I'm not saying you shouldn't have started the 'Bellowhead' thread, Will. On the whole, I think there were many interesting posts there. BUT, I think you should have realized that your initial post was likely to invite some contentiousness, and you were mistaken if you expected your post to be responded to with Sweetness and Light.

There are times when Mudcat embarrasses me. Even my wife says that I am a Really Nice Person, and I don't like being identified with all this Mudcat nastiness. If I had my druthers, I'd stay in the song threads, which are rarely combative.

I suppose I should confess that I have my own personal agenda in the way I work as a moderator at Mudcat, and it's an agenda that Max and the other moderators may not agree with. I'm a pacifist, and I've been a pacifist since I was a teenager. I do not believe in combat, and I do not believe in violence or aggressive conduct - even if the motivation for the combat or violence is righteous. I remember endlessly saying to my children, "I don't care who's right or who started the fight, I just want the fighting to stop!" I find myself saying the same thing here at Mudcat, over and over again. That can be a problem with pacifists - they try to solve conflicts by lecturing, and lecturing often doesn't work very well. Still, pacifists have a certain compulsion to lecture. In my better moments, I try to use humor and gentle persuasion to resolve conflicts - and sometimes, it actually works. Other times, I give in to the temptation to call somebody a motherfuckingasshole - and sometimes, that actually works, too. And sometimes not. But when I have the opportunity, I do my best to use pacifist, nonviolent, nonprovocative, nonagressive, noninterventionist methods to settle things down here. With mixed results.


So, yeah, I suppose you can call Mudcat contentious and all those other nasty words. On the other hand, you could call Mudcat "lively" and "refreshingly scrappy" - two different ways of looking at the same thing.

People complain that Mudcat moderation is "inconsistent," but we're actually not. Our underlying principles are freedom of speech, tempered by limited moderation. We eschew rules, and enforce the few rules we have only when we need to. Our moderation is practical, rather than legalistic. If you expect Mudcat to have a fixed set of rules that are rigidly enforced, then we're going to disappoint you. We generally let anything go by unless it's likely to result in warfare - and we even let the warfare get by, to a point.

Our general rule is that we don't allow threads that discuss Mudcat moderation, because there are many times that we cannot defend ourselves without revealing information that it's not wise for us to reveal. We much prefer to discuss Mudcat editing in private communication, where we can be more frank. This thread has a lot to do with Mudcat moderation, and I would be within my rights to shut it down. But it's a worthwhile discussion, so I'll let it go until it gets contentious.

-Joe-