If a club is going to work as a community, then encouraging regulars to become better and more confident performers is a must. This often means bearing with them during the first few months when they only have a few songs and they aren't performing so well. I find it weird to think of a club not encouraging people to broaden their repertoirs and to improve. What few clubs I've expereinced, the 'older hands' will often help out newer people, suggesting material they might want to try, providing chords, giving moral support etc.

That said, we have a running joke about 'practising' - everyone claims not to practise, anyone using 'but I haven't practised it' as an excuse not to do a requested song gets a round of ' so what, this is a folk club', but its all so much hot air, they all blatantly practise now and then. To the uninitiated, it might seem like we favour the whole 'I haven't practised, I do it naturally' approach, its just an excuse to rib each other and to try and raise a chuckle or two.