A request for a song can be the starting point for a thread that opens up the history and the variants of a song, and the different ways it can be interpreted and so on and so forth.

It can also be the way that someone finds their way into the Mudcat, and into the peculiar world of folk music, both on the net and in the face to face world.

When someone asks you a favour, and you are in a position to provide the help requested, without inconveniencing yourself, they are doing you a favour in the process.

Search engines are great, but they can't do all that. They only work so well because all over the world there are people who have gone to the trouble of putting the information we need on the net in an available form. Not just once, but time and time again, so that we can get different slants on it.