Is this even a dating site?

^That's why I (and many others) treat it like exactly that. Still wish we had a better system to dig up and weed out the creepers though (ya know, the non-fun Minecraft kind). Gives everyone else who's legit a bad rep ya know and I think it scares a lot of cool people off on both sides (as you've mentioned).

Just depends on how you see it and utilize it. It may seem more of a social network but this gives you an opportunity to interact and perhaps form mutual feelings of the sort with each other. You can't just go onto any dating site and expect to have a BF/GF ASAP. The threads here allows you to express your personality traits and if someone is interested in knowing you, they would add you.