There's another reason why people don't use search engines when they're looking for songs - they don't speak English very well, but they're venturing out into the Internet to find an English-language song. If a requester sounds abrupt, there's a good chance they don't know much English. Give 'em the benefit of the doubt.

I find that it's best to answer all song requests in a friendly, matter-of-fact, non-critical way (not that I always do it that way myself). It's probably also good not to be patronizing or to get too gushy in your efforts to welcome the people to Mudcat. You don't know the person who's posting the request, so you don't know how they'll react. Gushiness tends to make intelligent people gag. I've seen some renowned visitors get patronizing responses from Mudcatters who don't know their folk idols very well, and it makes me cringe.

If you're answering a song request, be sure you're not giving misleading information. For a while, we had a rash of answers that were sending requesters to OLGA and Cowpie and Google and all sorts of places - when we had the lyrics right here. If you direct people to go somewhere, make sure the information they want is actually there. If it's a pop song, maybe it's a good idea to just give a link to the lyrics if they're not here. If it's not here and it's something that a folk musician might like to perform, post the lyrics in the request thread so our search engines will pick it up. There's no need to start a new thread - just put the title of the song in the subject title of your message.

If a person leaves an e-mail address, note in your Forum response if you've e-mailed to them. I ususally give information on how I found the song, to help the person learn how to search - but if it isn't long, I also cut-paste the lyrics into my e-mail message (don't send attachments, because people worry about them carrying viruses).

If there's something wrong with the title of a request thread, don't be too quick to suggest that the poster start another thread, because multiple threads can confuse the rest of us. If you leave a message in the Help Forum, I'll see if I can rename the thread - but I try to preserve the original title of the thread as much as I can, so the requester can find it (Max and I and a couple of people at Onstagemedia have a thread-rename button - it's in the testing phase, so the JoeClones don't have it yet. My guess is that Bert can rename threads - he hasn't told me that, but his desk is 20 feet from Max's).

If you don't like the attitude of somebody who posts a song request, there's another alternative - don't answer them. Let somebody else deal with it.

-Joe Offer-