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No member is deemed a troll unless and until he/she exhibits some sort of trolling behaviour. This place has seen more than its fair share of trolls in the past, and the forum being a ghost town today has nothing to do with new members getting their vanities or egos shot down, or senior members showing trolling symptoms because they want to see some sort of traffic going around these parts. It is like this because we made a hard choice couple of years back - do we need to have resident trolls who posted 200 times a day and got their post counts up to a thousand or ten thousand in no-time with nonsensical things (while indulging in board breaking tactics behind the curtains), or do we have a less-traffic board with fewer contributing members posting?

Needless to say, we chose the latter and kicked all those disruptive elements out. Word got out that trolls weren't welcome in HDC, and it spread rapidly. Since then, the traffic of this place went down by miles.

There were at least four huge waves of trolling within the past 5-6 years which caused many of our fine contributing members to leave the place, some of them quitting the Net entirely. That was the biggest loss HDC has faced. Ever. No amount of new members can cover that loss.

And we had ban-happy Mods too. Allmykids, who returned home drunk one night and banned any and every member she saw in her sight. Kpropain, who repeated that stunt awhile later. It doesn't take long to ban - just a click and you are off - but we take the whole picture into account, especially the afterwards part.

If we chose to ban every "mother-" or "bi-" or "cu-" or "ass-" poster in this site, trust me when I say this, only the Moderators will be left as the remaining active members.

And if that were true, you would have been banned the moment you called MD a "cu-" in the Women As Heroes thread too, Fuglystick. It would have happened anyway if we favored older members like MD. But since it didn't happen, and you are still here, it sends a pretty strong message to you, doesn't it?

We as mods have to take very difficult decisions. We discuss all this in our own private section of HDC (one which is hidden from everyone else's eyes), and the point of you reporting a post from MD has come up, and all of us have been through the said thread. The fact that both you and MD are still here shows that we Mods are still trying to keep the larger picture in mind and seeing if some sort of a truce can be hammered out between all of you.

MD has a high opinion of herself, and so does everyone else. Don't you have a high opinion of yourself and your knowledge in various fields of your life, including horror films? I do, pretty sure Elvis does too, NE has that in vintage horror, cheeba does, Doc Faustus does too in the talents he shows in his writings...its but natural. If you don't hold your own self in some sort of a self-esteem, it's difficult to survive. Behavioural symptoms of real life tend to flow into our online persona too, its a natural thing. At no point has any of us shown arrogance about that, I am sure of it.

We know you are a contributing member, and so is MD. Same goes for Elvis. That is what is saving you at the moment. OMCDave - even when being a good contributor to the Asian Horror section and having the luxury of being a senior member with over 10,000 posts couldn't save him, once his board -breaking tactics came out in the open. So don't think even for a moment that a senior member will not be banned just because he/she is senior - cheebacheeba was banned more than once (unjustly I might add).

People join everyday, and people are welcomed everyday. They then proceed to post around and see what reactions their posts gather from others, which then dictates their presence on a board - whether they choose to stay or go. There are people who joined a long time ago and still have around hardly 100-200 posts - Kemal, Weapon X, etc. You don't see them being flamed or made fun of, do you? Let's take newer members into account. For example, Psycho_d. Did anyone flame him? Nope. Because these are people who know what they are talking about. They are here to discuss horror, so they mainly stick to the Modern, Vintage and Asian Horror sections.

Its not about having balls. Its about having a clear mind and take sound judgements, taking the whole picture into account and thinking about the future. We are Moderators, not Judge Dredds. A definition of Moderation does not include execution on the spot. Its way, WAY different. It is one of the hardest and toughest jobs one can do anywhere - real life or the Net.