[Denied] Catalogue rules that derive from disputes

[President]

Hi,

Most of the rules on Sythe are found (non-exhaustively) right here: The Official Sythe.org Rules

In a lot of disputes, the situation tends to be unclear and rules cannot be applied one-to-one. Either because the specific rule allows for a lot of discretion, because the situation falls just outside of the scope of the rule, or something else.
Taking into consideration that clarity is super important, the fact that ruling have sometimes been contradictive due to the passing of time, advancement of new staff and especially the lack of systemizing rulings I propose to do the following:

From now on (or in retrospect), catalogue important rulings which imply clarity, an explanation or elaboration of certain rules / or situations. This doesn't need to be a lot of work. Just write down what was the core-question of the dispute and what was the conclusion and link to the catalog in the rule-section.

A follow-up question can be whether this catalog will be public or not

What benefits does this have?
-Spares a lot of time by avoiding shortening/avoiding discussions that have happened in the past. Analogies can be found and all the arguments and considerations have already been laid down in the open
-More precise and accurate ruling that can be substantiated far better. The community will respect rulings more
-Principle of equivalence: equal situations should be treated equally
-More clarity and certainty. If a Member wonders whether something very specific is allowed or not he will just be able to look it up

 

I support. It supports a better understanding of the rules as well and it can help make things more clear.

 

[Inklyy]

100% support this. There should be clear ruling in nearly every single dispute, with the exceptions being the case-by-case, not the other way around.

 

[RuneChips]

Support 100%. It will make it easier to understand from a user POV what the rules really are

 

A follow-up question can be whether this catalog will be public or not

For almost all situations, these are somewhat cataloged in our staff discord. It is very rare that a situation comes up that has not happened in the past. If a staff member can not come to a decision alone, we will come to a discussion with at least two- three other staff members to come to a conclusion, most of the time drawing from past reports. The harder reports are stalled on until we have our vc meeting with the lord boomer. Even when the report is harder and or more in-depth and has similarities to a older report it will still be necessary to get a second or third opinion because no report are ever exactly the same. One word in a chatlog can change the entire outcome of a report, it honestly comes down to a case by case scenario, which is why staff has the ultimate say so in reports.

 

[Superfluous]

tl;dr - No

Sythe doesn't operate like case law in that specific rule decisions can be tied to certain reports. While certain reports set precedent for future ones, rules are rarely created in a reactionary sense like your original post suggests.

Usually the way this works is either: 1) a staff member says "hey do we really not have a rule about XYZ?" in which case we discuss and add a rule, or 2) we see a few reports about a common theme (e.g. someone claiming they are the OO of an account when that is not true), which prompts a discussion which prompts a rule clarification. There are logistical challenges with tying both of these "paths" to individual reports, and frankly the benefit of having all of this codified in the rules is irrelevant for almost all users. I certainly don't want to do the additional legwork for something that is just not helpful in 99% of cases, especially when Sythe's search functionality is as good as it is.

The other challenge is that future reports won't always fit nicely into precedents set in past reports. For example, what do we do with a report about an account for account trade where one account is recovered, the other is anti-scammed, some payment occurred with BTC without a fee discussion beforehand, and one of the users was DNT'd at the time? Reports like this are nightmares to resolve as is, and trying to fit them neatly into past reports' precedent isn't always possible or helpful. I also wouldn't want that example report to set precedent for anything, even if we did change some rule after having dealt with it.

 

[Superfluous]

tl;dr - No