The following is my own opinion, not Mudcat policy.

Some of us still hold to the archaic idea that this should be a folk music forum. We may seem to be outnumbered at times, but I think we still have a right to express our crotchety, outdated complaints. It may seem pleasant and polite for us to confine our complaints to "whine" threads - but confining complaints to certain threads is almost as restrictive as banning complaints altogether.

I figure that if you post something in an open forum, you have to accept the fact that others have a right to disagree with you - and you don't have a right to control the way they express their disagreement. If you don't like having people disagree with you, maybe you shouldn't post what you were thinking of posting.

We try to control the worst of the flames, especially if they are threats or personal attacks, but we are also careful to limit editing and deletions to a minimum.

Somebody sent me a letter last week and said he was entertained by my "annual outbursts" against prayer and healing threads. I guess I have to plead guilty - I can be patient for about a year, and then I have to say something. Maybe the writer will have to add non-folk obituaries to the list next year. From a personal standpoint, I wasn't interested in the obituary on Aaliyah, or whatever her name is. I take it that her "Rhythm and Blues" music was more pop than blues. Still, the posting of her obituary wasn't enough to garner a complaint from me. We've seen much worse here. I'm bored to tears by threads that are filled with platitudes - be they healing requests, prayer threads, or obituaries. If the threads have information that's of interest to folk musicians, then I usually find such threads interesting. So, if somebody's going to start an obituary thread, I think the first thing they should post is information about the dead person's life and death.

We have some people here who appear to be very impressed by their own words, and their goal here seems to be to post as many words as possible (intelligent verbiage not required). They copy-paste long lists of things that somebody else copy-pasted to them. They start multiple threads on the most inane topics. The start answer-threads instead of posting to the original thread, and they start copycat threads when they see that a thread has received a number of replies. Sometimes, they even start threads to call attention to other threads they've posted. I suppose it might be polite to simply ignore such logorrhea, but there's so much of it here that it's impossible to ignore it. I certainly don't advocate the nastiness of the flamers, but maybe all this wordiness calls for some creative curmudgeonry.

I think that if I start a thread, I need to realize that I risk being criticized. People will usually leave others alone about whatever they choose to say in most individual messages, but starting threads is another matter. If I find that I frequently get negative reactions to the threads you start, maybe that's a sign that I might want to think a little longer before hitting that "create new thread" button.

Another thing I've noticed - it seems that the majority of threads are started by a small minority of Mudcatters. Is this a good thing? If I create more than a couple of threads a week, could it be that I'm starting too many?

OK, so the above is my personal opinion, not Mudcat policy. I've learned my lesson - I won't post it in the FAQ. However, I still insist that I do have a right to express my opinion and maybe be just a bit grumpy at times.

-Joe Offer-