Having been in a similar situation to what Mike's talking about, I'll make one posting and then butt out.

Mike started off with blaming Bill for the problems. Bill invited folks, but I'm sure his focus was on music. He can't be held responsible for what folks do when they get there - they are responsible, but attacking all of them is not going to solve any problems.

This whole discussion became not about the session and what went wrong, but about personalities.

People who talk loudly can't hear anything but themselves. They don't notice what's going on around them. This is just a fact - at least I believe so. A friendly "would you mind keeping your voice down" may have worked a lot better than not saying anything at the time only to lash out at the lot of them in public, on the internet.

Folks who are arguing about this, well, if you want to take sides and argue, it's your prerogative. If you want to communicate, you have to listen for the bits of information contained in the angry words. Folks are focussing on the anger instead of the reason for it.

Back to me. The conversation sometimes gets so loud in our session that some singers can't sing and some instruments can't be heard, and he who is loudest wins. It becomes a fight for the dominance of sound, not a session. Once volume (whether from talkers or from accordion players) becomes the most important quality of the music, many musicians who don't particularly care for volume will quit playing. We have had sessions end early because of noise. If this were to escalate and continue every week, I think the session would eventually die.

In short, the simple answer is to ask people to keep it down or hold conversations elsewhere, and for the talkers to realise they really do interfere with people's enjoyment of the music and agree to limit the noise.

(And I'm now running off to hide before both sides of this issue aim flamethrowers at me.)