Hi, Roger - I hope you'll be back. I hate to see us surrender a good, comfortable home to the bullies of the world. They've taken far too much turf on the Internet already. I've been distressed by this most recent flareup - even the good folks seem to be snapping at each other now, and taking offense where no offense is intended.
In the past, several of us have gotten together to calm things down by posting music stuff like crazy, but it doesn't seem to be working this time. Too many people are taking the bait and belaboring the negative stuff, and it's bringing the spirit of the whole place down. I spoke to you rather curtly in the "censorship" thread about this - I'm sorry if my words stung, but it is of utmost importance for us not to contribute to the destruction of the spirit of Mudcat by dwelling too long on the negative side of things.
It's up to all of us to decide what to do here. It's not the bullies that are binging us down here - it's the well-intentioned people. We've got a heated, 80-message debate going about Mudcat censorship that really doesn't exist (except in a very few, isolated instances) - we've generated a lot of hard feelings about sonething that really isn't an issue. We've got all sorts of people taking offense at things said with no offense intended - or at things said by people who should be ignored. We've got a million words of absolute crap from people trying to solve this mess - and only making it worse in the process.
There has been a combination of factors that have made it downright unpleasant around here lately, and I wish it would stop. It's up to all of us to decide what we want to do here. My opinion is that all this verbiage serves to make matters worse. We need to get back to talking about music and good times, or we might as well all just leave. We're destroying ourselves.
Don't take the bait, folks. Don't talk about this stuff any more. Stop taking offense at what people say. If you have nothing to say, don't post a message just to fill up space. (Non-musicans have plenty of good stuff to contribute to this forum, so please don't feel I'm saying you shouldn't be here - but we all should THINK before we post)
Talk about folk music, for heaven's sake!
Goodbye, Roger. I hope you come back. You're a good guy.
-Joe Offer-