Jon

I don't think I do miss the point. I know you've been pursuing your own agenda for a while now, and fair enough. However, if you take time to look around, you'll see that there are some very expert people here, some new to Mudcat in the last few months. Also some of your "experts" have not really left. Some are lurking and contributing perfectly well (just calling yourself GUEST doesn't stop someone's style being recognised). Others were self-opinionated and nasty, unlikely to stay very long in the light - and they're still just as nasty in the folk forums outside Mudcat.

"The same row", kept going by the same people, can easily be ignored. Tell me, what exactly is the row supposed to be about anyway?

Our friend GUEST certainly has his own agenda and has been trying to wreck the basic style of Mudcat for a long long time now. We're getting better at dealing with this kind of thing. Currently, he's reduced to having a conversation with himself in order to keep his thread near the top. Sad's not in it.

The point I'm making is that Mudcat has a unique combination of things which makes the music threads catch fire from time to time. This could never happen in a "pure" music forum.

Personally, I've had Dick and Susan to stay with me for a couple of days, and the opportunity to talk to them about collecting folk songs and 101 other things. I'm corresponding at the moment with Wilfried about a rare German songbook (not what I'd have expected to have even been interested in until recently). I'm contributing to other peoples' research and enjoyment via the Basic Folk Library. I'm even getting near to publishing my first research paper because of the speed of response I get here when I ask a question (before that, years of part-time research was getting me nowhere).

None of these things would I have been able to do without Mudcat AS IT IS. I have no gripe about using technology well. Just consider that you sometimes have to look at what is the purpose of the change you are trying to bring about.

;-)
Ian