Here's my response to a thoughtful PM enquiry from last night. It sums up where the thread was going again,

"There are two problems IMO, first a small number of aggressive bullies one of whom bounced me on the first post, the kind of playground sharks who get in early to make sure nobody steals their territory - they're unmoderated which raises the general temperature, and second the board has a large number of professional promoters and working musicians with an agenda rather than people who are fans of the stuff and have been for many years.

That leads to a disparity and the kind of 'nobody knows what they're talking about but us' stuff that fills threads. If you try to open the debate out into wider issues they bring it down to incidentals, if you talk specifics they say you don't understand the big picture. They get away with it because they always have. I have broad shoulders but have seen good musicians like SS openly insulted by these so called gurus and I find that very annoying.

Thanks for enquiring anyway,"