Hello all,
I am developing a db-backed website and am trying to implement a friends list (i.e., users can have other users as friends). I'm trying to decide whether the entity relationship should be one-to-many recursive or many-to-many recursive. Can anyone give me some guidance? (It's been years since I took my last database course).

If I were to add you to my friends list, would that automatically add me to your friends list?

if it were one-to-many recursive, that would imply that tom could have dick and harry as friends, but both dick and harry could only have tom as a friend

somehow, i don't think that's gonna cut it

You haven't met Dick and Harry. Tom is the only person who can stand them.

i think dude is imagining something like

table1
PersonID PK,
Name

table2
MyPersonID FK,
MyFriendsPersonID FK

With both PersonIds in table 2 FKing back to PK personid.

Personally I hate social networking sites. My true friends can ever be "deleted" and I think the word friend has been devalued by those who think you can.

That's why on dbforums we have buddy lists - there's a clear distinction

To assuage everyone's fear, I'm not creating YASS (Yet Another Social Site). Hopefully that makes my intentions seem less nefarious.

Are you creating an Anti-Social site? That sounds even more nefarious.