Why do people get banned

Gen's provided a good explanation of most everything. Because we're a support community, the staff takes member confidentiality very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that any breach of member confidentiality by a staff member is grounds for immediate termination from our staff. Fortunately, that's only happened a couple of times, quite a while back, and the current staff all share an understanding of the importance of preserving the privacy of our members.

In rare cases, for example, when we discover multiple identities, falsified stories, and the like, we will either share that information with the community, or require that the offending member share the information and apologize to the community. Again, because so many people are sharing so many vulnerable things here, the staff highly values authenticity of information being shared here.

EC is far more heavily moderated than almost any other online community, and that's one of the things that keeps it a safe place where people can post without fear of being flamed, ridiculed, or personally attacked.

Probably the majority of bans are for infractions of the off-site contact policy, which is particularly distressing to the staff because we try in every way possible to make it clear that isn't allowed (the ugly yellow banner, explanation when you sign up, our Code of Conduct, various other places) people either don't read or, annoyingly, sometimes don't care. Or they try to get around it... which we catch in a nanosecond, and doesn't win any sympathy points with the staff.

Finally, a lot of our moderation decisions are made with the intent of cultivating and supporting empathy. Empathy is the single most important thing the EC community provides, because empathy is a powerful antidote to feelings of low self esteem, shame, and other related feelings that are so intrinsically connected to the coming out process.