Bagpuss, I don't know either, but I believe that what Peter stated is very true........specifically this:

The objection is definitional: some people just don't like the place cluttered up with conversation about this and that, and want it to be devoted to some kind of community of serious folk music scholars. They seem to be unable to digest the fact that even in serious music threads folk musicians and listeners are eclectic, chatty, and prone to take the mickey out of each other.

Read the Bruce O. thread and you'll get even more of the same. If this place ever was a scholar's site, it isn't now, nor has it been.......even before I was around almost three years ago.

There is a filter setup and perhaps Max can elaborate on that to some extent to make it operate in a different way, but I suspect the real problem once again gets down to the fact that there is BS here at all.

Spaw