When I made the suggestion I was responding to very sad news; even though the only personal aspect was via observations of Malcolm's postings (and a few interactions with him) via Mudcat. I thank Kat for taking it seriously enough to warrant a thread on the topic more generally. I hadn't noticed postings by Rick Fielding or Bruce O; perhaps I joined Mudcat too late or was engaged in different genres and there may well be others of whom I am yet unaware.

I apologise to Joe for not making the original suggestion about a Permathread directly to him via a PM but plead the sadness of the news as "extenuating and mitigating circumstances"; sorry, cobber.

But, now that the topic has been dignified by its own thread and Joe is actively engaged with it, I hope my further comments can be considered.

I am aware of Permathreads and Joe has been kind enough to suggest a topic for one that he thinks I could conduct; I am trying to get the spare time to do it properly before I even start. Keeping to the suggestion about the current topic I'd like to make the following comments.

I use the Old Advanced Forum Search and have found it successful on some occasions. Joe had much better success than I, when we were discussing (via PMs) some possibilities on another topic. Perhaps the search routines I used lost some of their power while crossing the Pacific, while his had all their considerable powers preserved. :)

I have used the ability to click on a person's Mudcat name and see the list of their postings and thus know I could get at their content; I wasn't aware though, that I could create a clickable link to them the way Stilly River Sage did to Malcolm's as the third post in the Obit thread. While this link could achieve much of what I suggested originally, it goes off the page until and unless someone posts to that Obit thread, effectively 'camouflaging' access to Malcolm's scholarship except for those already in the know.

It has occurred to me that, while I have some little knowledge of Mudcat and various search techniques, there are others who have even less. I had thought a Permathread might make the access easier. To avoid any sense of "Memorialising" (although I think it worthwhile to memorialise 'catters who've made considerable contributions to Mudcat's community) I wonder if the Permathread's title could be something like

"Scholarly contributions" ; others might have better suggestions.

It might, as I think Joe implied, be a rather short thread for quite a while yet. Its first post would be from the moderator and would carry a short description of why it's there and its value to newcomers and others. Subsequent posts would individually state, briefly, who the member is (or was), why their posts have been made accessible via a Permathread and links to their lists of postings and threads about them. On the basis of Kat's suggestion, such a Permathread might have only half a dozen posts in it, currently, and (hopefully) not be added to via Obit threads too rapidly.

Cheers, Rowan