Hi, Ragdall-
We split off the BS section maybe three or four years ago. The way Mudcat is set up, the threads with the most recent posts go to the top of the Forum Menu page, and the non-music thread seemed to be pushing the music threads into obscurity. Since we're a music forum, we wanted visitors to see our music stuff first, not the insider chit-chat that might not be of interest to them. We thought of starting a separate forum for non-music stuff, but Jeff came up with the idea of dividing music and non-music - putting music up on the top.

Right now, we don't have a way of excluding non-members only from the BS section - we're working on that and some other ideas.

My experience is that very few Mudcatters go anonymous to "troll" - my guess is that fewer than five do that on a regular basis. Most of our anonymously nasty Guests have been consistently anonymous - and most NEVER have a thing to say about music. We really want to make it easy for non-members to post on the music threads, so we're taking our time figuring out a solution. On the other hand, we have to do something to limit nonmember posting, since we're being flooded with Spam and general nastiness.

-Joe Offer-