Today we have a very special guest at PPG University!
¡Bienvenido! Penpal-Gate conecta a gente de todo el mundo. inicia sesión o crea un perfil.
🎓🎓 PPG University - Interview with Etienne 🤵♂️ De todo y un poco más
Oh cool! Etienne?😃
Editado por Lawrence11 .
Yes, Lawrence, it's Etienne the founder of the PPG website.
Etienne accepted our request for an interview.
So these are our questions:
1. How did PPG start and what was the goal of PPG?
2. How much time do you spend with PPG and
how does it influence your family and business?
3. How many helpers do you have?
Is there a constant change?
4. What do you think about PPG University?
5. Is there anything we can do to make your life easier?
6. What is your wish for the future of PPG and the world?
Thank you very much for your time and passion
answering these questions and
providing this wonderful platform!
Editado por Yue_ .
Would like what he think about it 😃
Hello ! Sure thing, here are my answers to your questions:
1. How did PPG start and what was the goal of PPG?
PPG started in early 2008 when I was 19. I loved using penpal websites back, which all had their strengths and weaknesses. I decided I would try to make my own and hopefully consolidate these strengths into one new platform. I already loved programming then so it was a great challenge as well.
I convinced my best friend in high school to help with the project, and he did the graphic design. This is what it looked like the first few years:
There is still a handful of early users around here to remember. 🙂
2. How much time do you spend with PPG and how does it influence your family and business?
It fluctuates a lot. I get many notifications every day that require my attention, such as support requests or automated notifications that detected potentially suspicious activity that I need to assess. It takes anywhere between 10min to sometimes several hours a day. The average is probably around 1 hour every day.
PPG isn't my regular job, so I do have to find time here and there to take care of these things. I try not to go more than 24 hours without checking on stuff.
I have had to step aside during family events to take care of urgent matters, but thankfully it doesn't happen very often so the influence it has on my personal life has been fairly limited.
3. How many helpers do you have. Is there a constant change?
I do 95% of the work alone. Those who reach out to me directly, use the Report feature, or use the contact form are of great help because I can miss much of what needs attention. I occasionally skim through the forum but I don't have much time to closely follow what happens. 80% of my time here involves taking care of technical things to keep the system running smoothly.
4. What do you think about PPG University?
I think it's great to have creative minds that are willing to invest some of their time for productive things. Knowledge is power, awesome initiative! 🙂
5. Is there anything we can do to make your life easier?
Being mature and independent would definitely be number 1. Handling drama is an enormous time sucker for me. It's very important that people respect each other and try to get along. Of course it doesn't mean everyone needs to love everyone else, but when disagreements or frictions occur, it's best to put an end to them and move on. Many people sign up ever day, so you'll never run out of new people to talk to!
6. What is your wish for the future of PPG and the world?
"PPG" and "the world" are two very different things! I wish PPG to stay just as lively in the years to come. I like the size of the community as it has been; big enough to have many different conversations throughout the day, but small enough that it can be taken care of without requiring it to be a full time job (which wouldn't be financially feasible anyway).
As for the world... I will share something that has been on my mind: I made PPG because I loved the idea of people discovering other cultures. It's an alternative form of traveling. Nowadays, many people assume that to reach peak cultural enrichment, we must live in a globalized world where all cultures/languages/religions/traditions/backgrounds/particularities share the same spaces in order to blossom. Well, this is an unfortunate lie. Humans are social creatures that have a strong sense of belonging, they will always adapt and aggregate to larger groups, thus leaving behind parts of what made them who they are. Think about vibrant colors being mixed together. Sure, it's beautiful and interesting the first couple of seconds, but they will inevitably turn into.. a uniform, questionable blob. If you fully appreciate diversity, you need to realize that each culture needs to be preserved separately. This isn't where the world is going. Of course languages and peoples going extinct is part of the history of the world, but I fear this will be accelerating rapidly in the coming decades/centuries. Those who have seen the "Goobacks" episode of South Park will know what I mean. Just something to ponder over! End of my rant. 🙂
I also want to thank you all for making the community what it is. I'm very thankful I could be the hidden middleman behind many relationships. I know many have also met in real life, and some event met their significant other on here. <3
Editado por Etienne .
very interesting !!!
Hello ! Sure thing, here are my answers to your questions:You still do a great job.m7ch people do not see hard work but you do☺️ Keep going like this 💪🥰1. How did PPG start and what was the goal of PPG?
Editado por Daniel-Mulder .
Thank you very much Etienne!! 🙏🙏⭐
I am really happy you take time to give such nice answers!! I like the most what you said under question 6 but I have to read that more times to understand it fully!! 🙂 I am VERY sorry that there were lot of fights in the forum and it is important everybody respects each other!! 🫶
PPG is really awesome and 🆒!! Thank you a lot for everything!! 🙂 🥰
PS: It was so difficult not to tell everybody that you agreed with the interview!! 🙂 But Christine helped me that I had to wait and be patient!! 😛 🥰
Thank you Etienne for this beautiful platform🫶We totally agree with you!😄
Editado por Lawrence11 .
As for the world... I will share something that has been on my mind: I made PPG because I loved the idea of people discovering other cultures. It's an alternative form of traveling. Nowadays, many people assume that to reach peak cultural enrichment, we must live in a globalized world where all cultures/languages/religions/traditions/backgrounds/particularities share the same spaces in order to blossom. Well, this is an unfortunate lie. Humans are social creatures that have a strong sense of belonging, they will always adapt and aggregate to larger groups, thus leaving behind parts of what made them who they are. Think about vibrant colors being mixed together. Sure, it's beautiful and interesting the first couple of seconds, but they will inevitably turn into.. a uniform, questionable blob. If you fully appreciate diversity, you need to realize that each culture needs to be preserved separately. This isn't where the world is going. Of course languages and peoples going extinct is part of the history of the world, but I fear this will be accelerating rapidly in the coming decades/centuries. Those who have seen the "Goobacks" episode of South Park will know what I mean. Just something to ponder over! End of my rant. 🙂I didn't expect much to read this, but I can fully imagine your point here and, in my opinion, the more you see this sens of belonging and explore other places, the more that point takes place in your mind. At least it goes this way for me.
Another question regarding the moderation:
Have you never considered taking another person as a moderator? Either a friend or someone from the website to whom you would get some power to moderate, yet keep the lead as it is/was done on other forums a few years ago?
This was typically the case with some video games forum where the community can sometimes be a little bit too wild; some people could postulate to be moderators and help the community managers there.
7. Is Penpal-Gate still a communication platform on which you personally maintain contacts or has it faded into the background over the years?
Funnily I've always considered PPG as "work" and I've never tried to use the platform for personal reasons. That said, I always talk to anyone who reaches out to me, just like I'll sometimes interact in the forums to keep in touch with people. Fun fact: a long time ago I made a secondary non-admin account to use separately, but I never did. 😃
You still do a great job.m7ch people do not see hard work but you do☺️ Keep going like this 💪🥰
Thank you Daniel, I know it looks like not much changes over time but you'll see new features soon!
I didn't expect much to read this, but I can fully imagine your point here and, in my opinion, the more you see this sens of belonging and explore other places, the more that point takes place in your mind. At least it goes this way for me.
Exactly, I know it may sound controversial to some, but it really isn't meant to be and ultimately should be common sense.
Have you never considered taking another person as a moderator? Either a friend or someone from the website to whom you would get some power to moderate, yet keep the lead as it is/was done on other forums a few years ago?
This was typically the case with some video games forum where the community can sometimes be a little bit too wild; some people could postulate to be moderators and help the community managers there.
Some people were helping with moderation a while back, mostly helping with validating profile pictures (we no longer have specific rules). We also didn't have any anti spam/scam mechanism back then, thankfully many things are fully automated today thanks to basic forms of AI here and there.
I think one of the very nice things of PPG is the forum! It is like a chatroom but everybody writes when they have time and everybody can choose the topic that you like. 🥰📍
And I am very curious about the new features! Maybe that you can give pokes or tickles to friends 😋 or that you can use funny or cute GIFS. 🥳🤩 But anything that you bring new is 🆒!
I really like reading what you write. It makes me think a lot about things!!! 💡💡🙏
You still do a great job.m7ch people do not see hard work but you do☺️ Keep going like this 💪🥰
Thank you Daniel, I know it looks like not much changes over time but you'll see new features soon!
Your welcome. And looks forward what the new features will bring in the future 😁😁
Roseee 🌹 had a nice forum post not long ago about appreciating PPG. 🌸🌸🌼🌼 I think that everybody here should be very happy about what we have and it is Etienne's gift. I wanted to read the interview again about PPG. Maybe other PPG members want to read the interview again too so I bring it again in the feed. ⭐🫶
Interview with @Etienne 27.09.2024
Thank you Etienne that I can interview you again!! Last time it was very nice to do that together with @H_E_A_R_T and people said they liked the interview a lot!! So it is very nice that you make time again for questions. 😊😊 I will ask questions in several Parts and you can always decide if you want to answer or not. 🙏
⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ PART I
1: This question comes from @Pennarossa2024: I would like to know if Etienne has found any friends on penpal gate? I mean someone he met.
I can think of 5 penpals I have met in real life, years ago, but not through PPG. I consider it to be work and it just feels weird to use the service "normally" 😛. I know some people who have, though.
2: What does your wife think about PPG? Is she also a member or does she maybe want to become a member in the future?
She isn't a member, she just thinks it's a cool project but we never talk about it. Same with my mom. Every year or so I'll get a "do you still do that penpal thing of yours? Oh you do? Okay" 😃
3: This question comes from @Roseeeee: How many people approximately get a ban every month? And I would like to ask about the same topic: does it cost you a lot of time?
There are different layers of ban:
a. fraud detection on signup (automatic): ~7%
b. bad reputation (automatic): just a few times a month
c. manual ban: once a month at most.
Most bans are automatic, but I do manually review some cases when the system is unsure (around 15% of the time it reviews a situation). What takes the most time is people reporting other members simply because they disagreed on something stupid. Very few reports are legitimate, which I might need to adjust how it works one day.
4: What is your favourite dish to eat? And if you can only eat from one cuisine a whole year (like for example only Italian or Chinese or French) which would you choose?
Favorite dish is easy: confit de canard pommes sarladaises 😛. If I could only eat one cuisine, I would probably pick French but truthfully I would very much be okay with Italian and Chinese too.
5: Do you play sports? And what kind of sports did you do in the past and what would you like to do as a new sport in the future?
I was a swimmer for 9 years, I did some fencing too. Now I only do mountain biking when it's beautiful outside (which means almost never in France, unless you live in Nice) 😅️. I love hiking, too!