Minor Change to Pardon Requirements

I had this idea a few nights ago and he said it was a good suggestion.

I have noticed a lot of users who have been banned for scamming have attempted to contact their victims prior to their first pardon attempt and the attempt has been unsuccessful, usually due to the victim being inactive.

Let's be honest, that first pardon usually doesn't pass so they continue pardoning every 6 months or so.

However, during the past 6 months (or 1 year, 1 and a half, etc, depending on how many times they've attempted to pardon), said victim may have been active again on Sythe or may even be active currently.

However due to the fact that the user doesn't really give a shit about refunding their victim, and only meeting the minimum requirements to be eligible for a pardon, 9/10 times they haven't attempted to contact their victim since their previous pardon or anytime recently, and the victim may have missed out on a chance to receive their money back because the scammer has already tried contacting them once several months ago and not bothered doing so again since then. I feel with the current requirement for a pardon being attempting to pay back victims sometime prior to the last month, but with no expiry date, there is a sort of loophole provided for scammers so that only really minimal effort is required to right their wrongs and return stolen money/goods to their rightful owners. There are also some other ways i've seen people try to work around repayment but this is the most common.

Which is why i'm proposing that instead of just requiring a pardoning user to have attempted contacting a victim sometime prior to the past month, the requirement is changed to:
-If the offense it at least 6 months old or the user is now pardoning for the 2nd+ time, they must post an updated re-payment attempt that is not only at least 1 month old (as per the current requirement) but no older than 6 months(for users who haven't bothered attempting a second/third/w.e pardon attempt since a first attempt that was a year or more ago, or users whose offense was over 6 months ago and they have not yet attempted to pardon.) I feel this will cut down on the amount of people trying to pass off the fact that they sent a message to someone on skype a year or two years ago as a valid attempt at repaying them.
-If the victim has since the scammer's previous pardon attempt posted updated contact information, said scammer should be required to contact them via that information as well, not just the MSN they posted once in 2011 which it's unlikely they're going to be using anymore for obvious reasons. (This is another way i've seen people attempt to avoid paying back their victims as i've mentioned above, just not as common.)

 

Is this really a problem that occurs?
If the repayment hasn't been attempted in a few months the thread should be locked.
I'd say that's common sense.

 

I've noticed it less as of late but yeah there's still people popping up from time to time passing off some BS old repayment attempt as valid. A somewhat recent example being:
http://www.sythe.org/dispute-forum-archive/1855311-chicken-noodle-ban-evading-pardon.html

He tried passing off the repayment attempts from his previous pardon at the end of 2014 as valid, when even then they weren't correct.
http://www.sythe.org/dispute-forum-...e-requesting-pardon-scamming-ban-evading.html

As you can see he had said upon posting this that FangZ hadn't been active since 2011 and Shoop hadn't been active since May. Both of these were incorrect at the time and were most certainly incorrect when he tried passing them off as valid recently before being told to make a new contact attempt. Shoop had been active only 20 days or so before his last Pardon was made and Fang Z had made a number of posts in the previous 2 months showing he'd at least somewhat been around, and was even active as recent as 3 months ago. But he was still trying to pass off repayment evidence from his first(?) pardon attempt and as a result effectively robbed Shoop and Fang Z each an attempt at getting their money back from him because he was too lazy to give a shot at contacting them again.

Some users are just kind of ignorant and it's an honest mistake, some users specifically try and use this to their advantage to lower the chances of making contact with their victims so they don't have to bother paying them back, meanwhile it looks like they care about refunding the person when they don't.

 

If this is the case then definitely. I thought that's how it was at the moment, but it's not, it should be.

 

According to:
http://www.sythe.org/request-pardon...irements-rules-avoid-thread-being-locked.html

It technically only has to be at least one month old, with no limit on how old it can actually be, resulting in evidence of repayment attempt being reused for a year or longer.

I notice some staff request a pardoning user to make a more recent attempt here and there, but there's no written requirement for that, and as a result some people get away with it by only adhering to the minimum requirement (any given contact attempt at least a month old.)

As I somewhat mentioned to a lesser extent, i've noticed the occasional pardon that shows someone attempting to contact a user via some random email they haven't posted using since 2011, which may be the only available contact information in certain cases (victims who haven't been active in years or have since then been private about their new contact info and haven't made it public), but this also sometimes happens when there's new contact info available even as public as attached to the victim's profile, which the scammer hasn't even bothered trying.

 

If attempting a pardon, the person requesting the pardon should have evidence of an attempt to refund no older than 31 days. This should apply for any and all pardon attempts, no matter how old and/or how far apart they are. This should be common sense. When granting a pardon, the biggest concern is that whoever is pardoned might scam again, should they be allowed access without need to refund due to inactivity. If we do not take this seriously, it's going to turn out ugly.

It's time we take a step in the right direction and make sure pardons are handled properly and thoroughly.

 

The current requirement has it being at least a month old so there's at least some time to allow the victim to reply, otherwise users attempting to pardon would be attempting to contact the victims the day before or the day of their pardon.

It could be a shorter time period requirement than the 6 months I suggested but it shouldn't be too short either.

 

I'm sorry, I seem to have misconceived the point of the thread; I blatantly posted without thinking beforehand.

Yes, it should be allowed whereas users may pardon sooner than once every 6 months. A user should be able to make this request once every 2 months, warranted they've supplied legitimate up-to-date evidence supporting their claims.

Proclaimed requests are submitted all the time, and most of the times the evidence submitted is authentic and according to requirements, but there is sometimes that one person attempting to slide through evidence that is per OP's description.

I support.

 

I wasn't arguing that they should be allowed to pardon more often than 6 months. Once every 6 months is a good time period lol.

I'm suggesting that the requirements to be eligible to pardon be changed to make it somewhat more likely that the victim will be receiving their money back before the scammer is allowed to pardon. A fair amount of people pardoning for scams end up re-using the same proof of contact attempts for repayment pardon after pardon and this will more or less be a written requirement that will put a stop to that and make contact attempts slightly more likely to be answered.

Not sure if you thought I was suggesting that pardons be allowed more often than 6 months and were agreeing with me (it seemed kind of that way from how you said it) or if you're saying you agree with me and you're offering another potential change. If this is the case I don't really agree considering I see 6 months as a decent amount of time that the scammer should be focusing on repaying the people he's stolen from as opposed to getting un-banned. If they were allowed an attempt at getting un-banned more often than every 6 months the focus would be constantly spamming the pardon forum trying to get un-banned. In all honesty users shouldn't be pardoned at all unless their victims have been repaid, but obviously I understand that sometimes they just can't contact their victim for repayment. However some users take advantage of this and use it to their own personal advantage by deliberately lowing the possibility of getting in contact with their victims and repaying them, and there should be some form of rule in place to at least lower the amount of people who do that.

 

Would it be easier to just take the money from the scammer trying to get pardoned if the contact attempt was unsuccessful, and hold those funds?

E.g. Scammer scams victim for $80
Contact attempt is unsuccessful, scammer pays $80 to Sythe
Admins send a PM to victim on Sythe saying the $80 is available to pick up provided a method of repayment
Pardon attempt continues as usual


Not sure how feasible this is, just throwing ideas out there

 

They used to do this and they stopped, apparently due to it being a hassle or something but i'm guessing there were more problems with it.

The money is taken from the scammer and in the end the victim gets paid back but i'm sure there are specific details that would make it too complicated to be worth doing. I've seen a few banned users often to have the staff hold the money and the response has always been that no staff member is allowed to do this.

If this wouldn't be re-instated in some way, shape, or form, then I feel the best alternative is to at least make it more likely that a scammer would come into contact with a victim and end up paying them back, at least more likely than it is currently.

 

Yeah, it would make sense for it to be "a month prior to your current pardon".

 

This is actually how it has been implemented. My mistake if I worded the rules incorrectly. I'll fix this when I'm home.

 

Thnx!