Folk may have missed the (official) reply to by Joe Offer to Kedall's question. This is because in was inserted as an editorial comment into Kendall's post and did not refresh this thread.

Subject: RE: Objections to Joe Offer
From: kendall - PM
Date: 04 May 05 - 08:02 AM

As far as I can see, the only thing that is forbidden here is personal attacks. What is wrong with that?
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Well, there are a few other things, but they're relatively rare. We don't allow Spam or racism, and we don't allow lengthy non-music copy-paste posts (we encourage people to post the entire text of music information they find, and ask them to include attribution). We reserve the right to delete messages in other situations where a need may arise, but I can't think of any such situations now.
And we view thread and message titles as indexing tools that are to be used to help Mudcatters determine the contents of a thread or message. We do change thread titles and move messages to consolidate duplicate threads as part of our indexing process. And we do occasionally close threads for various reasons - but people are free to start a new thread or post to a related thread if there's a need.
The "Mehlberger" thread title was changed to enable visitors to understand what the thread contains without knowing who John Mehlberg(er) is. The Girvan thread will be changed sooner or later to something like Girvan (folk festival 2005). Threads titled "Lyr req: Lyrics Request" are routinely changed to "Lyr req:" plus song title.
With the few exceptions mentioned above, the contents of messages are rarely changed. This is a fairly comprehensive explanation of our editing policy. Does anybody but Shambles object?
The Editorial Policy is here (click) in the FAQ, last revised in 2003.
-Joe Offer-

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My point is simply that if ordinary posters were able to use as many letters as out volunteers are - they may be able to produce more informative titles - without the need for any imposed change.

It is surely worth a try?

It may very well be that a poster - would make a more informative title - if they could use the few extra spaces that our volunteers can. Especially when often the routine imposed change is simply our volunteers feeling that they need to impose a change - by adding something like 'UK'.

If the routine imposed change is just adding "Lyr req:" - perhaps when starting a thread - posters should not be given an optional choice - to use a prefix or not?

Is this illusion of an 'optional choice' a little dishonest - if a prefix is later to be imposed without the originator's knowledge or permission - as a matter of routine?