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 Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 12:55 am
Tanasha lizbot Hi, I'm contacting you concerning the link in your sig that leads to this page: http://www.pvps4free.com/default.aspx?r=42508Unfortunately, such links fall under VI:6 in Gaia's terms of service. Quote: While using the GAIA Online Experience, the User may not: 6. Upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, "junk mail," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation. Please remove the link as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation, -lizbot Gaia Online Moderator If you like, but for the record: That site is not a pyramid scheme under US law, which holds jurisdiction over both myself and Gaiaonline, and who's definitions of terms are presumed to be used by every legal document within said jurisdiction. It is no more "unsolicited or unauthorized advertising" or "promotional materials" than a hotornot.com link, or most other hyperlinks. The "junk mail" and "chain letters" parts are irrelevent. The statement "any other form of solicitation" also applies to "Help me get a Halo" threads and sigs, links to places where people can send a user money, amazon wishlists, "Help the Tsunami victims" links and all other humanitarian causes, etc... I would suggest rewording it to have a more definate scope, but then again I don't even know how many times have my suggestions for changes to the ToS to make it at least *somewhat* capable of serving it's purpose - providing Gaia a legal shield from lawsuits. So while it may fall under part of section VI:6 of the ToS, the part that it falls under is legally unenforcable due to lack of enfocement. The ToS does a decent enough job of providing the users with a set of rules to follow, but does so in a manor which is confusing to Gaia's target audience. Gaia needs to have an actual lawyer look the ToS over if it's to provide any legal defense, or at least a legal aid, unfortunately the admins refused at least one offer to have it done for free. I also want it on record that at no point did I even *imply* that other users may get something out of it, I stated that the goal was to provide benefit to me with no other claims. I have not in any way misrepresented any facts, there is no scamming or defrauding involved. Also for the record, I regrent that users are no longer reasonably capable of communicating with the admins directly, as there are several issues I would like to discuss with Lanzer at some point. Yes, what I've said is the requisite "This is dumb" response to any mod action, only better. 3nodding Anyway, as you can see down here, the link has been removed. | | | V I reserve the right to repost any and all PMs I recieve, as well as any responses, and I can't think of a better time to do it than when an authority figure tells me to do something. If I get banned, I can safely say that it's because of this response. Too bad Gaia doesn't have free speech anymore, I miss those days. crying
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Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 4:03 pm
If you get banned, i'm sure a lot of people would roit *evil smirk*
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Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 4:38 pm
Hikaru Yui If you get banned, i'm sure a lot of people would roit *evil smirk* *slaps on hockey mask and sheats a hockey stick* Ok Im game whee
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Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 5:16 pm
Lindy_Knightstar Hikaru Yui If you get banned, i'm sure a lot of people would roit *evil smirk* *slaps on hockey mask and sheats a hockey stick* Ok Im game whee (sheats?) *starts rumageing threw his hightech gadgets and pulls out some rocket launchers, grenades, and laser weaponry, as well as a power suit* bring them on!
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Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 6:18 pm
I hope you don't get banned, Tanasha. That's crap, is what that is. They can't ban you for putting this topic up, or they'll be infringing on freedom of speech even further.
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Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 9:41 pm
*GRiffin enter dressed in suit and with a briefcase*
Ok you ahve your lawyer beside you, Im with you chief...in case is needed my briefcase has a DE .50 inside xd
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Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 10:10 pm
(hey i just got a blue gift box from this thread xd
i got a good feeling you whont get banned without a fight.)
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Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 9:35 pm
pfft, she has me on her side....no noobie mod can come up against the first mech pilot on Gaia >/ (unless they ban me for saying this sweatdrop )
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Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 10:10 pm
(now i got a turnk from your thread. i do think you will get banned.)
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Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 10:19 pm
I was kinda being sarcastic about the whole "banning" thing, I just thought that was a stupid call on the part of lizbot and I wanted to share.
I feel there was *nothing wrong* with that link, and if there was then it wasn't because of that section of the ToS.
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Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 1:41 pm
Well it didnt do anything to my comp nor did it advertise anything besides getting you a laptop XP
It WAS a stupid call and uh....yea...as i stated above, if you get banned, there will most likely be a riot.
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Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 9:15 pm
I've decided to make this my general I'm-doing-something-to-push-the-envelope thread Tanasha Akahana Why Gaia is NOT going to become Neopets. eek You know, I am so damn tired of people whining about Gaia becoming the social hell that Neopets is. Sorry to any QnFers that think this is misplaced or don't wanna hear it, as a lurker in this forum I've heard that phrase for the umpteenth time today, and I need to get this off my chest. I have been on Gaia and Neopets an almost equal amount of time, for the past year and a half or so. I've had experience with both. They remain radically different and I see evidence that they will remain so. True, they are both wildly popular gathering places, but there are too many important differences for them ever to be related to each other in any other way. Gaia is far more organized and its very core is user communication and interaction, and the admins have definitely shown deep interest in preserving those aspects. As a member of the "I will hurt people if the admins let Gaia become Neopets" group, I can state that most of the "Gaia will become neopets!" exclamations are based on selling-out and the userbase. Gaia isn't selling ad space in their mini-games (yet), but 'donation' items are a farce disguising a sale. Gaia has a userbase that - while being just as dumb - is mostly in the 10-16 range compared to Neopets 8-14 range. Akahana 1. Customizability and User Interaction Gaia has something Neopets has never seemed to have: it allows much more creativity and individuality. Your avatar is nearly infinitely unique with the plethora of item combos you can have, and your signature is bound only by a few limits. The most expressive things Neopets gives you is perhaps a customizable storefront/guild, a funky little webpage/userid, and a text-based signature in the so-called "forums" which also only allow you to have earnable(no custom) avatars. Therefore, I have often found in my forays within Neopets that the other users seem to be very faceless identities and I'd never remember that user if I saw them again in the "forums" or even visited their shop, since what you can decorate your shop with is limited. However on Gaia, I see very highly unforgettable siggies and avatars. I feel like I'm dealing with individual people, not faceless entities screaming at everyone to look at their equally generic pets. (I mean, come on, you can't even visually equip your pets with anything or play with them, much less have your pets interact with other pets. My Tamagotchi's more interesting than that) However, Neopets allows users to have customized webpages. Neopets is also geared to the portion of the populace that's still trying to learn to *not* chew on the keyboard let alone type, while Gaia is geared to the portion which is supposed to be learning how to type English but *isn't*. Akahana 2. Item availability and usage I see people bitching about greed on Gaia all the time. How about they try buying one of the average items on Neopets? The stores are insanely understocked, especially when you take Neopets' HUGE user population into consideration. In a Neopets-based economy, imagine questing for a 15k Dark Cape. Now imagine refreshing the page for an hour straight at the store to even get a CHANCE to buy it, and even so, it'll probably be bought out from under you. Finally , you cave and buy it in the Marketplace for 150k, TEN TIMES THE NORMAL PRICE. surprised That is the nightmare of Neopets. That sort of greed is commonplace and universal throughout the users, I tried to raise a cause against it but people just told me I was too lazy and "that's the way it is." That's mostly why I left Neopets. *Points above her head" over 35mil pure at last count, IF you can convince somebody to sell in the first place. Most of Gaia's income isn't from ad sales, it's from people buying donation items so they can sell them for gold. Neopet's economy is fueled by getting rare items you want for their usefulness, Gaia's economy is fueled by greed, ego, and a bastardized take on the stock market. Akahana People can complain about the rising prices of the donation letters here , but honestly, they're much more easier to obtain than many of the standard items on Neopets. Donation items are SUPPOSED to be special and hard to get. Don't you remember they are supposed to be a symbol of virtue and money spent on our beloved Gaia? Now, if they started to limit the clothes in the stores, THEN I'd start complaining. Virtue? People buy them to sell them. Period. They stand for speculative buying and appreciating value over time. They're not supposed to stand for anything, they aren't supposed to be hard to get, they were SUPPOSED to be a thank-you from the admins that people got because they looked cool and they could wear them. Any meaning donation items once had has long since been lost, and I've yet to see anybody disagree who *isn't* sitting on a pile of '03 and/or '04 letters. Akahana 4. Target Audience and freedoms I know this is probably the main reason why people think Gaia is taking the Neopets route. So many n00bs. Well, I have news for you. THEY'RE EVERYWHERE. Just get used to it. But even so, even some of the worst n00bs here only represent the STANDARD user on Neopets, but I don't think it'll get too much worse here. Wanna know why? Most of the n00bs have fairly low attention spans and are attracted by the shiny avatars at first. But they leave after bumping in the chatterbox for a few days because it inevitably gets boring-they just don't get that the point of the site is posting real messages, socializing and accumulating wealth OVER TIME. Indeed, Neopets has a far smaller focus on socializing. However: Akahana Many people like to claim that with the arrival of more flash games and the battle system that we'll drown in a sea of n00bs. I don't think so, personally. The n00bs will be playing the games and thus draining them from our sacred forums. razz That's my view on it, anyways. Even if the n00bage is too much for you, there are numberless havens you can enjoy thanks to the diverse forums sections and guilds. Every forum here has its own personality and set of characters and there's one for every mood, it seems, for me at least. ... which is vastly similar to neopets; a horde of users who do nothing but play the mini-games and amass items for trading, and only venture into the forums to abuse people. Worse than neopets is the obvious: With an RP section and a large n00n segment of the userbase, there will be an endless supply of idiots to ruin any hope of decent RP. Akahana Neopets seems to have no tolerance for nonsense whatsoever and it gets many people frozen with very little notice. Which is similar to Gaia, where many users are warned or banned by the mods for asinine reasons. I had a friend who got banned 'cause she was sharing passwords with somebody who was sharing passwords with somebody who was sharing passwords with somebody who got pissed at their now-ex friend and cried "hacker"; if it weren't for my having a couple of mod friends, she would still be banned. The mods refused to even consider unbanning the rest of the people in that chain. Back when he first became a mod, Danjel had a bad rep for deleting threads when he started to lose an argument. I don't know if he still does, because I left when ED was too neutered to fulfill it's purpose; a free forum for serious debate where you could leave the kid gloves at home. Gaia needs more mod s to handle the workload that the horde of stupid kids produces, but it needs less mod ding. It also needs a way to appeal the arbitrary decisions. I can't imagine that Neopets' ToS could be nearly as bad as Gaia's. Akahana I do understand that sites must become stricter as they grow larger, but there are ways to uphold a laid-back, free-speaking atmosphere. No, there isn't. It's actually *easier* to be less restrictive as it takes less effort to maintain 'lower' standards. Akahana Gaia's wise choice to cater to teens and up as well as having a forum's traditional mod system lets the community do that. Neopets, on the other hand, has all sorts of filtering, you can't post links to other websites in any of the "forums," and you will probably get frozen if you manage to say the word "butt" somewhere. That's because the Gaia admins know that if they implemented a filter, people would start showing up at Lanzer's place with nailbats and crowbars, and not for subduing the requisite zombie-like creature. Akahana They nail accounts left and right, for little-to-no reason. Gaia handles things much better I believe, and while I do agree it needs improvement(a little too loose, damn those trolls), it doesn't seem the admins are gonna-overcorrect things and start restricting us. That seems to be totally against the spirit of the site, and I'm sure the admins know that their beloved users would leave in droves and be replaced by mindless spammers and bumpers. What Gaia *NEEDS* is an adults-only section that requires a credit card to enter. As everybody there would be legally-in-a-court-of-law confirmed to be over the age of 18, there would be little need for mods. It would be a place of thread-owner moderation, flamewars, *true* free speech, and porn. I doubt the admins will do so, however. Akahana So please people, for the love of Gaia, stop saying that its degrading to Neopets. Gaia is an entirely different site with entirely different goals and an awesome set of users. It is on its own path. Let us be content to enjoy what we have, never mind what we THINK it will become. Have faith. The last time I had faith in Gaia, I was let down. Now I'm watchdogging to keep the admins from screwing-up. If you honestly believe Gaia won't become like Neopets, then let the doomsayers say doom. Otherwise you sound like the only person you're trying to convince is yourself. Akahana Basically: 1. We have many more creative freedoms than Neopets ever had You obviously weren't on neopets when it was as young as Gaia is now. Akahana 2. The economy is much more user-friendly The 'economy' is a sham of abuse and greed. Akahana 3. n00bs are everywhere. get used to it. They lose interest in Gaia fast enough to keep ourselves mostly pure. And the flash games/battle systems will draw them away from the forums once they are released. The flash games will keep the n00bs attention, and they will proceed to use the forums to release their pre-teen angst through abuse. Akahana 4. We have one thing that I doubt the admins will ever truly hinder: freedom of speech and expression. Oh? We really have free speech? We can't post ANYTHING from the anarchist's cookbook. We are not allowed to discuss sexual perversions such as BDSM, except for ones with a large enough userbase to turn Q&F into a sea of hellfire, like the furries. We are not allowed to post anything "objectionable", which means anything that a user complains about. Heck, post this in a thread in chatterbox and see how long it goes before getting deleted: Subjectline: Question: How do you make a baby cry twice? Message body: Answer: Wipe your bloody d**k on it's teddy bear. Long story short, I've been here since the early days, and Gaia has been heading in the direction of Neopets for a LONG time. If you haven't seen it move that way, I'd say it's probably because you haven't been around long enough to tell.
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 12:05 am
http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pt=1105343758&p=265075565#265075565Tanasha Cassidy Peterson Tanasha Feel free to ignore that "advertisement" part of the ToS for the most part. That's almost exclusively there to stop spammers. You're allowed to pimp your thread, quest, mini-shop, shoutbox, etc... I occasionally wonder if you're allowed to put paypal donate buttons in your sig, but that's a decision that the admins - not the mods - should be the ones to make. I said "for the most part" because you are NOT allowed to spam, which I also stated. "Advertisement" is a subjective term, not an objective one; a bump may or may not be inappropriate depending on a variety of factors: A: Is the poster a regular in the thread? B: Is it on-topic for the thread? C: Is it in chatterbox? D: Did the thread owner request that people bump the thread? If they're a reg, then it's between them and the thread owner. If it's on topic, it's fine. If it's in chatterbox, it's a bit innane to complain about spam in a forum dedicated to spam. If the thread owner asked people to bump, then they should specify that people should not bump with links. Keep in mind that I mis-read the OP as being about sigs, and not iSigs. Cassidy Peterson Also, PayPal is a super-nono. No using Gaia to make real money. The ToS says you can't make money off of Gaia, but that doesn't mean you can't let Gaia members give you money - assuming the anti-scam rules don't kick-in. It's a context related question too - Would the mods ban me for sticking a tsunami-aid paypal link in my sig (I would have to pull out the nailbat for that - in fact, I think I'll add one now)? One requesting aid in paying for little timmy's medical expenses? One for replacing broken computer equipment or paying the ISP bill? Where is the line? Cassidy Peterson Saines, I'd say that "feed my pets" posts fall under the same rules as any other form of advertisement post. They are uninvited solicitations and I believe they should be treated as spam just like other advertisements. Posts? Yes, barring the above criteria. Sigs? No.
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 2:04 am
Here's one to piss you all off, from here: http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5460401&start=15&postdays=0&postorder=ascTanasha Jakobo As for paypal / donate buttons in signatures, no that wouldn't be allowed since we do not allow transaction of non-gaia gold for gaia items (which is usually it's purpose). Not to mention, PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy states that placing PayPal buttons onto sites that you are not the controller or provider for is against the AUP and could get your account suspended. Sorry it took so long to reply, PayPal's ToS is a bit wordy (and huge) ^^; IIRC you can have the link "with consent", I was just wondering what the official GaiaOnline stance was, regardless of paypal's rules. Anybody who complains about this donation link in my sig WILL get a facefull of nailbat, even if I have to find somebody halfway around the world to do it for me: | V Moderator Edit - Sorry..though your intentions are good, linking to a Paypal Account not part of GAIA Online is against Paypal's AUP Yep, a coward removed a tsunami donation link and disabled my sig.
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 1:03 pm
Jakobo Tanasha http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pt=1105348510&p=265091054#265091054 My signiture has been disabled, and I did not recieve a PM regarding the incident. The mod is a coward; they know people would be against them if they said who did it, and acted silently in hopes that they could let it slip by. I'd have been willing to play ball if they *had* the balls to call me on it and try to work something out. Aside from being a breach of protocol, it's just plain offensive. By the by, would you put this on Gaia's main page for all (users+guests) to see? [URL=http://tinyurl.com/4dftc][img]http://tinyurl.com/72xhf[/img][/url] Or if you don't want to link directly to the donation page: [URL=http://tinyurl.com/7ykcy][img]http://tinyurl.com/72xhf[/img][/url] As an aside, did you get the PM-mail proposal, our of curiosity? To the donation issue, I cleared that up with the moderators. The Tsunami Relief Fund one is fine, however, PayPal forbids the use of the paypal Donate button or Make a Donation Button (which links into Paypal's payment gateway) on any site you are not the controller or provider of. This is to prevent people from mass-spamming, botting, or otherwise advertising a donation link under a false guise. The Tsunami Relief Fund does not have an Payment Gateway, and it's link to it is clear and concise. Additionally, there is nothing in the AUP regarding the Tsunami Relief Fund or Paypal related charity collections. For the image to be on the front page would be a decision not only by myself, but the other Administrators, and it will likely not happen, just so that you know. As for the mail suggestion, I did get that, however, we don't have the server capacity or capability to increase PMs to 2-5mb, offer POP access, gaiaonline.com emails, etc. Since Gaia Online is not a messaging service, these while okay ideas, are very low priority compared to the housing system, battle system, and many of the other things we promised would come with our Beta version upon its completion. Thank you for contacting an Admin. ~Jakobo Follow-up, so I don't leave you with the impression that this went unresolved.
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