although I'm posting from home, I haven't refreshed my cookie (I was just forced to upgrade from AOL 3.0 to 4.0 so I could learn to mambo, breaking my connection to that confection).

Gargoyle, I appreciate your return to reasonable discourse, but remain puzzled by your passion over this issue. You have always been a regular poster to BS threads--this one, indeed, is well laced by your opinions and even more generously by other people discussing your opinions and postings; hell, you've even been known to show up at the pub. The membership keeps growing because this is a welcoming place, because it is full of characters, and of course because of the music--and those who so generously assist with obscure lyrics and help with musical theory and tips on instruments, and I have to recognize your great contributions in these areas.

I recognize you as my elder, at least in length of membership, and I know it must grate when I criticize you--what right have I to do so? I even recognize that when I first came to the Mudcat that I was pretty new to the internet in general, had never lurked anywhere before, had posted questions and answers in an aol photography forum where there never seemed to be much of a sense of community, probably because of the format--threads weren't headed by a chronological list of posters, just a number of responses to a post, and you navigated through it with next message or previous message or next thread or previous thread buttons. Almost all the postings were technical, related to cameras, films, chemistry, alternative techniques, etc.

So when I came to the Mudcat it was a revelation to me (I had spent some time searching for folk music sites--the closest I managed to come for a few weeks was country music sites...aaack!). So when I found this place a year and a half ago, I was delighted to find not only the music I loved but people who not only shared my love but were helpful, friendly, funny, irreverant, tolerant--despite the fact that in the first few weeks (especially) I was clumsy in my posts, particularly in proofreading them, necessitating corrections--which themselves sometimes needed correcting; my humor was often sophmoric, and I often jumped into discussions with insufficient knowledge to make meaningful contributions--and I know that I irritated the hell out of you, and may have even been responsible for unleashing your Mr. Hyde side. I became for you poster boy for thread creep and a cockroach in the Cafe (you're not the only one--I know at least one other member who regarded me as roughly equivalent to a case of the crabs, although he was almost always restrained in his expression of disapproval).

But the music is still coming in, probably in greater volume than it was in your golden age. Each day there are dozens of new music threads--requests for lyrics and music, questions about artists and instruments, announcements of concerts, instrumental and vocal techniques, and so on and on. The Digitrad is alive and well, and a whole worldwide community has grown up and is flourishing around it and the Mudcat Cafe.

--seed