Sorcha, I think you might find that your craven, supine view would earn you few brownie points with Max. Without the community of people who mix here and use the place, Mudcat would be a waste of server space and Max's time.

So far, I'm in favour of the split and haven't resorted to Spaw's workaround. I only ever recommend Mudcat to people for its music/folklore content, so it suits me that the shop window now reflects that valuable content far better. It would appear that the predominence of BS threads that we sometimes saw was for the reason that McGrath explained - a handful of highly active threads pushing the rest aside.

On the other hand I see the logic of Greg's concern. We'll have to see what happens.