Understandably, the phrase 'banned on Gaia' carries very little weight outside of the site. In our community of 20-35k active users, there is very little to no fallout on any website other than Gaia for the actions expressed here. Unlike 4chan, reddit, facebook, etc. when the actions of site admins bother you... the ability to "go public" with that kind of information often falls to deaf ears on this site.
Gaia Online, without a doubt, has a culture of irresponsibility in accountability. What I mean is that users trust administrators and moderators up and down in the community sense. Gaia's culture uses pre-18th century reasonings to justify just about everything. For example, a moderator's action falls out of line? Contact another moderator. Contact usertalk. Anything 'higher up' must be better.
Unfortunately, Gaia demands moderation that is expansive and immerse, yet personal and fluent in the 'Gaia culture'. The Terms of Service was initially established to keep out spammers, hackers, botting, and other illegal acts. However, the ToS became very subjective and therefore left to interpretation. That interpretation, for many years, was created meticulously by moderators, the post-adolescent teenagers and college students. However, I thoroughly believe that the original writers and first enforcers of Gaia's Terms of Service were only focused on legal implications... and then simply what they didn't like (trolls, light spam, flaming, etc.)
Over time, users have matured. People who trolled when they were 13-14 years old grew up as well. Discussion, interaction, community development, etc. transformed into something all new. The Terms of Service never changed (nor did it ever need to), but what remained was its liberal and somewhat intolerable interpretation.
Either way, this is all to say that I know that many Gaians have been banned based on beliefs that they held (or still hold). The subjective nature of the Terms of Service is acceptable under the premise that moderation understands the advancement of discussion and prepares its enforcement accordingly.
You may not agree with what I believe. You may think I'm rambling on about nothing. But if you've been banned on Gaia, I just need to let you know that several of us have fought for your voice and have been banned for it.
And for many of us there is no other site to run to. There's no one in our lives that care. There's no one on youtube, facebook, life, etc. Our time and effort invested into this community can be gone in a matter of seconds due to a hotheaded moderator. So often times, the only support we have is the PM we get from a user saying something like "I know I would've got banned had I said what you said, but thank you so much for saying it", or "I saw your posts and totally disagree with how they handled it. Sorry you lost your account".
Its those kinds of private messages that get us through the day... because I don't believe that anyone who's spent 9+ years in this community and then, fighting for something he/she believed in, gets banned for it and has no where to turn to.
Site Feedback? "You're better off doing anything than getting banned and telling someone about it".
Gaia Community Discussion? "You're the kind of loser that ruins our site".
So... without rambling on further... If you've ever been banned before for any subjective interpretation of the Terms of Service... I stand along side you... and this is my tribute to all Gaians who have been banned for subjective reasons.
