Feedback, please, on suggestions for improving this site

Hi, Admin!

You have written to me several times saying that changes take time, that the technical staff are working on a certain problem, etc.

This message isn't a criticism. As the administrator of 2 web-sites, I KNOW that it's not easy. There are glitches on both those sites that I've been meaning to repair for months... or even years. But I'd like to suggest another 3 improvements that you could be considering for the future:

a) [This is the least important one.] Allow ONE private message to another user who isn't already connected. For example, if I want to tell somebody WHY I want to connect with them, how do I do so unless they accept my connection request? Or again, I recently criticised another user's question format. Not being connected, I had to do so publicly, when I would have preferred to do so privately.

b) Allow searching for comments by named users. I am a big fan of a few on this network, and would like to keep tabs on what they're saying (or doing). If you think that this could lead to stalking, there are a variety of safety measures that could be employed:

1) Allow any user to block any other user.

2) Allow any user to opt out of being searched by ANYBODY.

3) Alternatively, and more protectively, have opting out as the default, i.e. A user would have to click on "I allow other users to search my contributions via my user name."

4) Only allow this search function among users already connected.

b/b) AT LEAST allow each user to search their OWN past contributions (including comments on others' Q&A or shared work) without having to wade through pages and pages of backlog, thinking "Let me see, I THINK that I replied to this one..."

c) It's been some time since I posted a Q&A question myself and I suffer (sometimes REALLY suffer) from an arbitrary memory, so this is really a query:

If somebody replies to a question (or a shared work) that I've posted, do I get an automatic e-mail notification? If not, could this possibility be looked into? I sometimes surf Q&As from MONTHS ago, but fear that if I answer one that really interests me, the original poster will never know, because they never think of opening questions asked months earlier.

I can't remember getting e-mail notifications for comments on my shared work. But this could be due to my haywire memory.

All 3 of these options (including the sub-options of blocking and default settings) are possible on Facebook, so I know that they're technically possible.

Thank you for your consideration.

JHiD

p.s. I will post these suggestions in Q&A, asking for user feedback.