Lizzie, I would agree the BBC boards have terrible troubles with mods (usualy every inconsistant and at times illogical and plain wrong application of the house rules) and that the house rules are too rigid and they can make some discussions on folk music impossibe.

I however see nothing wrong in some segragation and desire to keep boards reasonably on topic. I believe this is far more important at the BBC than most Internet forums simply because of thier volume of traffic and the number of specaiist areas they try to cater for.

Dave Hanson has given his view above, comparing the BBC to Mudcat but I don't think that comparison takes all factors into account. Although, personally I do perfer increased breakdown of categories into logical areas, Mudcat is small enough to cater for all its discussion into 2 areas without to many problems but I don't believe it would be workable on the BBC site which under it's current structure I believe has hundreds of areas each with it's own followers whether it be football, cricket, various forms of music, individual tv and radio programs, local interest disucssion for each county, etc.

To drift breiefly into censorship and Dave's comments, Mudcat is not going to make the national headlines or get sued for posts in their forums, etc. Applied badly, or otherwise, I can see needs to be tighter than here.

If there is abosolute refusal to allow any OT comments at all in some of the BBC boards, it is something I would probably disagree with but I can't say I've experienced problems with the occasional aside in any of their boards I have used or have I reference to non-folk, eg rock, music in the BBC folk and accoustic board.

Where I would be more likely to agree is if a board is getting bombarded with OT stuff. I haven't looked through the example given towards the top of the thread but I know your posting history in F&A well Lizie.

Apart from getting banned and having duplicate membership identities, it has included several repeated rants and or/crusades in the F & A, perpetual SOH promotion etc. My initail reaction knowing that is perhaps you have just been pissing people off again.