Well I've had two previous attempts at a contribution and discarded them, so third time lucky! I suppose like Bill, I have a niggling concern here which won't go away. We all agree that the last thing we want to do is to restrict access or to diminish the range and eclectic nature of the conversations and Mick has put this side of the argument beautifully so I wont try and gild the lily, but there are still potentially very real problems associated with growth and the wide spread of topics.

Technical.

Lets not forget that this site is financed largely by Max's commercial operations and with the best will in the world this must be limited. The resources required by the site: basically processor (power + memory), storage capacity, and telecommunication bandwidth, are all potential constraints and need money to be upgraded. Apart from bandwidth, which is shared, these problems are with the forum as the DT is a static database which can be optimised for searching.

The problem is essentially due to the nature of the Internet, with the indexing of site contents by search engines like Alta Vista, growth in hit rate will normally follow a standard population growth curve to an equilibrium, the problem we are discussing is that the equilibrium level for people searching for / interested in "pop" music in all its forms is probably several orders of magnitude greater than the population for "folk" (especially as Bill and I would define it!), so the strain on the hard resources is likely to continue to grow for a while, and the more we deal with non folk lyrics, the more likely we are to be "found" by people using a search engine to find pop song lyrics etc. As an example the recent "contributions" by juveniles almost certainly arose as a result of them finding the site and indeed a particular thread, by searching the Web for a specific word or phrase. Fortunately trying to elicit outrage from a bunch of pedantic polysyllabic pundits is obviously not as easy as they hoped!

Legal.

Knowing what a litigious society the US is, the fact that the 'Cat is located there may also be cause for concern. Whilst we restrict ourselves to work by Trad and Anon and those song writers who see merit in having their work presented to as wide an audience as possible, there is no problem, but if some smart lawyer decides that us posting the lyrics to "Ode to some gunk I found in my navel after visiting my therapist" violated their clients copyright, there is a real danger that Max may be forced to shut up shop.

Sorry to be so depressing, but if we are going to have this discussion we may as well address all the issues.

Pete M (Catspaw, I suppose I'm the member of the family that sits in the corner muttering "Doom, doom, we're all doomed."?)