I usually go by what mutual friends we have, and it seems to work fine. Some of them are folkie friends, and if I think they might be Mudcatters or someone I know, I'll send them a message with the request. I sent some FRs to people in the Mudcat group on Facebook a few years ago, asking them who they are on Mudcat, and most accepted. One rejected my request rather brutally I thought, saying she only friends people she has actually met. There was something about the way she said it that made me think that if I do ever meet her - which is a real possibility now that I'm in the UK - it will be hard not to react to her in a negative way. So far I haven't met her.

One VERY successful friend request that I sent to a Mudcatter in 2007 resulted in my life being completely changed! It was Rob, who is now my husband, and we both moved countries and are now living in Somerset! So I would have to say that I err on the side of accepting friend requests rather than rejecting them, because you can tweak your privacy settings, and you can always unfriend them or hide them if they become a nuisance, and you never know what might come of the new connection!

I also have a lot of Facebook friends because of games, and some of them have also turned out to be really nice people to get to know - some of them are even folkies who are not Mudcatters.

I have to say my positive experiences with Facebook far outweigh the negative ones. As long as you are a bit sensible, there don't seem to be many problems.