Well, of course they'd say that, now. And of course the human side of the equation couldn't remember Gardner any way but fondly.
But seriously.... As you said in your earlier post; Gardner's absence didn't last long. Probably about enough time for him to work his way up the human chain-of-command with a great WTF?
Let me re-emphasize the impact of the insane, robotic Moderator thing.
The community, at large, was already dismayed by the arbitrary nature of the moderation; and it's complete disregard, and ignorance of the nature of a community that had pre-existed, in harmony, for a dozen years.
It was a stunningly remarkable cap on this display of ignorance, by the Psychotic Moderataton, when it arbitrarily banished Gardner; which emphasized its complete ignorance of, even, who was Gardner Dozois.
It's no surprise that the disconnected (disconnected enough to hire a computer algorithm or an offshore sweatshop to do the moderating) higher echelon at Dell would have a softer memory of what chaos was happening in the trenches during the collapse of a long-standing, vibrant community.