Ok, so let's go for a nice answer.

"On another note, if you want to whine about it so much, instead of creating ANOTHER non-mod related thread, how about you start SOLVING the problem, by making mod related threads, instead of adding to it..
What a thought.." (cheesestix)

That's exactly like removing the salt from the sea by adding unsalted water to it. What a thought.

"then again i'm a firm believer in acting on something to change it if you don't it like rather than stop at moaning about it." (Metalbabe)

What is starting a topic to talk about it ? Is it moaning or acting on it?

"I too won't remove this forum, because we are all entitled to our opinion, and that is why the stupid forums stay as well. We all should have the right and ability to post what we want

 (within reason of course. outright bashing or rudeness or any form of offensive material will be taken care of accordingly) without having to worry about censorship.

if we think such a topic like "are facial tattoos stupid?" voice your opinion about it. there's a lot i don't agree with and there's a lot out there that i have different opinions about, but that is why we are all here to come together and discuss it." (Eaten)

Oh ... still I don't understand how such topics like "are tattoos trashy on females" or "is tattooing the whole face stupid" are doing on the site. Ain't they rude, offensive?

When Hellboy69 posted the topic "is tattooing the whole face stupid", I posted a poll named "is Hellboy69 stupid", to which everybody but Hellboy69 answered yes. This topic was rapidly removed because it was derogatory. To which I agree. Still I don't understand why asking it about a member may be considered derogatory, but asking the same thing about a specific mod or a gender is not.

Eaten, Cheese, can you explain me with simple words why a poll named "Is Hellboy69 stupid" was moderated, and why the two previous ones were not? Because my topic was personal and those directed against a certain kind of mods or a gender were not?

If it's just a question of being personal attacks, I guess I should post a topic like "are all Canadian  BodyMod moderators with long hair stupid ?" for instance. Nothing personal involved in it, and you'll certainly be quite happy to see that topic day after day. Right?

Then, back to the initial question.

A lot of nice people that used to be active simply are fed up with what they find here daily. Again, despite of the fact that the site is bodymod orientated, most pros who tried to become active here simply left, or became silent.

Why? How did it all happen like this? InkedNation for instance, which isn't so much bigger than Bodymod, has attracted hundreds of tattoo artists, top tattoo artists who are discussing technique, showing off daily their best works, sell their businesses, hire people, talk, meet... why do Bodymod totally failed and fails on a daily basis to attract pros?

Here I'm not putting emphasis on pros saying that they are worth more as human beings than other people. Of course we're all human beings. Still, in a moded community, pros are the core. Imagine a shop without piercers and tattoo artists, with just the customers ... meaningless, right? Well that's what we managed to build here as a community.

Why? Well we started not so long ago a discussion about the pro status. That would help of course. Still, that's not enough to attract serious people. Like it or not, Bob Tyrell came and registered, Shannon Laratt came and registered, Lukas Zpira came and registered, same for Tim Kern. That is, we had some huge names of the industry (not even talking about hundreds of worthy artists) who came in, had a look and decided not to take part in the community. why?

Well you have some part of the answer in my reaction. I think that if a top tattoo artist comes and sees that the two only active topics about tattoo are  "are tattoo trashy on females" and "is tattooing the whole face stupid", he'll leave instantly because he won't feel in the right place. I think that you, moderators, need to moderate more and avoid quite strictly any topic being judgmental or derogatory to any form of mods. Not necessarily delete them, maybe sometimes rename them. But still, bringing the site to a higher level relies significantly on the moderators.

Then, we're doing lots of positive brainstorming those days. Thinking about creating a pro status, an active member status (that should by the way automatically be granted to any pro once their pro status is certified), giving out ideas, and the inevitable answer to it is that Adam codes everything, and that Adam doesn't have the time to do it.

To which I have a fairly decent proposition : how about GNUing bodymod? How about open sourcing the code, discussing ethic problems together like we did about pro status and active member status - which was very good - and then have people being able to take part in the coding as well, and Adam mainly checking up the work and compiling the versions? We quite certainly have quite a bunch of ASP coders here. I'm sure that some would be quite enthusiastic about it.

Oh ... Cheese. Thanx for your remarks about my "inane comments" and my "foolishness". That's also part of the things you may want to change to help the site being bigger and better : avoid personal attacks as a moderator.