You don't have to intend to exclude people in order to exclude them in practice. That obviously true.

But just because you feel excluded doesn't mean you are being excluded. It might be just the way you are feeling, and the way you interact with other people.

If you post stuff, and nobody seems to respond to what you post, that doesn't mean there's a conspiracy of people who are turning their back. Most of what we all post gets no direct response.

Some people here seem to generate a sense of being someone you've almost met, and that's down to a lot of things - what they actually post over a variety of topics, how they respond to other people, how other people respond to them.

If you get interested by a post someone makes, you can click on their name, and up comes a list of all te stuff they've posted before, with links to the posts - so it's easy to get a sense of wherre they are at, if you want. Then, when they have a picture in the Mudcat resources, that makes it a little bit easier to get the sense that there is a real person at the other end.

And the thing is, none of things are in any way exclusive. You don't even have to register as a member totake an active and welcomed role here (though it's clearly a good idea to do so, if you can). You don't have to come from any part of the world. Race, class, politics - no restrictions exist. You don't even have to share the same language - there's that little "translate" button next to every post.

If the Mudcat is a clique is a most remarkable variety of clique - it is an Open Clique. The only requirement in coming here is that you want to come here, and the only requirement for staying here is that you want to stay here. (In this way being different from pretty well any other gathering of people - schools, workplaces, churches, even folk clubs. Noone ever gets dragged here and held here because they've got a friend or partner who wants to be here.)