Jesus, this is a hard place to make a suggestion!

Ed, what actually works in idea-implementing around here is that someone has and tries out the idea, and then when it's clear how the idea is functioning, it's either adopted or it's not. Many, many excellent ideas have simply not caught on, or have caught on in ways very different than had first been anticipated. It's just the nature of Mudcat to operate like that.

What has never seemed to work is, "Hey, let's all do THIS, or THAT, OK gang?"

That would only work if:
A. People had to be members to post, AND
B. The membership ranks were a fixed pool, AND
C. Every member read every post containing every proposal, AND
D. Every member agreed to abide by proposals as written.

Or if
E. Every post were scrutinized by the authorities, and ideas imposed by use of the edit function or by a moderator previewing every post before allowing it to be visible.

None of these describe Mudcat.

It doesn't mean the idea was a bad one, or that suggesting it was unwelcome. It's just that people here are pretty rigid about doing their own highly-individual thinking.

In the present instance, TECH seems to strike some folks as a useful way of indicating that they want to talk about the nuts and bolts of their gear-- the tech side of the gear as opposed to the music side of it. I suppose it's a good thing people didn't take it as an abbreviation for TECHNIQUE, or we'd have all kinda playing tips being solicited and swapped under that prefix.

OBIT is a real good example (see how you used it). A number of us tinkered around on what would work, when a batch of death notices began to become a regular thing in the threads. People who were around the forum at the time discussed it back and forth and gave reasons for using one prefix or another. Generally, though, what was important was that people seemed to like having the notices, and having them easily findable by the filter. OBIT was duly adopted, and is often used in the spirit in which it was created. Since then it's also become a way of protesting the outcome of the PEL in operation, and further, since that became normal, it's become a way of protesting anything people want to protest. Not so long ago it was used to herald the demise of an entire country. Ah, well that's the 'Cat. One can get one's knickers in a twist over these little bumps in the road, or one can instead choose to just smile as one would at a wayward, much-loved child, and think to oneself, "Gotta love it."

~Susan