I'd say that people respond about half the time, giving thanks for responses to lyrics requests. I figure that the rest of the time, they got lost. I think it's important to remember that our purpose is to provide lyrics to the folk community, not merely to individual requestors who happen to ask for them.

And in responding, it's a good idea to heed the guidelines given in the FAQ (click). if you are responding to a request for lyrics, first search Mudcat and see if we already have the lyrics posted. If we do, provide a link to the location of the lyrics at Mudcat. If the lyrics are NOT at Mudcat, post them in the request thread, along wiht information about where you got the lyrics (the URL of a Website, if you got the lyrics on the Internet). Do not merely post a link for lyrics we don't have - links often go dead within a very short time. The exception is when the lyrics are to a recent pop song that no self-respecting folkie would have any interest in.

I think it's also important for us to provide good lyrics when we post them - lyrics that are researched and documented, so we get the best lyrics available. Speedy responses shouldn't be our goal - we should seek to provide information that is truly worthwhile, something that is a contribution to folk music knowledge. Sloppy lyrics posts are often worse than no response at at. We shouldn't place all the burden for folk music knowledge on Malcolm and Masato - this is something that we all can do - but it takes a little time and a little care.

The general principle is this: We're here to collect lyrics, not just to answer requests. Requests are just an excuse to goad us to finding lyrics.

-Joe Offer-


Oh, one other thing - oftentimes, I see Mudcatters link to http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/ (Yet Another Digital Tradition) to answer lyrics requests. Please don't do that - that site is just a mirror of our own Digital Tradition Folk Song Database. An exception would be if somebody wants pennywhistle notation or a gif of the tune or other sniff.numachi variations of our MIDI files.