Disclaimer: vldPersonals is the best dating software I ever use and those criticism you may read in my post has it's place only to make vldPersonals even better. (version 2.5.3)
 

"User-friendly" - designed to be easy for an untrained user to use; especially (for a computer system) having a uniform look and feel and standard widgets (from Wikipedia)

Remember your first time you tried demo at vldPersonals website. You were excited, you were confused and a lot of things, a lot of features were a bit complicated for understanding. Some of you need 1 day, someone 1 week to get full understanding of website structure, navigation etc. Now you probably think there is nothing easier to understand than vldPersonals but you are mistaken.
Do your users have whole day, week for learning and getting used to website's navigation? If you made a dating or social networking website for geeks, programmers, system administrators this post isn't for you because your users would feel themselves comfortable even with spaceship control user interface :)
 
To speak ad rem, what is the main goal of your website? To make people communicate and find their matches.
What is your main task? To make people feel comfortable being at your site, browsing pages etc.
What are the enemies of feeling comfortable at your site? Negative emotions!
I'll try to show you all resulting in negative user reaction situations at regular vldPersonals website. I hope you'll add more in your comments. Today's subject is "Comments handling".
 
Guestbook comments
When regular member opens his 'My profile' page what he see? Last guestbook entries. Ok, he wants to delete some of them, some of them comment (answer to user comments). User has to visit his Guestbook menu section to be able to delete comments. User has to visit his public page as if he visits someone else's page. How? Either go and find himself via Search or directly typing in browser's address bar youwebsite.com/johndoe
Is it good from point of usability? No.
Can it result in slight negative emotions? Yes, probably.
Suggested solution:
1. To make users to be able delete guestbook entries from 'My profile' comments without going to Guestbook.
2. To make users to be able post comments to own guestbook from 'My profile' (My page) or from account/guestbook by enabling "Add comment" textarea input field.
 
Blog, pictures, videos comments
You get email notification: "User has posted comment to your blog (picture, video etc.)! To visit page click this link". You clicked the link and there are some comments:
"Wow! Cool post, good one!"
"I don't think you are right talking about it that way"
"I like second part of your post!"
Oops. What post? What I was talking about? I don't remember my position on that subject cause I wrote this post 2 months ago. I want to glance at my post every time I have doubts or questions regarding my own posts reading user comments. What I have to do? I need to click Edit entry tab holding shift or ctrl to open it in new browser tab or window and switch from comments to blog entry editing page and vice versa.
Or sometimes they say:
"You look nice. Great picture!"
"Nice t-shirt. Funny label"
The same here. What picture? You need to click Edit picture (but you don't want edit it!) to see the picture. Ok, you decided to reply to users comments for blog entry or pictures or video. Again you need to find yourself on a site and post comment to your public blogs, pictures page.
Disturbing? Yes.
Could be better? YES!
Possible solution: Give users ability to see comments in their context. The way as regular members see each other's blog entries, pictures, videos with comments below. We must give our users ability to see commented content above our comments. We must give our users ability comment their own content right from the place without opening separate public pages.
Guess what is happening after you posted comment to your own content? You get email notification that somebody has posted comment at your Guestbook, Blog entry, Picture or Video. It's better not to send notifications in this case...