I think it's an excellent idea - it isn't just a question of finding archive clips of people like Woody Guthrie or Elizabeth Cotton, (both there), or Fred Jordan (not there so far). Fascinating stuff can turn up under tags where you wouldn't necessarily expect to find them.

For example I've found a fascinating set of clips about folk music in a small Portuguese town called Montargil - the tags for them are words like "folclore" and "montargil" 2006. Even if I'd looked for "folklore" I wouldn't have found the clips.The only way I found it was by chance, because I put "concertinas" in the search engine, and it happened to lead me to a clip of the town band (without a concertina in sight, but several accordions).

Here are some links to show you what I am on about - here and here and here. And for a bit of contrast - here. (What's the song here by the way, and who's singing it?)

The point is, we are all likely to find something good from time to time we'd like to share with others, and some way of making these finds more accessible over time would be really helpful.

What I'd think is likely to happen is that as the YouTube archive gets bigger, people on the Mudcat are increasingly likely to link to clips in the course of discussions on threads, maybe as as illustrations of something they are talking about. Some way is needed of accessing good stuff that turns up, once the thread in which they cropped up has fallen away.

A permathread is perhaps a good way. There might be other, even better, ways which could emerge if we put our thinking caps on. Maybe the Mudcat search engine could be tweaked in a way that would help.

The thing is, YouTube (and proabaly other similar sites) are changing things, and we can use them to make life on the Mudcat even more interesting.