Vaniver comments on Rational approach to finding life partners - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think of it more as a Type 1 versus Type 2 error tradeoff; there's a point at which you are excluding too many people, true, but I'd treat it less a function of raw dates, and more a function of the number of obviously unacceptable dates you have. You can relax exclusion criteria if you're not getting enough dates, but if in relaxing it, the number of unacceptable people rises without a commensurate rise in acceptable people, you went too far.
(The criteria will differ wildly according to the population you're searching. The style of profile I had living in the Northeast was -much- more exclusionary than the style of profile I used in the Midwest or South, both because the pool of potential people was much larger, and the percentage of them I would consider dating was much smaller.)
I agree that this is a big issue. My point there is more that you need to look at that curve, figure out your tangent line, figure out your value tangent line, and then move so that the two are identical, and this requires both advice on what to do if you are going on too many dates and advice on what to do if you are going on too few dates.
The secondary issue is that presenting as exclusionary typically is discussed in terms of relative turn-offs; if it turns off 5% of the people you would want to date and 50% of the people you wouldn't want to date, your pool's average has increased. (Ideally, someone decreases the turn-off chance in people you'd like to date and increases it in people you wouldn't like to date, but I think people are overly sanguine about what strategies have that effect.)
<snort> ...dating advice on LW ... even mentions looking at curves ...</snort>
:-D