I might be missing something, but it seems there is no way to share contacts reciprocally on LinkedIn.

One of my pet peeves on LinkedIn is when people ask to connect with me and then don't actually share their connections. I'm on linked in to share my connections and hopefully vice versa. Often, I'm just curious to see who is connected to who. However, viewing a person's contacts actually gives me a lot of context to their bios and profiles. It's invaluable to get a better understanding of who my contact is- especially when we're not close friends or colleagues. It aids me in building a valuable network of loose connections, which is really why I use LinkedIn.

I don't really understand why someone would use LinkedIn and not want to share connections. If it's just for the address book, there are better alternatives. Since they already had my e-mail to make the connection in the first place, why bother with LinkedIn? I guess I wouldn't mind people adding me to their LinkedIn address book if there was a "share contacts reciprocally" setting. If there is, I can't find one.

Maybe my use and view of LinkedIn is too simplistic?
Do you share contacts? If not why not?