I have long been an advocate of an "open" forum for the Mudcat. In fact, I encourage vibrant discussion on any topic. If I don't want to read a thread, I simply don't open it.

However, I have become a Mudcat addict because of the many advantages it has over the Newsgroups. One of them being that in the past, people have for the most part avoided personal attacks, responded seriously to discussions on music and the issues of participating in folk music (either actively or passively), and kept spame and spurious attacks to a minimum. The real identities of People were/are anonomous, but people seemed to treat their Mudcat Personas with integrity. Lately, I feel that the guest debate and the people signing on with fake IDs to make statements that they don't wish associated with their Mudcat Personas has changed this. Some, have started to use the Guest veil to act in ways that they would not act in person, or if they could be associated with their statements.

Consequently, I have changed and would like to put my vote in for only allowing posts by registered Mudcatters. I'm sure Max could establish a secure system, so only the system administrators would have access to the e-mail addresses and names of registered members. I also feel strongly that there should be only one registration per e-mail address. This would not stop people from going to hotmail, or yahoo, and creating an e-mail address when they want too. However, if truly egregous statements were made, there would be a traceable path and they could be reported to those services by MAX.

While I believe in anonomity, I also feel that every adult should act as if they can be held accountable for their actions, and for serious infractions (threats, etc.) are held accountable for their actions.

So, MAX how about an experiment. Let's have posting only by registered members, and one registration per e-mail address for 1 month. Guests that wish to comment about the change could do so on the list serve that has been established for when Mudcat is down. People could still use different computers and accounts to access and post from. We could then see if this makes any difference, stifles discussion, or creates new problems for the Mudcat or it's adminstration.

Another options is simply to establish, and let everyone know that it has been established, a mechanism where the account and location is captured and stored in a database when each post is made. Isn't this possible based upon the site log that is reported of "hits" for the Mudcat web pages?

People would then be anonomous to the community but not to the administrators if it becomes necessary to trace who made a post.

JAB