Not me, Robin, not me!

Like others, I too am a member of 3-4 different folk music fora. They all serve slightly different purposes and slightly different communities, and they all do a pretty decent job of it, by and large.

Mudcat may not be as advanced a forum technically, as others of its kind. And discussion in it may not reach the high levels of academic discourse that one can find in other fora.

It does have two advantages however:

a) The Mudcat community is the most diverse, both geographically, and in musical tastes (and even in interpretations of what is "folk" and what is "traditional"). I find this aspect invigorating because through the various conversations I constantly find out interesting things on musical branches of "folk" that I know little about.

b) The Mudcat community is (partly) a physical community too, as many of its members have met, and several do so regularly. My estimate is that about 90-100 of the UK Mudcatters have met each other, and an equivalent number in the US. And several of us have shaken hands across the water too. This lends Mudcat a "reality" that other fora cannot, and makes for conversations on a different level (for better AND for worse).

So, Mudcat is not the ultimate in folk music fora, but then none of them is. What does it matter? We visit different restaurants for different reasons, and the same is fine for music fora too. But as long as Mudcat has good things for me, I will be here picking among the threads for the little gems.

So far the pickings are very good.