Hmmm. I think McGrath's basic point is very reasonable. It has taken a long time for Mudcat to build up a community of expertise and of interest - not to mention the set of controls and conventions which, most of the time, allow that community to function relatively harmoniously. Pushing out into the wider world through "social networking" mechanisms runs the risk of putting one or more of those three elements under stress.

No doubt Max has some notion of what might constitute "success" in this context and a sense of the metrics that might establish its achievement. The basic risk is of constant trivialisation, rather than of increased frequency of venom, I suspect.

Regards