GUEST no name, I'm neither stamping nor pouting and anyone who knows me will tell you I take my folk music seriously, which is to say always with a smile. The software is the main reason I stay away for months at a time, it doesn't allow editing and gives no indication of intervening posts, hence the end of Maud Karpeles name going missing in an adjoining word change. The board is virtually unmoderated, meaning posters can be serially misrepresented without any accountability from those making the mischief. It's mob rule, take posts seriously and you're told to lighten up, engage lightly and someone will accuse you of taking the p***. Truth by consensus has never floated my boat.

The 'vituperative intolerance' Peter Bellamy's obituarist referred to is alive and well in the folk community which is the reason why I consume the English scene at least, at (turntable) arm's length. Nonetheless I was musing at the time this thread came up why it is other folk communities accommodate new material alongside the old without diminishing either and why the general paranoia about definitions, which is why I was moved to chip in.