OS instead of BS designation

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From:
Date: 02 Dec 99 - 03:41 PM

Suggestions for a useful classification of threads

INFO?: Requests and follow-up notes on subject of folk and other old songs, music and instruments. No BAT, and only highly relevant BOS.
BOS: Bullshit On Subject of songs, music and instruments, I'll admit it isn't always BS. A better name for this category needs to be devised. OS is too vague. BS also need to be distinguished from trivial witticisms
BAT: Bullshit And Trivia on everything else, now the most popular category.
TFD: for idle thinkers that need directions to aim brain
ANN: Announcements of events, plugs for records/tapes/cds/etc., advertisements. Those 'You've gotta hear this' threads belong here. Citing folk and old songs by performer gives no information, it just gives plugs for one's favorite performer/s. Just Hero worship, so put them here, or better, on rec.music.folk

No threads to start without a proper prefix

Credit where due: 'by' should mean the author or composer. 'As done by' for performer/s, e.g., "Now westlin' winds"-by Gaughan; in the favorite Scots tunes thread. It's not by Gaughan, it's performed by Gaughan. It's by Robert Burns.

Statements with no citation of supporting evidence are often nonsense, no matter how firmly the author believes it. In the interest of saving space, I haven't always cited full references to my statements, but am always prepared to do so, promptly, if asked. I think if questions arise as to accuracy of statements the author should be prepared to answer them promptly.

There's no moderator or censor for this Forum. If it's not to die by trying to make it everything, the end result of which is being nothing, we need some constraints.

Not everyone visiting this Forum has a good background in the subject of folk and other old songs and music, and hoaxes and facetious questions and answers don't serve to educate them. Maybe we need another category for these. They are certainly out of place in INFO? threads.

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Dec 99 - 05:48 PM

Now, how come someone who takes all that time to tell us what we should all be doing (and getting on for half of what s/he says I might well agree with) feels it appropriate to post anonymously?

Failing to stick a name in - even a pretend name - just feels like bad manners. The net effect of that is to guarantee that whatever the anonymous poster has to say will be automatically discounted by most readers.

Maybe the finger slipped or something, and it wasn't intentional... (Though I wouldn't know how to post anonymously anyway, even if I wanted to)

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From:
Date: 02 Dec 99 - 05:53 PM

Thanks for calling attention to it.

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Dec 99 - 07:54 PM

So we're supposed to take it as read that the last anonymous poster is the same as the one before? I suggest if our friend should try leaving out the post as well as the name, that way s/he can be really anonymous.

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From:
Date: 02 Dec 99 - 08:28 PM

I guess that nothing can stand on its merits, it just might have a political agenda behind it, and we need to know who to blame it on. How about 'informed sources say....'?

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Dec 99 - 09:02 PM

That might hold in general public, but at the Mudcat, it is just plain good manners and common courtesy to post one's name. It's a bit like the neighbourhood child who rings the bell and runs.

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: Áine
Date: 02 Dec 99 - 09:19 PM

I consider anyone who intentionlly posts on this forum anonymously to be in the same class as vandals who spraypaint graffiti on buildings and scribble obscenities on bathroom walls, and those of us who have the courage of our convictions, and are willing to identify ourselves here when we express our opinions, should treat these invisible posters with the total disdain that they deserve.

-- Áine

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: Ánon
Date: 02 Dec 99 - 09:45 PM

All right if you insist. Now, can we consider the real questions.

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: Paul S
Date: 03 Dec 99 - 08:52 AM

In defence of people who don't post their names:

When I first started coming here, I was afraid to post, just out of general shyness. Then I started posting under a new name every time. There was no logical reason for it; somehow it just felt safer. Finally, a few months ago, I gained enough confidence to register.

I don't know why I needed this "introductory" period, but it felt a lot better.

I always feel better if I see a name, as well, but I can understand why someone may not want to post their's.

Paul

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Dec 99 - 03:28 PM

Easy to se whty anyione might feel a need to be anonymous, but that's what psudonyms and aliases are for. Leave out any name at all, and how is anyone supposed to be able to tell whether two nameless posts come from different people, or the same person?

But please kat, don't compare nameless posting to playing "Knock Down Ginger", which is an ancient, albeit annoying, traditional pastime, all written up in the folklore literature by the Opies, and opriobably others.P>

The best way, of course, is in a narrow street where houses have knockers on the doors, when the game is to tie the knockers together and rap on one of the doors and hide round the corner. The idea being that when the householder opens the door, finds noone there, and closes it, this operates the knocker on the opposite house. When the second householder opens the door and closes it, this knocks on the first house -- and so on.

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: Áon
Date: 03 Dec 99 - 03:43 PM

I am well aware that McGrath is not a BSer, and has contributed much good information to this Forum, but posting a real name just tells BSers (with monikers that are really anonymous) who to attack, and get things further off track.

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: Áon
Date: 03 Dec 99 - 04:31 PM

Whoops, I might have the wrong McGrath. Frank seems to have disappeared last July.

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Dec 99 - 08:06 PM

No,it's Kevin not Frank. As I said, being anonymous isn't the problem. But leaving off any kind of identifying label gets in the way of any kind of exchange of views. Which means that it conveys an attitude that an exchange of views isn't envisaged, just a bit of graffiti stating a position and asserting a claim to territory.

But the original post by the nameless one, who now I take it is the same as Aon (that's purely a guess on my part of course) was clearly argued and logically expressed. It didn't read like unattributable graffiti, which is why I expressed surprise, and speculated whether the lack of a name might just have been a slip up rather than a statement.

Saying it was logical and clearly argued doesn't mean I agree with itmore than some lf the way.

I quite like the idea of prefixes which are more informative, to give a better idea of which threads are worth dipping into when time is short.

And I also get irritated when people or documents say that a song is "by" the person who is best known for singing it, ignoring the person who wrote it, or collected it - though that happens all the time in the face-to-face world, and, as there, the only answer is for those who have the facts to chip away and put in the needed corrections.

Yes, and not everyone is as funny as they think they are - and that's something that happens in the face-to-face world as well.

But the distinction isn't between stuff that is appropriate to a folk-based site, and stuff that isn't and shouldn't be there.

It's much more between stuff that is interesting and cogent to whatever kind of thread that is going along (which doesn't mean it may not be trivial and lightweight at times - just as there are excellent somngs which are trivial and lightweight), and stuff that isn't - and that can include stuff which might be formally about music or songs, but is really about trainspotting. (Though I use that term as shorthand, and bear no illwill or contempt towards real trainspotters.)

But there's no way in an unmoderated forum - and from his or her post Aon (or whoever) appears to agree that that is what we want to keep - that you can exclude stuff that doesn't measure up to whatever standards you'd like to apply, even if there was any agreement on these things, which there never can be.

The price of freedom is eternal tolerance. All we can reasonably demand of each other is that we are reasonably polite and friendly and don't try to hurt each other. And maybe if a thread is getting a bit heated, bring in a song, the way Quakers bring in a silence.

"Let no man come into this hall,
Groom, page,nor yet marshall
But that some sport he bring withall,
For now is the time of Christmas.

If that he say he can not sing,
some other sport then let him bring,
that it may please at this feasting;
For now is the time of Christmas.

If that he say he can nought do,
Then for my love, ask him no more,
But to the stocks then let him go,
For now is the time of Christmas.

(Balliol MS, Richard Hill's Commonplace Book, 1500 1535; but I've modernised the spelling.)

The reason I put that in is that it is about what links everyone who visits Mudcat. We're willing to risk making fools of ourselves in public to help the party go better. This isn't true for all that many of the people around us, and that is a pity. But with that in common, it means we ought to be willing to put up with and respect each other - and most of the time, we do.

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: katlaughing
Date: 04 Dec 99 - 09:49 AM

Well said, McGrath! Love the lyrics!

tks, kat

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From:
Date: 04 Dec 99 - 02:23 PM

With original spelling, McGrath's song is #2 in Rossell Hope Robbins' Secular Lyrics of the 14th and 15th Centuries, 1952. Robbins notes several earlier publications of the song from the MS.

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: wildlone
Date: 04 Dec 99 - 04:36 PM

Looking at a BS thread the "Archers"I remembered that an actor in it was also a fine folk singer I knew I had one of the song he sang somwhere. It was not in the DT,I found the song in one of my books and posted it as a LYR ADDED thread so that at least might make some body happy.But I think our friend might be happier with a mirror on a stick so he can survey his rectum.

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Dec 99 - 06:12 PM

Back to leaving out our current pseudonym I see, Aon. Or rather, I surmise, since of course it might be a completely different nameless one. What an unsettling thought that is...

As for the song - well I took it from a book published in 1928 called "A Christmas Book - an anthology for Moderns", with Richard Hill's spelling from his Commonplace Book, 1500-1535. Which is no doubt the spelling used in the 1952 work cited by The Nameless One, (who may be the same as Aon, The Faceless One).

Whether Richard Hill's spelling was the original spelling I have of course no way of telling, since he is no longer with us. I assume he wrote it down in the current conventional spelling of his time, and I did the same. It seems a sensible practice.

One thing I left out was the title given to the song in the book I took it from:
"A SONG AGAINST BORES"

Whether that was Richard Hill's title I am not sure. However it is perhaps rather an apt title, in the present context.

And here is another brief passage which has a certain current resonance:

As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish to God he'd go away

(Which was, I understand, written by someone called Hughes Mearns, born in 1875. Except he wrote it slightly different from the way I've got it, because the folk process has been at work I'm afraid. As it will. The original version is in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations)

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: Áine
Date: 04 Dec 99 - 06:24 PM

A few quotes about bores:

Boor, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen. - Ambrose Bierce

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. - Christian Nestell Bovee

[A bore is] a guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary. - Walter Winchell

People always get tired of one another. I grow tired of myself whenever I am left alone for ten minutes, and I am certain that I am fonder of myself than anyone can be of another person. - Bertrand Russell

-- Áine

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 04 Dec 99 - 06:39 PM

A bore, or one with a two hour vocabulary....

If you see two guys talking and one of them looks bored witless, he's the other one.....

LTS

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From:
Date: 07 Dec 99 - 12:11 PM

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 11:26 PM

Refresh why Katlaughing does not like BS

Subject: RE: OS instead of BS designation
From: Sorcha
Date: 02 Mar 00 - 11:35 PM

Guest We think we know who: Personally I do not mind the "BS" acronym because it is now accepted in "Polite Society" as opposed to Bullshit. I don't really care if we call them BS or OS or PMS, as long as you can tell they are not MUSIC RELATED AND STAY OUT OF THEM!!! because NONE of us really want to hear any more of your non-music Rant of the Thread.