Give Miniranks and Sythe Gold Of Scammers To The Victims

Describe the problem:
Users are scammed and usually are not made whole. When someone is scammed, it's unlikely they will be ever paid back by the scammer. There is the community repayment fund, but not all debts are eligible for that and that is a lottery, so chances of getting picked are slim. Most of the time an individual gets scammed, they end up taking the loss.

What current rule(s) tackle this problem:
1. Community repayment fund.
2. People having to pay back debts before making a return to Sythe.

Explain the change:
Rather than auctioning off Miniranks and Sythe Gold of scammers, give it to their victim(s) directly. If there is a means to make them whole again by giving them something of value from the scammers profile (e.g. Miniranks or Sythe gold), then we should do so.

Explain why this change will fix the problem:
This would fix the problem because it would immediately make those who have been scammed whole or partially whole should they choose to accept those mini-ranks. If someone is scammed by a User for $100, but the scammer has $50 of Sythe Gold/Miniranks, the victim should have first dibs on those. The value of the Miniranks/Sythe Gold could be determined by market value and negotiation between the victim & moderator, with the moderator having the final say of value based off of market value.

Side-effects:
The community repayment fund would lose revenue from the scammers mini-rank auctions. This is a very minor side effect as I believe the last one was done in 2021.

 

One potential way to avoid that issue is to enact this rule on all scams reported after *X* future date, as to not create unnecessary work for the staff team.

I still see it as a positive improvement as there are scams happening daily and this would reduce the scammed amount for some users

 

I like the idea but I disagree. I like the the auction method personally. The auction method gives community funds funding to assist with more repayments. And if the auctions became more than yearly and maybe move to quarterly, there would be more funds available throughout the year allowing more people to get paid back.

Edit: Here is a link to the approved suggestion for the miniranks auction.

[Approved] Community minirank auction

 

I agree that the auction method is a great way of giving the Community repayment fund a source of funding, however we should keep in mind that the Community repayment fund also gets funding through scammer repayments when they choose to return to the site.

The Community repayment fund is a great idea, but I do think giving people the option to be made whole or partially whole once they are scammed is better than saying "good luck" and putting them on the list.

 

auction system is better fair and easy to apply
so (no support)

 

Why do you think it's better? Wouldn't you say it's better to be immediately repaid as opposed to getting put on a list to hopefully be repaid in month or years?

 

Most miniranks have buy/sell offers in the sandbox marketplace. The Staff team could use those prices as a reference to come up with market a price for the mini ranks.


Using your hypothetical, if I was scammed by an individual for $200 who had 5 Miniranks worth $10 each (mentioned how we could come up with values above), I could choose to accept those as $50 paid towards the $200 debt or elect not to.

In my opinion this system allows users to be compensated by their scammer immediately as opposed to being put on a wait list and hoping.

The fact that scammers don’t often have miniranks should make this system even easier to implement. If the victim doesn’t want the miniranks, they could choose to not accept them.

 

No support. Majority of people making reports would not care about mini ranks. The only people that would actually care about minis would probably be long time Sythe users or donators. Most people scammed are new users or victims making guest accounts.