What I meant about my cookie comment is simply that Mudcat is open to all, member or not, cookie'd or not. Jon's forum is not open to all, currently. I do not state this based on any assumptions or feelings about why Jon set it up that way... I have not asked him why, and frankly it's up to him and I don't give a tinker's dang.

In fact I would probably choose to set up a prayer forum that way myself if I did one, or have some other way of being sure who people are, because of the personal nature of the material shared in it and my long and effective experience dealing with confidentiality issues from just about any angle you'd care to name. But I respect what Max has created too much to casually make something that I fear would pull people away from what Max means this place to be.

In any event, my lack of being able to decide things like that has been one reason I have not pushed the Prayer Chain people to go to something like this. (It is all set up, BTW, as I have said in the past, complete with introductory posts starting some get-acquainted threads and laying out basic policy.) I just never said, OK, this is how I am wiling to do the prayer thing from now on, let's move over there and out of e-maill-- partly because I could not decide whether to throw it wide open, or what. And the place I happened to set it up requires at least an MSN Passport, to get in, even if I do not close the site to pre-registering members-- I did not know at the time how people would feel about that. There is another place I could move those posts but right now, I care more about keeping life simple and doing MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC. And the prayer chain-- no one in it complains!! *G*

But I DO think people (some people) will be likely to make an issue of membership requirements at Jon's forum, at some point. Probably when it starts to do well, that's when the nay-saying will kick in, and then we will have people on the defensive in TWO places. See?

Now please take the following in the spirit in which it is meant. I would really, REALLY appreciate people saying what they think, for themselves, and not focusing on what I may have said as a way of getting at your own thinking. Agreeing or disagreeing with me-- it's just not as valuable as your own precious and creative thinking about things freely from your own view. I am bringing this up because it tends to happen so much-- and it causes me to post less and less about what I think about much of anything. I get to be like some kind of weird magnet. These days, when something starts to be too much about me, I head for the hills.

~Susan