I tend to resist trying to put a name on what the the Mudcat is to me, although if I were to try to find an analogy, it would be that the Mudcat is a lot like the high school I went to.

It was (during the time I was there) an experimental high school. It was fairly loosely structured, and without very many rules. There were all kinds of people imaginable there from all socio-economic strata, from all races, ethnic groups and religions, as well as immigrants and exchange students from countries all over the world.

Because of the way it was structured, it attracted quite a lot of transfer students from other schools. And the people it tended to attract were some of the most intelligent, creative, articulate, imaginative and talented people I've ever encountered. I learned so much from those people... far more than I would ever have learned in a more "normal", or traditional setting, and it was an incredibly enriching and enriched environment and experience for me.

It had a "hall culture", in which students would be hanging out in the halls (or in some of the teacher's offices) playing music, or reading, or playing cards or doing just about anything else they could think up. They would do this in between classes or during a free period or while skipping a class. Nobody got into any trouble for this... it was tacitly allowed. The hall culture was every bit as much of a learning environment as the regular classes were. Sometimes more. I think of the BS section in the Mudcat in the same way I think of the hall culture at my high school.

It was an incredibly musical place. In the halls one could hear people playing and singing folk music ("folkie folk" and traditional), classical music... especially early music (Renaissance, Medieval, early Baroque), and people were singing Gilbert and Sullivan, madrigals, songs from musicals, and some times there was a bit of rock and roll, and country here and there. Ochestra instruments, baroque recorders, and guitars were laying all over the place, just about everywhere one looked.

That's pretty much exactly how I experience the Mudcat, in a virtual sense.

Having said all of that, however, whenever I have actually met a Mudcatter face to face (several dozen at last count), it has pretty much always felt like I was meeting family.