Ah ~~ thanks for that info re the Voltaire biographer, Jim. I had heard of her by pen-name only, and hadn't come across theory that the attribution to Voltaire was a gloss of hers. Thanks for this info: no knowledge ever unwelcome.

As to "telling you where or whether you can write" anything. I think it reasonable to challenge your apparent assertion that any thread can be arbitrarily led off in any direction at the whim of any contributor to it, which seemed to me to be asserted in your "these threads go wherever the contributors choose to take them". If that is not what it implies, then what is? And it still appears to me a most questionable claim, liable to lead to infinite confusion. I can't really feel that challenging it in any way constitutes "telling you what or where you can write".

Does it?

~M~