Kat, I join you in your distaste but you know what happens as well as I do when anyone here starts to try to rally everyone to a central point of view of any sort. Some will agree, some will ignore, and some will power up an attack. Maybe folkies tend to be so iconoclastic IRL that we are even braced a bit too much against potential "controls" here at Mudcat, where so few really want to control anyone at all!

And, well... there is a long list of people who have, at one time or another, stated that certain threads were distasteful. And been roundly criticised for having done so. It starts to feel like, "Who's got the hot button today" sometimes-- which thing is gonna bother which person, and who is going ot be bothered that they are bothered, and who is going to be bothered that someone was bothered by.....

It's pretty obvious that the bottom line is, we who are here regularly care about the Mudcat, but maybe most especially about the Mudcat each of us has in our minds at any given point in time.

We also know what does and does not work to deal with such things, but it's funny how hard it is to remember and DO that when we ourselves are the one with the hot button of the day.

Maybe a couple of new strategies can evolve in place of the continual stream of "What Seems Awful Today."

Perhaps a way to register distaste for others to see one's stand would be posting nothing more than the simple frowny emoticon, which presents a much slimmer profile for attacks in response but which sends a message like one sends IRL when one physically moves away from that with which one does not care to be associated.

Another might be that if one wants to recommend Mudcat, one can do it not with a link to the whole site first off, but a link to a specific thread or even a specific message in a thread that one, as an individual, might think the person one is inviting might really enjoy, and which speaks to what one, as an individual, sees as the finest of Mudcat. When someone comes here and falls into a thread like that the first time, something magic happens that, I think, arms them against the awfulness. It makes it easier to see that even on its worst day, the Mudcat is still just about the best place on the Net to be. It makes it easier to see how positively such awfulnesses are handled, instead of just seeing that they are there. Because IRL these things happen but are usually NOT handled well at all.

Another would be the oldest standby in the Mudcat Anti-Crap Book of Tricks-- and that is, start a coupole of new music threads each time one spots a new stinker. Do so many music threads that these shamefull ones fall off the page and slink away...

Pull people to what inspires you, and they will come there with you anytime. I do that once in awhile with an e-mail link to a new thread that looks really good, among Mudcat friends whose interests I know. And it works, every time.

~Susan