An Outside Observation: Most of the regulars on the mudcat seem like nice people who try to be helpful. I post under various "GUEST" identities and try to be equally helpful where I can. There are "members" who appear to be a bubble-and-a-half off the level. Some members seem to have come from a different planet altogether. Other members post such unintelligible drizzle that I despair for the future of humanity. Some just can't type and/or spell and/or have any inkling of the rules of grammar. (jOhN Of hUlL - consider night school!)
Then there are the members who would like the Mudcat to be a closed little community where they can bask the reflected glow of their own narrow-minded pseudo-intellectual pontifications. Some of these are simply egotistic, opinionated assholes who attack GUEST postings at the merest slight. These are the people from whom I shield my name or where I live. (The web is never completely anonymous - Joe and the other Mudcat webmasters know who sends every post.)         
Blackcatter is one of these people - but he has a particularly easy-to-tweak weak spot on his beloved whistles which tends to make him go apoplectic and use bad language toward GUESTS.
Brucie is more even-tempered and will consider a GUEST post on its merits before attacking the stupid ones.
Clinton Hammond should have been drowned at birth (OK, maybe he was and what we hear from today is really his own placenta!)
Caveat: The comments above are directed to those on the porch and are in no way intended to demean those honest folks in the BS threads down below!
Long live the Mudcat in its present form!