It seems one of the problems has come to the surface in that people claim they only react badly to subjects like racism, religion, capitalism etc etc, none of which has much to do with folk music directly. Other forums I use tend to stick to their topics, so don't have the same problems.

My pet hate is bad manners. I generally react to bad manners in a dismissive way - "the chap is clearly a lout" - but if there's too much of it, I'll just quietly go elsewhere.

Rather like the village pub I mentioned earlier - if it starts to be taken over by ill-mannered louts, I'll find a different pub. Then if the landlord finds he's losing his customers, he might have a word with the offenders, get them to change their behaviour or they're barred.

In Mudcat terms, Max is the landlord and if his "staff" (the moderators) point out the pub/website is going bad, he needs to do something.

Which leads me back to Will's wondering where we'll be in 10 years time - I think if the ill-mannered behaviour is allowed to continue, the pub will either degenerate into a place no decent person will set foot in, or will go out of business because the landlord is fed up to the back teeth with it.

g