Please, when people ask for information like this, and give their e-mail addresses, if you have ANY information to give them that isn't already in a thread someplace, please post the information here, and then email them in addition if you wish.

The way I figure it, we're not just collecting information to satisfy one person's request; we're also accumulating information for posterity. Any information you post here will be available in the future for anyone who goes searching for it. I think it's useful to have all that information about folk music at one site instead of scattered out over the whole Internet. Internet sites do close down from time to time, and many links that were posted a year or so ago are now invalid.

I've searched and found lots of useful information in old threads. I'm glad the people who posted it didn't merely say, "I emailed the information."

Actually, I did find a message like that once in an old thread, and it really pissed me off, because I wanted badly to get the information myself, and I couldn't find it anywhere on the web! I tried e-mailing and PM'ing the person who said "I emailed it" and also the person who said "I got it" but their email addresses were no longer valid, and they never replied to my PM either. I think they are no longer active Mudcat members. I didn't get the information I wanted until nearly a year later.

What I prefer to do, when someone requests an email reply, is to post the answer in the thread, and then send an email containing a link to the reply.

I think the only reason people ask for email replies is because they're newcomers and they don't understand how Mudcat works. Maybe they're afraid they'll never be able to find the thread again after they've posted. That's why sending them a link is a good idea.