reflect how people vote and also instantly change the ratingts on the site to reflect your vote. Before these changes it could take up to an hour for your vote to appear as calculated. The effect of this was, as you saw, a gradual change in our model ratings as we now include every vote that people make. I believe this is a more accurate rating system and that people aren't calling models a "1" but they are telling us how much they like the girl on a scale of 1 to 10. After all, if we believed our models are only 8s 9s and 10s, why do we even offer the lower ratings?

All in all I think this has resulted in more accurate and truthful representations of our top models and top content. But we are not weighting more recent votes or any votes more highly than any others.

I do not like that system with assigning numbers. Since one person might rate a girl as a 5 whereas another, for the same perceived "value", would assign a 7, you don't get either a ratio or a nominal scale that way. It only works for one individual's preferences. Never, ever, try to use a ratio scale to measure something that is inherently non-parametric. I would prefer to allow the users to rank the girls against each other by asking them if one set is better than another, or to distribute 100 points between the models; that way you will soon be able to rank the models/photographers/scenes on an ordinal scale.

 

[Sevrin]

Alex, CTO here:

Your observations are spot on. The details on how we compute model ratings has never been discussed but I'm glad to give you some insight here.

When the site first started, over a decade ago, decisions were made not to count user ratings that were below a certain threshold. The thinking behind that being that you can't really say any of our models are a "1" on a scale of 1 to 10 so why are people rating them a 1 or a 2? The decision was made not to count those very low ratings.

Recently we decided to reverse that decision and slowly roll back the ratings so they accurately reflect how people vote and also instantly change the ratingts on the site to reflect your vote. Before these changes it could take up to an hour for your vote to appear as calculated. The effect of this was, as you saw, a gradual change in our model ratings as we now include every vote that people make. I believe this is a more accurate rating system and that people aren't calling models a "1" but they are telling us how much they like the girl on a scale of 1 to 10. After all, if we believed our models are only 8s 9s and 10s, why do we even offer the lower ratings?

All in all I think this has resulted in more accurate and truthful representations of our top models and top content. But we are not weighting more recent votes or any votes more highly than any others.

All I can say is that any system that sends someone like Iveta, who was a terrifically popular model both on MET and Errotica for a long time, and who would certainly appeal to many new visitors to MET, off the "Top 150 Models" list has to be broken. Was MET wrong those years to feature her 91 times, with 75 of her sets carrying a "Top 10" banner"? Jenya D, Ukraine's 2009 playmate of the year, is gone, as is Andrea C, for years *the* face of MET. Anna AJ and Sharon E are off to the dustbin and Mila I is hanging on for dear life. Do you really think this is accurate? Were they really not as hot as we thought all those years?

I think a system that includes clicks, page-views and downloads would give a better idea of how important a model is to a site's members, although implementing something like that now would be even more punishing to inactive models.

Anyway, none of these things will affect *my* use of the site. I'm not going to point out this model or that who should be dropped from that list either, because that would be rude. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the current system is broken.

 

[cestmoi2010]

Somewhat personal question for Jill

How do/how have the guys in your life (boyfriend(s)/husband/whatever) reacted to what you do for a living? Have any of them had a reaction one way or another about it?

 

[solrage]

I believe this is a more accurate rating system and that people aren't calling models a "1" but they are telling us how much they like the girl on a scale of 1 to 10. After all, if we believed our models are only 8s 9s and 10s, why do we even offer the lower ratings?.

I do not like that system with assigning numbers. Since one person might rate a girl as a 5 whereas another, for the same perceived "value", would assign a 7, you don't get either a ratio or a nominal scale that way. It only works for one individual's preferences. Never, ever, try to use a ratio scale to measure something that is inherently non-parametric. I would prefer to allow the users to rank the girls against each other by asking them if one set is better than another, or to distribute 100 points between the models; that way you will soon be able to rank the models/photographers/scenes on an ordinal scale.

...Do you really think this is accurate? Were they really not as hot as we thought all those years? I think a system that includes clicks, page-views and downloads would give a better idea of how important a model is to a site's members...

Gotta say I agree with Ovidius and Sevrin here, Alex. Although I never much paid much attention to the ratings and, like Sevrin said, it won't affect my use of the site, I also don't like *just* having a 10 point ratings scale to determine rankings; there are too many problems with it. Personally, I don't think I've rated any MA model below a 5 (just checked: I haven't, and I've only given out twelve 5s). I don't know if most "1" ratings would actually be reflecting an individual's preferences, or if such votes are given only as a means of voting models down on the Top 150 and elevating others. EG, a "smart" user might give their favorite models a 10 and then go around the rest of the top 150 giving out 1s just to vote other models down in relation, since that would be their best chance of affecting a change. They may do this even if given those models in isolation they'd rate them a 5-7 or something. As sevrin said/suggested, I have to wonder how many of our older favorites (Jenya D, Iveta B, Ariel, Anna AJ, Altea B, Sofi A... just to name a few) would only have have done maybe half the sets they've done if they'd been under the new system, considering that now they're not even in the Top 150.

 

[beaner_syx]

dou yo have any work with little wheeled boards
do you have a favorite lip color that you like on other women