Mudcat falls under the rubric of social networking, but not all social networks are communities. I don't have a sense of community on Facebook like I still have here, though I realize it is a shrinking community. Lots of factors go into that shrinkage. We are aging. Many of us are scrapping so hard to keep jobs that we don't have time to hang out, new members don't come along to renew and refresh ideas and conversations. Familiarity breeds contempt, as well as a tendency to pigeon hole and not listen to one another. Same thing happens in small, insular rural communities that either die or grow and change.

I think Mudcat will be here a long, long time as a continuing folk music resource and forum - that is what it was originally designed to be, as I understand it. I only came along in 2002 so am not one of the "old timers." Time passes. Lots of things change. I don't think the community that exists here will go away anytime soon. It is not the social community it once was, and probably never will be again, because things change. It may eventually evolve into another kind of social community. Who knows?

Mudcat as a social community reflects larger social trends. Change happens. Whether it is evolution or de-evolution is to a certain extent a matter of perspective. Viewing it from the standpoint of bonafide social community, Mudcat seems to me to be dying. It may be like a phoenix however, that arises from it's ashes. Might not look like the phoenix that burned, however.