Explaining the process of finding others

This is an explanation of how it is envisaged to manage who is a possible candidate for their enquiry, and how to contact them.

This is what happens in outline.

1. Other users start off as unknown.
2. When the enquirer has 1 to 9 results from an enquiry, displayed on the Show results page, the enquirer chooses whether to put them on the list of Candidates for this enquiry, or to ignore them and go back to Forming enquiry.
3. The list of candidates for any enquiry also includes the others who appear because they are requesting contact with you. No textual information or personal or contact details are shown at this stage, only the questions and answers.
4. The Candidates page allows the enquirer to remove the other from the list, or to examine them in more detail on the Candidate page. Here, again, a candidate can be dismissed, or contact may be requested.
5. On the Candidate page, if the other chooser has already requested contact, that can be accepted, and the candidate moves to being a contact.
6. When contact is requested by the enquirer, the other chooser is informed, and if they agree, contact is possible. The parties are then known as “connected”. Contact information is shared, along with a range of other textual information, such as a description of what they were looking for, and reasons for any changes in answers.
7. If anything does not feel right about a contact, either chooser may ask to break contact. This disables any further contact or correspondence with the other chooser, except for the possibility of a final note.

In line with the principle that no chooser-entered text or user details are visible until each chooser has agreed to proceed, when the first indication is given that there is a fit between the chooser's enquiry and another's, the other chooser's name is not given, but instead just an opaque identifier — possibly just a serial number. When a fit is found, both parties are notified, and can look at the essential information about the fit.

Each person can see what the other person was asking, and how they have answered the required questions of the other. Either chooser can invite contact, which the other person can accept or refuse. At the moment when they both have accepted, a range of details are made visible, so that both sides can follow up.

In RegenCHOICE, another chooser is called a candidate if there is a fit between the two enquiries but contact has not yet been mutually agreed, and a contact if contact has been mutually agreed.

If all goes well, contact details are exchanged. RegenCHOICE has finished its work, and may hand off to another system. However, it is important to allow for feedback to monitor how truthful people have been, and also perhaps how fruitful the contact is, whether they fulfill the expressed need. The details may be quite complex, but in essence, the system needs to allow people to report abuse of any kind, either misrepresentation on RegenCHOICE itself, as shown in behaviour, or behaviour that is generally unacceptable, or should be reported, or which means that the other chooser should be banned from the whole system, or even reported to authorities if there has been illegal activity.

This may also mean that a chooser wishes to break off contact, so that the other chooser cannot use the system to find out anything else about them, and this user will no longer appear as a candidate. On the other hand, it is vital not to let people abuse someone else and then simply disappear without trace, so that they cannot be called to account.