Personally, I have a system when it comes to online dating. As a female in an online dating world it's pretty normal to be flooded with messages. Because I have neither the time nor the interest to sift through a bunch of messages I do a swift look through. If it's "Hi,""Hey," or automatically about sex it's immediately out. If it's less than four sentences I usually won't reply. If those four sentences are incredibly generic and mention nothing specific about what's in my profile/sound like they've been sent to ten other women that day, I don't reply. If we pick up a conversation but they can't get it past a superficial level within several messages, I don't keep the conversation going.

This weeds out a surprising number of generic or "fishing" messages from those people I might be genuinely interested in and attracted to. The best conversations I've found come from people who read your profile, find something interesting about it, and are willing to pick up a good conversation from there. This system may seem harsh, and possibly is, but it's what works for me. AFter all, I'm there to find a really good connection, and want to expedite that as much as possible. So by keeping my goal in mind with every message I read, I'm generally able to keep it down to a manageable number of people I want to keep conversations going with.

I would also suggest really taking your time to get to know these guys before getting into anything serious with one of them, if you're just wanting to meet people. Let them know you aren't looking to pin anything serious down just yet; you're just wanting to get to know people, with no expectations attached. Being upfront about your goals and desires with people is both the polite thing to do and respectful to both of you guys' time and energy. I've met some people from dating sites who turned out to just be great friends this way.

I hope this helps. If there are any other questions you have feel free to ask me.