Thanks for sharing this. Adding someone to your circle is the best way to get updates about new posts by member's whose past posts you've enjoyed--so I still encourage you to add to your circle members who interest you, even if they don't follow you back.
That said, I'll discuss your feelings on unreciprocated friendships and better ways to sort, filter, and shed members from your circle.
There's a "favorites" option/list on our circle page that I think should serve this purpose and be the opposite of our fans list; however, while the fans list leaves out friends (where both people added each other to their circle), the favorites list does not. I think that's bad.
Yeah you have to go through each one. I tried to add my good "friends" back when I came back, but they seem to not be "friends " after all.. my bad .. you meet a lot of fakes and hangers on here..:( Well I did find most of them. but it would be nice to be able to do it easier. I don't care to see the activity of people who don't like me.
i hear you though find it hard to believe someone would not add you back. anyway, i think the whole circle bs in general is completely unmanageable. why do i have five hundred friends? not because i am popular, but because i am too lazy to send hours upon hours sorting through them and figuring our who has never so much a liked a comment, or rated up a story of mine. can you image if we had a list and under each circle member was some basic stats, like: number of comments on stories, number of likes, whiteboard posts, etc. and next to each list of people there were check boxes like in email to click on and then just mass delete people you haven't interacted with in any way for months, if ever. imagine, just imagine..