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Unjustified Bans.
I'm not sure how to start this, or whether I can keep this entry coherent. Often times when I write an opinionated piece of work it ends up jumbled with emotions and thus distorts the main point of the work to near invisibility. But, just the same...I'll give it a go.

I myself have never been banned. I was given a warning once but I deemed that fair because I had neglected to read the ENTIRE TOS and ended up breaking some copyright rules.. I have done so since then (though parts of it are still beyond me) and have thus avoided being banned myself.

Still, it would seem my current safety from being banned is in question. In fact, after repeated visits to the Q&A forums and a growing number of "Why was I banned?" threads popping up in there I am confident in saying we are all in some kind of danger of being banned. It can be said we always are, but the fact of the matter is that these recent bannings are becoming totally unjustified and downright unfair.

I give Gaian mods and Admins great credit, they work hard to keep this site updated with new things all the time. They regulate it as well as they can, but their strategy for the most recent waves of glitches and scams is WRONG. Period. I cannot change the fact that when a glitched item is sold and thus profited from is illegal. Nor do I feel that that rule is entirely unfair...in some ways selling glitched items for more than they are worth is wrong. My problem lies with something less noticeable, something that I can't avoid and neither can you.

Please be kind enough to read the following.

Quote:
Your account is permanently banned because you were the recipient of gold from an exploitation of a glitch on Gaia. You either received it for free or purchased it on eBay.

The ban is final

This is what I'm talking about. Are you beginning to understand my frustration now? How can you, or I, be punished for something like that? When we UNKNOWINGLY receive gold that had been previously gained from a glitch SOMEONE ELSE sold? How can we possibly know that any of this happened prior to our current purchase on the marketplace?

To put it simply, we can't.

To play devil's advocate for a moment, I can see why the mods and admins have chosen this path to take. It would seem they themselves cannot identify where the source of the gold from an exploited glitch comes from in the first place. Therefore, they simply ban whoever they can find that has possession of such gold in order to try and eradicate the original source. This in long term effect could work. But I say, it isn't worth it. It isn't right to punish those who have done nothing, and lose the support of its users. Gaia needs us to survive, they shouldn't be treating any of us in this way.

Banning innocent people for having received dirty gold AND NOT KNOWING IT is downright UNFAIR. Just imagine all the things you've worked for on Gaia. Your items, your gold, and in some cases your reputation. It is true that Gaia is just an online site, but even silly things like gaining gold, accumulating post counts and buying items is an accomplishment that stings when taken away.

To solve this problem, I propose that not only the mods and admins find a new solution but that Gaia as a whole work together to find a way to prevent this. There ARE other answers, unfair banning is not the only way.

If you have experienced such a banning and would like your say, feel free to post anything you like here (as long as it follows the TOS >.>" wink . Someone has got to say something, and if we all come together and demand this type of banning be eradicated, the makers of Gaia will have to listen.

Lost cause or not, I'm still going to try.


P.S: Ignore any typos >.>;;;;

Hoo... I definitely sign. I'm one of the people who got banned for benefitting from botting. This is the actual email they sent me:



When I recieved it I was like
"lolwtf no way what did I do?"

It turns out that when a friend of mine lent me some golden laurels and a kiki, he had traded with his brother who in turn had botted gold to repay my friend for something. Of course he got caught, and the lot of us and all our mules were banned.

Also, I recieved a PM from a stranger who thought I was the sister of my friend, asking me to give his brother a good swift kick in the cajones. Now, if I was able to, I would have gladly done it, for I had a small fortune on my banned account. I explained that to this guy and he then showed me a screenshot of his inventory and all the items he had lost. I was flabbergasted, to say the least. He had at least twenty sealed's from various months, and at least one of every slightly expensive item on Gaia that you could come up with. It was absolutely amazing, and I was surprised that he had been so calm about the ordeal.

I wish I had saved that message, but I accidently deleted it a while back while cleaning out my inbox.

In the end, I wrote a few strong-worded yet civilized emails to the admins and whatnot, and I never rexieved any sort of reply. I have tried many times to log in on my old account to see if it had been unbanned by some stroke of luck, but it is still banned, and I'm afraid that it will remain banned.

On December 7, 2006, it will have been a year since I was banned. I'm not exactly looking forward to it, but it will be nice to look back and see how much I've progressed from absolutely nothing in just one year.


I really hope this petition makes some sort of impact on the higher-ups.

I'll sign.
I'm relatively new to Gaia, so I'm rather fortunate to have this not happen to me. However, in the mere weeks that I've been here frequently, I've heard of over 4 people getting banned for alleged bottled gold, and all of those people have character testamonies from others saying that they wouldn't do such a thing.

This is not a way to impress new users. I'm currently questing a number of expensive items, and what if someone donates me items/gold from a person who bottled them? Why should I be punished for someone else's mistakes? Why continue my quest if the possiblity of this occuring is a very real thing? I wouldn't want to be the victim of a ban and lose all the gold/items I worked hard to collect, as many people here did.

Mods/Admins, I know you guys have a tough job about things, but at the very least, give some gold proper to the people unfairly banned. Not all of it, maybe, just enough to get them back on their feet. It's unfair, especially with the inflation of items nowadays.

Finally, to the people whom this occured to, i apologize. I don't know if something like this exists, but maybe we can all come up with a charity for people who were unfairly banned to help them out some. Just a thought.

Anyway, sorry for the long winded post; I do sign this. Good luck.

Absolutely... a right to a fair trial. We can't be treated as if we're taken for granted.

If the mods say "oh, there's too much to investigate and research," they need to retire and find someone who actually gives a damn about everyone else.

I'll sign.

I sign

A friend of mine was given an account on Gaia, with a large amount of gold and rare items, under the pretense that the giver was leaving Gaia for good and had no wishes to return to Gaia. My friend wasn't the only person given a loaded account, the Giver ( for lack of a better term for him) gave away, I believe 2 more accounts.
Well the gold was botted and the items were bought with the botted gold. My friend was tried to create a new account and was KOS'd because he was IP banned.
He doesn't want to come back to Gaia and I don't blame him.

Sure he made a dumb move by trusting this suspiscous move, but he knew the guy in real life so he didn't think nothing of it.

I was banned for reciving botted gold, which I didn't know was botted. I lost about 3.3million in items and gold. :[

This is seen through the eyes of the loyal community.

I am signing this as well. I believe that the way the admins handle this is pathetic. They have their ways of handling it, but still, it seems wrong. For one, how can people tell if the gold they get is from a bot or not? For two, why must they ban the account for just receiving it? For three, it could be an item... This banning system can LITERALLY get EVERYONE on Gaia Banned. This will not only hurt Gaian Admins, but also the loyal community.

I have not had an account banned on Gaia... The only way I will become banned is from something like this happening to me... I want it this to change. They need to find a new way to handle this...

Why can't they catch the botter BEFORE this happens?

AND... How do they determine who is a botter and who isn't?? I have been wondering this one for a long time now...



This is something opposite, but is seen through the eyes of an admin. (Read below)

There is one thing I was told by an admin because I decided to ask one... I asked them why people were getting banned for no reason at all. They told me that if I contacted them, and they found out that I wasn't at fault, then they would restore my account, that is if it happened... If you are wondering to why they ban, then ask questions later, it makes their life easier to keep all of the items/gold in one place.



I AM SIGNING THIS PETITION!!

I'll sign. Just because there are so many people that are getting banned for something they had no idea that they did. I'm honestly scared to get donations now or getting money from selling something. I don't want to have to ask the person if they botted the gold to make sure I don't get banned. I feel so bad for all of you people who have gotten banned.

I wasn't sure if I had signed this before... but I don't think I have, and I've checked the list of signatures *snuggles ctrl+F* XD


I frequent the Q&A forum, and I frequently see threads titled "why was I banned?" "wtf? I'm banned!" "how can I find out why I was banned?"

And a lot of the time, the reason is:

"for botting/profiting from botted gold"

And most of the people who post these topics, don't even know how they profitted from botted gold. And you know what REEEAAALLY sucks about this system of banning?

This:

User X bots gold and items
User X sells those items on the marketplace for more gold
User Y saves, works hard, and gets gold HONESTLY to get these items (which they don't know were botted)
User Y finally gets items, he/she is happy and satisfied that he/she worked hard and earned what he/she wanted
User X is discovered for botting
User Y is banned for working hard to buy items honestly, but those items were not obtained by the seller though honest means

Since when is the buyer responsible for what the seller does? It's not like they were in on some "huge botting conspiracy" rolleyes




Sorry for pointless post sweatdrop I just needed to ramble a bit. sweatdrop

Point is, I sign!

I, Lord Vann, sign your petition.

I've never had myself banned, but we must keep people from being banned for the unknown misuses of Gaia by others.

I think this is the most unfair, unjust and unreasonable reason to be banned. It is just plain bad luck that you happen to recieve botted gold. Any dedicated Gaia user could be banned for just accepting a trade. I think it is wrong that people bot and make it unfair because they don't earn their own gold, but it's worse that people earn their own gold and get banned because of botters.

I sign.
Big time.
See the large text?
XD <3

If you look at it as the worst of the two,
being innocent people getting banned vs. the badguys getting away,
I'd much rather risk the badguy getting away.
I mean
banning innocent people
doesn't seem just.
Go figure.
XD

Especially considering how ridiculously easy it is
to accidentally profit from botting,
that rule definately needs to be trashed.

I wholeheartedly sign this petition.

I've only personally heard of one banning from botting. I never personally knew Plexi_lexi, but I know that she has helped hundreds of Gaians because of her Kiki giveaway and anti-inflation store. I was shocked at the news of her banning.

Then I just got mad when I heard what it was about.

Let me get this straight. Plexi accepted a donation from someone and got banned for it. Because the donator decided to bot gold and give it to someone else.

Stuff like this just makes me sick.

I know so many people have already said this, but how are we supposed to know if someone has donated botted gold? It looks just the same - and functions, mind you - as regular gold! And there is no 'ask the donator if they had botted the gold' route, because obviously they could lie and say no. It's as if the only option to keep ourselves from getting permabanned is to not receive or give any donations and not to buy or sell anything on the Market or Exchange.

But what's the point of that? One of the points of Gaia, other than roleplaying and interacting with other people from various parts of the world, is to earn Gaian gold and dress your avatar to look cool. But with the prospect of botting, why would we even try to buy new things for our avatar? It's like, we could work for months towards an Angelic Scarf or something, and finally reach it with a small gold donation to push the amount you have versus what you need over, and you finally buy the item and put it on when BAM! You, the person you bought the scarf from, and the person that donated the botted gold to you are all banned!

Is this really fair? No! The members of the Gaian community that work long and hard for their items expect to be rewarded, not punished. It's like a first impression here on Gaia - your first act of misdeeds gets you on the 'to watch for suspicious activity' list of the mods, while fairplay is looked positively on. But with this system of banning, it blows the whole concept out of consideration.

Basically, what I'm saying, is this:

Mods, admins - LAY OFF US! If we get donated botted gold, WE'RE NOT GOING TO KNOW! The only way we could is if someone we knew personally was botting and we were aware of it, and if we were, do you honestly think we would accept anything from someone we knew was botting? Stop pointing the finger of accusation and permabanning us immediately and do a bit of investigation! It's innocent until proven guilty, not accused of guilt and forced to prove innocence!

I've seen several cases of banning innocents for that reason. Although Gaia does investigate each case in a long process and bans based on "evidence that is extremely suspicious." They also say you will be unbanned if you prove that evidence wrong. However, how can we prove their evidence wrong if we never know what evidence they used. This has a simple solution; give us the evidence.
The admins believe that one who bots once, will definately bot again. Therefore, they say temporarily banning a botter won't do much except give him another opportunity to bot again. I disaggree on this. Temporarily banning a botter on the first offense can potentially be enough to keep some botters from botting again, as well as keep some innocents from getting caught up in this. The problem that the admins and mods have with this is the long process taken to ban a botter. For them, once is hell enough. I'd say compromise and temporarily ban a botter once, and if they do it again, permaban them.
The admins also guarentee that all legitiment exchanges will be honored. This means the marketplace and trading is safe. However, questing can be dangerous because a botter will set up the trade with botted gold. The quester accepts without giving anything in return. That to a mod is suspicious and i have to admit if I were in their shoes, I'd find that suspicious too. This is likely to be a one time deal for the unfortunate quester. However, a temporary ban for a first offense and giving evidence to the quester can overall benefit the mods because the quester can point them in the right direction to the actual botter. Although, yes the quester will end up taking the temporary ban, I'd say that it's rare enough that a quester will recieve botted gold twice without botting to safely assume that they are somehow connected to the botter. Keep in mind, the questing system is coming out soon and will (hopefully) address this problem.
Third, for the person who got banned to be in contact with the mods, they need to make a mule account, fill out a feedback form and wait for a mod to find it. As some of us may know, that can be a pretty long wait. Therefore, create an e-mail address for the mods specifically dealing with permabanned accounts. That way, Gaians who get banned do not need to create a mule to work with the mods to get their account back.
Of course, this also opens another door that can deal with a problem in the permaban system itself. A botter (or a hacker, scammer, etc.) with a mule can offend again. And with that mule banned, he can create another mule. So, what good will a permaban do if anyone can create an infinite amount of accounts, given they can get an infinite number of free e-mail addresses (which is easy to do) regardless of the number of bans recieved? What the admins can now do is put a cap on the number of permanent bans an IP address can have before the IP address being banned altogether. (That way, if a user reaches the cap and is innocent of the last ban, they can still contact the mods and plead their case.) My suggestion would be three bans (five at most).

In conclusion, I believe that Gaia should AT THE VERY LEAST provide the evidence they used to ban you in the ban notification e-mail they send. That way you actually have the slightest chance of being unbanned. They should also: a) temporarily ban on the first offense and permaban on the second, b) provide an e-mail address for people who get banned to still be able to contact mods without creating a mule and c) put a cap on the number of permabans an IP address can get before the IP is banned altogether.

This petittion has my support.