Hi, Daisy - I'm taking your suggestions into account, because we most certainly want Mudcat to be inviting to occasional visitors and to new members who may join us and keep our community vibrant.

Much of what's good here is due to the interaction of people working together on researching a song or developing an idea, and too much control can dull that sort of dynamic. A lot of our lyrics request threads produce no worthwhile information - there's a request, and then somebody posts a link to another location at Mudcat. I try to close those threads quickly so the discussion is directed to the previous one - but I try not to be so quick that I kill a good discussion. Usually, I crosslink all threads pertaining to a particular song if the song is traditional, and I crosslink by songwriter if it's a more contemporary song. If you look up a song in the Forum or in the Digital Tradition, you will very often find crosslinks to related threads - the "Origins" threads and the "DTStudy" threads are generally the ones that give the best information. Crosslinking song threads is manageable, but threads on events and instruments pose more complex problems. Our guitar geeks have created a vast web of threads, and it's hard work to organize it. Jeff has done a lot of the work on the guitar stuff, because it's not in my area of interest.

I know Mudcat like the back of my hand, so it's sometimes hard for me to see it in the eyes of an outsider and understand what people need to find their way around. I'd suggest you read the first message in our FAQ to learn about our search engines. You may also find our Song Origins and Information database helpful, although I admit it's a bit hard to find in our QuickLinks dropdown menu. I'm sorry, but we don't intend to make it any easier to find, because there's only so much you can display on a main page. All of the information in that database is used in our crosslinks system, which is most easily accessed by using our search engines.

I suppose there's one most important rule for searching Mudcat, and it's something Dick Greenhaus has expressed from the very beginning - search for a distinctive phrase from a song (or whatever you're looking for), not the title. Titles can be misleading.

-Joe Offer-