Thanks for that Max - I nearly used the schoolyard metaphor myself then decided not to, because actually Mudcat can be rather like a schoolyard sometimes - and maybe that's not such a good thing. Maybe you guys have a different view of folk music in the States to us over here. Your folk is all nicely bedded in with your other similar genres, and traffic flows both ways without problems. We don't have that luxury in the UK - specially in England. We're at something of a crisis point here - fighting a rear-guard action for our music against media indifference, government meddling, demographic inevitability and a host of other challenges. The flow of nutrients from the roots of our own indigenous music was holed below the soil forty years ago (partly because of US imports it has to be said), we've had a battering since, and now we're going through another rocky patch - specially with the folk club movement. The rough-housing that sometimes goes on on this website does nothing to help those of us who are desperately trying to 'market' folk music outside of our little clique. This is all the more tragic because Mudcat could be massively useful if you/we could point it in the right direction and make it more inclusive. I know you guys think we eat our babies over here - but that's just a dozen people giving the rest of us a bad name. But you seem happy to let that situation persist in the interests of natural self-governance. Well it's a fine ideal, but i for one don't think it's working - not from where I'm standing anyway. I don't expect you to understand because you've no experience of how things are over here, so why should you be interested? But you have made this thing, and it IS over here, and it IS having an influence. Mudcat is routinely derided on other more 'serious' forums, which is a real tragedy in my opinion, because what you have here has real potential to make a difference - as well as earn you a modest living too.

Sorry if that seems insulting - I have great respect for what you've made, and wish you all the very best with it.

Tom