I wish there was a Mudcat time-travel button - you'd click on a date, and up world come the threads as of that date.

There may have been some golden age before I started coming here, but I've got a certain scepticism about it, because I keep on coming on people talking in those terms about times when I have been visiting, and it doesn't fit with my memories.

Mostly I think it's a cyclical thing, maybe it ties in with the phases of the moon or something. But there are times when the whole place seems to be full of wrangling about everything under the sun except music and then you turn around, and it's all music, and you find yourself looking for a thread with a bit of a debate going on, and there don't seem to be any. And then you turn around and it's the other way.

And I'm perfectly confidant that, assuming it's still here in a few years, there'll be people saying how it's all shot to hell. "Why don't we ever see threads like the one about the hunt for The World is Old tonight"

The Mudcat is far better than we've any reason to expect it to be, and it needs all the bits and pieces, including even some of the bits that get up peoples noses. Even the pain-in-the-arse characters who waltz in with their GUEST-look-at-me acts and try to throw their weight around as to how the Mudcat ought to be, do maybe have a certain value. It's so great when they sod off. They are the equivalent of the occasional Mudcat crashes, like the one that set this thread going. Irritating, but they bring it home what a good "place" this is.