I didn't come up with that one, McGrath, I just have it stashed in my bookmarks. I think originally it was just BS and then the colon was added later to keep the wrong threads from being filtered out... "GiBSon guitars," for instance, would be screened out.

I think one of the reaons people don't always use the BS prefix is because they feel as if it says the content of the topic is BS-- a pejorative word. (I say this based on what some people said in PMs when I asked them about using it) ... and that was when I realized how important is the difference between a verb and a noun. I don't know if you have this connotation in the UK-- a verb, "to bullshit around," meaning to sort of explore and play together. But that's how I see that prefix. It doesn't mean the subject is not worthy... it means the discussion is going to be fairly informal and broad ABOUT a serious topic. Like shooting the breeze. But these two connotations seem to account for the divide over requiring its use and complying with requests to use it.

I had this funny image earlier today of Max trying to implement some of the things some of the "Guest" posters seem to want. In this image, Max was stooped over a huge monitor mounted in the top of his desk, poring over about a dozen open windows, each one containing an open thread. Pore fella was all bent from the hours and hours in the chair every day... (potty seat in the chair of course)..... people were dropping by with food cuz he was wasting away..... crazed eyes.... He wasn't combing the music threads looking for BADDDDD BS to delete though.... Nope, he was scouring the BS threads making sure they didn't contain any music, because if they did how could he delete them?

That's the "curse" of the current Mudcat system-- that music stuff just WILL not stay out of even the silliest discussions! *G* Cuz... those dang musicians just WON'T be controlled!

Then there was the idea that a moderator would pre-authorize posts before they'd be hung up to dry..... Oh yeah, I know about that kind of forum, I had one for awhile that you could set up that way. But, um, here, how many hits a day are there here and how many moderators would it take to do that, and how would you get them to agree on how to apply the rule to musicians?????

~Susan