Late to this particular party. Will, are you staying then?

Just a couple of words in agreement. There are two things I really hate about Mudcat, one of which I could avoid if I had any sense. I've got a bad habit of engaging in discussions that I know aren't going to turn out well, and trying to be civil to people who I know from experience are going to wind me up. (It's a bad habit, rather than just me being naive, because the inevitable result is that I get wound up and add to the general excess of heat over light. Also it's a waste of time.)

So one of the things I hate about Mudcat is the realisation that I've fallen for a wind-up merchant - again - and the red mist is descending. Sometimes I can get something worthwhile out of it - by writing a long and impassioned post about musical tradition or about performing standards or (more often) about how people should and shouldn't post on Mudcat - but there's always a temptation to sneer and call names, i.e. to descend to the wind-up merchant's own level. Hate it when that happens.

But my number 1 Mudcat Pet Hate - what drives me from 0 to fury in 10 seconds flat - is comments that slag off Mudcatters in general, sometimes quite nastily, without actually descending to specifics: that select little band of self-delusional, smug bile-merchants and their self-congratulatory circle-jerk of the mediocre. As well as being vicious - really excessively, self-indulgently vicious - this type of criticism is unanswerable, making it grossly unfair (I mean, who? what? where?). And when it's made (as that comment was) by someone with actual authority in part of the folkie real world, it leaves a really bad taste.