[aashay]

While your point is valid, I'm left wondering if too much openness becomes a problem. When I was single, I made an OkCupid profile and decided to, for better or worse, be as open and honest as possible (a principle I adhere to in meat space as well). I had over 1200 questions (this is a lot) answered and never tried to make myself seem like something I wasn't.

I figured I was doing everything right, and I was optimistic (a good handful of my friends had great success on OkC), but I barely got any dates, and the ones that I did ended up being duds. I did this for maybe 8 months.

Contrast that to the couple of months I signed up for a paid match.com account (pro tip: paying for a service and looking for someone else who has paid for a service shows a mutual seriousness about the service; OkC's barrier to entry is practically zero so many people don't end up taking it seriously) and here I am with a going-on-three-years-now happy relationship. Match barely has any information to fill out and it makes me wonder if that ends up being a more successful model, as it pushes much of the "screening" process to meat space, where it's a lot easier to discern people's idiosyncrasies.

Of course, being open once you're offline is absolutely key. I'm just not sure how well it works for the first online impression.

Edit: I don't mean to attribute my relationship success to my choice of service, that was pure luck. I just wanted to point out that it'd be interesting to see more data about openness' influence on dating site success rates.

[safrolic]

I'd firmly advice against being open about your personal information on the internet, especially on a dating site.

I understand every big internet corporation is pushing the idea that privacy is dead and that you ought to put every thing about you online for every one to see. But what made the internet great is its pseudonymous nature.

Don't lie on your profile, but don't put up identifying personal info either.

[NoahTheDuke]

You mean, like a picture?