first friendslist cleanup

[a meta-post, and possibly my most boring post yet... :)]

Until recently, I had never removed anyone from my LJ friends list. Mostly, I only added people I met in person, though there were a small handful of journals of people I talked to a lot online, or that I just really wanted to read because they wrote great posts. I've been using filters to read since long before LJ added "Default View" (which I don't use), so I shuffle people on and off my reading filters to adjust which ones I read regularly, but I like seeing names on bold on userinfo pages to indicate who I know.

Earlier this summer, near the beggining of the roadtrip, I reached 750 friends, LJ's maximum. I was meeting new people on the trip who I wanted to add, but couldn't, so I dropped a few communities I don't read much anyway, and soon I was back to 750. I kept a list of who I wanted to add and when I got home and had time to deal with it, I went through and found old inactive syndications (RSS feeds) and communities and removed them, added everyone I wanted to add... and I was right back at 750.

So this week, I combed through and removed journals from my friendslist, of people who:

• I don't know, or may have met once or twice but never knew well to begin with,
• I've had little or not contact with in the past couple of years,
• and who don't have me friended.

There are actually I few more that meet those criteria who I left on, but now I have room for 12 :)