Hi Alice,

Your recollections of the young (but hardly what I would call naive) Mudcat are much the same as mine, it seems.

One of the ways one keeps discussion forums on-topic is by pointing out posts which are off-topic. Self-policing like that has to happen in any public forum to keep it free from becoming what Mudcat has become today, which is much less about music than it was in 97/98.

Now, the folks who post most often here seem to clearly prefer things the way they are now, to the way they were then. Which tells me they come here to be with a community of musicians and music lovers, not to discuss music per se. The music discussions get more and more marginalized with time, it seems to me. And yes, I'd have to agree the History of Irish Music thread is an example of what happens when some folks try and seriously discuss the music. The wise-crackers and malcontents seem to come out of the woodwork and get very aggressive.