'what's being kept out' is all the people who visit Mudcat purely for the shadenfreude but wouldn't dream of posting, all those who visit for a while then leave again in disgust at the entrenched views, factional in-fighting and inverse snobbery, all those who'd love to take part but dare not for fear of being ridiculed for a spelling error or using 'bad' grammar.

Well, I am a bit of a bumpkin in these matters. I have no idea how to count the people who come for schadenfreude, and while there have been plenty who have come and gone, that is also true of most towns and cities, and I have no idea what their motivations have been at one time or another. The quality of this community has a core consistency even though the noise level does go high and low at different periods. Except for a small handfull of dedicated nutballs, I have not seen anything that makes the ambience so toxic that a reasonably abled, mature human couldn't handle it easily enough.

There are a few topics that make people get hotted up--mea culpa in the political arena--but by and large the balance, for such a minimal effort at control, is quite good. (Not that Joe's efforts are minimal, but that the control structure is, being a democratic sort of attitude).

You are describing undefined generalized pluralities of these offenses, and I think it may be the case that your impression is actually founded on a small specific number of incidents and/or individuals.


A