"...one didn't even have to be a member.

You still don't - the only thing, when you sign in as GUEST, as I did just now, there's no way anyone can be sure it's you or not, since anyone can post using that label.

Before the GUEST option was introduced it was possible to do that with an ordinary name, and that's why it was introduced.

Yes, the Mudcat changes - but then we change as well, and when people find they don't like it here as much as they used to, it can be the latter as much as the former that is at the root of it.

You lose some of the pleasures of novelty, and in their place you get the pleasures of familiarity, and they aren't the same. We're no different from any folk club in that way - and like a folk club we also have the renewed pleasures of novelty from newcomers, and the renewed pleasures of familiarity when an old friend drops in again after being absent too long.