In practice not every message we receive is a direct reply to a request
that went out.

We receive messages as replies to our welcome message, for example.

if contributor has not received a request simply save the message
without one

This section if for displaying latest messages to specific requests. It
displays the request title as a link. We could display some truncated
text of the message with no request, but then we'd need to account for
messages with a blank text, like an image only message.

I think the section heading is clear that these are the most recent
replies to a specific request