I've been realizing that there are a few peculiarities about the site that are worth knowing about.
Probably the main one is the feature that sends automated messages to people whose profile you view. Though at first it seems like a nice idea, I've come to feel that it doesn't really serve much of a useful purpose, and contributes to inbox spam - I get a lot of them and I don't flatter myself that my profile is particularly active. For people who only check back here every now and then it most likely makes it easy to miss any genuine messages they may have received in amongst the huge number of these icebreakers. I've turned the feature off for myself, but I believe it's on by default so it's always likely to be active for the majority.
Combined with the fact that the Activity History feature doesn't go back very far, I think there's a high risk that people who aren't on the site frequently will miss messages. So I wanted to emphasize the comment in my profile: I will never send a friend request without also sending a detailed message. If you do see a request from me, and you have any interest after viewing my profile, then if you look back in your inbox you should find my message. If you can't find it, or don't want to trawl back through hundreds of messages, just accept the request and I'll be back in touch.
There is one thing that has me puzzled, and if anyone can explain I'd love to know: I have a few times been notified in the Activity History list that somebody would like to be added to my friends list. But when I check I've not received a friend request from them, so I'm stumped as to what this means. Any thoughts?
