Ah, the Paddy O'Brien thread. I was going to stay above the fray here, but...

The guest's thread banter in that thread is a good illustration of why Mudcat has problems with anon guests. The guest is clearly knowledgeable about the music, and engages in thread banter in a "slagging" sort of style you would hear in any pub or house sessions in Ireland or the UK--and also is typical of the on-line banter style seen in uk.music.folk, for instance.

Guest seems to have a low tolerance for the eejits, and the eejits seem to be very thin skinned. I mean, c'mon people...go to google & type in the words "Liz Carroll" as I just did, and you'll see that the query about Liz Carroll was a bogus one, and the response to it by guest was well met. It is obvious the person requesting the information hadn't bothered to look before asking. So they got the response they deserved, eh?

It seems to me that a lot of the problems with Mudcat is too many thin-skinned primadonnas, believing that no one on the internet should be able to get away with making them look the fools they are, and then getting vehement when they are caught out.

I can't believe someone would associate the guest in that thread with trolling or flaming. But it does speak volumes that people here think it is. Because then you DO have the problems which are endemic here--someone called me a fat arse, so I'm runnin' home to tell me mum, Max. Or starting a new thread to taunt the person who was mean to me. It is all so childish. This is the internet. If members haven't learned the cardinal rule of always wearing an asbestos suit, they bloody well need to now. This forum is growing all the time. The more members, the more eejits, flamers and trolls.

I happened to love the guest's banter in that thread. I get really tired of reading through posts that sound like the second grade teacher talking--it is insulting to have everything so bloody dumbed down for the sake of a few clueless feckin' Americans.