I would never consider to not register a postcard, having a wishlist doesn’t make someone a cheater according to the rules 
There was one card I didn’t register, but I talked to the staff about it and they said I shouldn’t register it as it was clearly against the rules. Else I register everything, if I like it or not (there were hardly any cards I didn’t like).
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I have something like this in my profile. From the first day on.
Nevertheless there a cards which are wasted on me. These are listed under “Things I don’t like so much”. Which doesn’t mean that I’m not happy about cards like this. I’m simply not over the moon. At least someone made the effort to send me card. And for that I am grateful. I say thank you and move on.
But what I can’t abide are cards with a simple “Jesus loves you!” or cards suggesting me that I needed more God in my life. And even then I say thank you. And move on.
I like churches. From the architectural point of view. Maybe some day.
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Reply: “Yes, he loves me the way I am, for I am okay!”
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Reply: Father Christmas loves you too! (or the Tooth Fairy…)
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It can be disheartening at first when you draw a profile that is more about what the recipient does not want than what they love. I feel conflicted when I meet profiles that instruct me to look at online albums of collections “so I don’t get any repeats” - I simply don’t have time to check these albums which often contain hundreds of images. I would hate to disappoint them, but I don’t have the time to search their collections, and that is not in any way part of the Postcrossing project.
However, I must say that I often receive polite, happy “Hurray” messages from these recipients when my card arrives. In other words, reading someone’s profile is just one aspect of the connection, and there can still be a surprising outcome once that person receives your postcard, whatever you chose to send them. 
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I agree with this. I won’t be able to grasp anything about someone if I only see information about how many kids they have or their wishlist. Usually I end up selecting a generic card or writing purely about the card and stamp I chose.
Writing prompts usually help a little, or if there is a bit more information about the person, I can try to relate to a similar hobby / interest. If there is a wishlist (not one with very specific and hard-to-fulfil requests), then I will try my best to match the postcard I choose to the preferences too.
(I might have digressed a little so I’ll move back to the topic.) I think sometimes some people might not mean it the way it comes out on their profiles. Sometimes, it’s just a slight language barrier that makes it seem like they are demanding something. I have come across these profiles whose preferences I cannot match, but when they received the card, the ‘thank you’ message was a really happy one.
Then again, there are always those who are only in this to accumulate the cards they want, or the stamps they want (then they dispose of the cards). They have no interest in communicating whatsoever. While we can’t change that about them, at least the rest of here can try to make this community a better one by not doing what we dislike others to do.
I constantly change my profile to make it sound friendlier and include a little more information for those who wish to read. 
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If I remeber it right I went with “I’m sexy and I know it” and a link to LMFAO’s song with the same name.
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Youtube shows me Bloodhound Gang’s "The bad Touch"afterwards and I really do not know why!
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Yeah, the music of my youth!
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I absolutely agree. Such profiles make me desperate sometimes. Especially if I don’t have anything that fits in their wishlist. Then I try to be creative and write some interesting message or draw something beautiful.
To me personally, postcrossing is about people not postcards.
On the other hand, to be honest with you, I dream of getting some specific rare postcards but I don’t write it in my profile because I’d like posctrossing to be easy, joyful for everyone. In the end, it’s text that is more important to me.
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After reading so many of these threads, I’ve literally put in my profile something along the lines of ‘here’s some things I like but I’m honestly happy to receive any postcard, so don’t feel stressed in picking one.’ (I don’t make demands in my profile anyway but just wanted to make sure people didn’t feel stressed out about it!)
I was thinking about this earlier and this just kept coming back to me - at the end of the day you can only control what you do, you can’t control what anyone else does. You can control what you write, how you decorate the card, how you write the thank you message - but from the other person it’s out of your control so you just have to let it be.
I’ve had a few postcards now that are just quite bland messages and you can tell they haven’t put a lot of thought into it, whereas I pack quite a lot in on my postcard - but it’s not going to make me change how I do things.
In saying all that, Postcrossing specifically say you’re not allowed to make demands about what you do/don’t want, so they can always be reported. I imagine admins get in contact and explain it to them.
I also wonder maybe how we get more people involved with the forum so they can do direct swaps for the things they really want?!
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The easiest way, I think, would be a blog post on the main page. Maybe people who have meaningful stories to tell about how they’ve interacted with someone else they met through a swap on the forums. But that’s up to the admins on whether or not they want to highlight those stories.
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I agree, except I don’t feel conflicted and I don’t really hate to disappoint them.
Being in Turkey, it’s a lot easier to look at someone’s received cards on the site to avoid duplicates, so I often will, but when I was in the US, the sheer volume of cards people receive from there make it a ridiculous request. And either way I will never look at/search through a gallery on another site for that purpose.
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Yes, the numbers definitely make a difference! I do always look at received cards on their Postcrossing wall, but as you say, searching a gallery on another site is a different matter. That’s not what anyone signed up to.
(It bears repeating in case there are any new Postcrossers reading this - you’re not expected to do this! Just send a postcard.)
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Since people have LOTS of cards from Germany, I actually prefer to go through an external album where it’s sorted by themes. It’s so time-consuming to look through their received cards from Germany. (when I read their profile and decide to send a city view… I only want to go through their received German city views and not all other kinds of cards) 
It is so much faster! So… I love external gallerys! It’s even worse for shops that are used internationally… like a card from postallove… it’s ridicolous to check that on the Postcrossing site when they have received many cards. But well, that’s a different topic. We’re all very different in our preferences 
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To hunt for a specific rare theme is not always easy/possible, but very joyful to me. So if a profile is basic friendly and has some general themes too just in case, I def. do not mind some specific wishes. (how specific are we talking about? )
But, of course, that’s only my mood - others (might) see specific wishes different
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Funny. I just joined and I was very surprised people had sooo many postcards listed they wanted. I even wasnt sure whether to send one to a person who asked for “no more tourist cards, I have doubles” because all I had left were vintage cards of my city! I just want to meet people from different places!
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Honestly, I would rather wishlists were banned completely and we were all forced to write about ourselves instead. But it should have been that from the beginning! Now, if that became a rule overnight, people would just write I’m a dentist from Spain and I collect view cards, cards showing royalty, cards with pigs on, cards with children’s book illustrations on, cards with cars or buses on but I HATE TRAINS AND CATS POSTCARDS!!! Also I like to knit and travel by train with my pet cat.
Therefore I don’t think there is any way to escape wishes. The only way to control them would be to create a new, structured profile format that very clearly framed them as suggestions and limited it to a hundred characters or something similar.
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