Since I believe it is important to reinforce the genuinely positive, rather than the merely popular prevailing view, I wanted to congratulate the few Mudcat members who have recently spoken out against the Mudcat Membership Mafia, who really are the problem here at Mudcat.

People really do need to get clear on this--the major problems with the forum aren't being caused by the occassional guest troll, for they are present everywhere in cyberspace. Rather, there is a handful of members who, with the tacit support of the Joe Clones, Joe Offer, and Max, are responsible for the pretty serious degradation of this forum, particularly in the last year or so.

They are the folks here who are playing the flame warrior game. Anyone with any experience on the Internet a forum that has been "taken over" by these types of people, knows that is just what we are seeing happen here at Mudcat. They haven't won the day yet, because many fine folks are doing their best to keep to the high road by not playing the infantile troll/flame games we see in BS threads all the time, and increasingly (in my view) music threads.

The main tactic the Mudcat Mafia uses to dominate the forum is the member/guest thing. It is the simplistic member=good, guest=bad thing which has become much more of a problem than the stolen "Mudcat regular" identity problem ever was. Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't have been appalled if someone did such a thing to me. But I will say this: the response by Max (ie the instituting the member/guest log-in) has clearly caused many more problems than it solved.

The member/guest log-in created the opportunity for the flame warriors to create an "us vs them" dichotomy, which they continue to use to manipulate the more mature and responsible membership. Frankly, I've been pretty surprised by some of the Mudcat members who have fallen into this trap over time. I thought they were much too intelligent for that, but some of them have repeatedly proven me wrong.

But that wasn't my reason for posting. My reason for posting was for saying "good on ya" to those who are beginning to come around, and see the forest for the trees. But I would make this suggestion, by posing a question:

Do you really think post a PM to Mudcat members when they flame and troll, will solve the problem? Or does the nature of community policing, if it is going to work, require that we publicly admonish the offenders when they do it?