I'm still new to Mudcat, so I'll just pose a question. Do you have any suggestions what personal (not enforced) guidelines should be between posting messages in threads, sending messages to Personal Pages, or e-mailing? In the short time I've been here, I've found myself wanting to discuss things further that seem too unrelated to a question raised in a thread, and didn't feel a new thread was necessary. If there's someone I want to carry on a further discussion with, I post a message for the person on their Personal Page. If that evolves into a more long-term conversation, it seems dumb to just keep sending messages back and forth through the Personal Pages, and I exchange e-mails and don't go through Mudcat at all. Is that the way you suggest people do it? There are times when conversations wander so far off the original topic of a thread, and seem to become a personal conversation with one or two people that I wonder why the people don't just carry it on through Personal Pages, or e-mail. Not a major irritant, but there are times when a thread I was initially interested in wanders so far off the subject, or becomes a personal exchange between two or three people that I wander away myself. That's all right, too. I'd rather have threads wander, I'd rather have the occasional over-the edge insult than to have this place heavily structured. Maybe I'll feel differently after a year. But I kinda doubt it.

So far, for the length of this thread, the only suggestions I've heard seem to be to start a new site, or pretty much keep going on the way that it is, with more and more people becoming disattisfied. Like a variant on "My country, love it or leave it." :-) Remember that one?

So c'mon "Inner Core Group," you have been at this a lot longer... any suggestions about when to post and when to e-mail, guidelines about common courtesy in exchanging posts? I've really enjoyed meeting the people I have since I came on, and expect that I'll meet more. I can also see why someone new would think that there is a clique of "inner core members." When you're new, you often feel that way. You're the outsider. Witty interchanges don't include you because people don't know you. No reason to feel that you're an outsider. Everyone started out as an outsider.

It just seems a shame to have this site so pre-occupied with wounded feelings and bitterness.

Jerry