I think the prefix plan meets some of the concerns people have stated, but not all.

One unmet concern is the preference many longstanding members of this community have stated in civil terms-- that there be some restraint about the raunch level.

Also, it has been a tradition at Mudcat-- and sometimes policies have reflected this-- that universal access is desirable when operationally possible. Thus we have thread title length limits partly so that WebTV users can read them.... we have a Help Forum that rightly helps people no matter WHAT browser, people prefer to use. We have Guest access for people who can't cookie from work. We help newbies find their way around, including people new to computers. And so forth.

One of the people who has had concerns about lack of access to the forum on a regular basis, due to workplace content filters, happens to be someone who finds and posts a HUGE number of missing tunes as MIDIs. He doesn't Mudcat from work because he doesn't care to pay for a computer. I believe he has indicated in the past that the online access he has from the rural area where he lives is spotty on home connections-- it's just much better to access Mudcat from his workplace. Would he be able to get to the main forum page even to set the filter??? Would this apply to others?

Neither of these concerns have to be met by censoring anything. They can be met with strictly practical approaches that should not cause concerns about PC or censorship.

If a few dashes are used in a thread title, people will have no trouble reading the actual intended song title if they pause long enough to let the mind reveal it-- this has been shown in a number of BS threads in the last year, where the concepts underlying our minds' ability to do this was laid out and a lot of posts were made based on it. So the concern that people would miss the title is, fortunately, baseless.

For facilitating clarity in case the reader CAN'T make out the intended title-- the SUBJECT LINE of every post can be changed by the person posting. Chaqnging the subject line at the time the thread is created would result in a fully searchable, as-intended title popping up in Supersearch. There would not be a need for anyone to do anything complicated. It could just be a policy that makes it possible and minimally offensive to post ANY material people might not handle well. It would obviate the need to create the next "logical" filter/thread prefix, such as "NonPC." Or "Religion." Or all the hot buttons people list when we get a hair across our ass. :~)

People have widely misunderstood and mischaracterized my effort to resolve a past situation when I titled a thread, "Run, ======, Run." There are MANY songs titled "Run [insert word of choice], Run," and the thread was meant to serve as a place where those variants could come together. My having done that has been touted whenever someone has wanted a pungent example of the wrongness of censoring-- I don't understand this, myself, but I guess soapboxing is easier when one has an effigy to beat.

I'd like to request now, in respect for those whose primary reaction remains that I had "censored" the word "Nigger" which is one of the variants posted in complete, non-PC clarity in that thread and its predecessor, that the SUBJECT LINE of that thread's opening post be changed to "Run, Nigger, Run and variants."

This is an approach we could all follow voluntarily. Or perhaps a consensus might develop that it should become official policy aided in operation by the clones when people forget to follow it as they start a new thread.

On the downside, this would tend to let most of the hot air out of all the censorship ranting people seem to enjoy so much these days. :~) I'm for simplicity, though, and it is quite a simple solution.

~Susan