[Approved]Enforce the pardon/dispute rules for staff

Lately I've noticed that alot of pardons are being handled quite quickly, which is good, but what is bad is that I have reasons to believe there is little to no attempts of having the actual scam victims being repaid while the community repayment funds keeps getting filled with more and more. Ofcourse it's great that scammers repay, but in my opinion it's also a matter that has to be resolved with the scam victim themselves. Right now it's like they have to apolgise to the website for their actions, whereas in fact they should apolgise to the actual scam victims.

As per the pardon rules there's a rule saying "there must be proof of at least ONE MONTH time being passed for attempting to contact the victim for each pardon separately." while looking at recent pardons I don't see this being enforced. Users who haven't been online in a year are already considered "inactive" and even though sometimes it's being written down the scam victims can "later on collect their funds", it's not like they'll ever find out based on one mention in a pardon thread.

My suggestion here is simple; stick to the actual pardon rules and do some proper attempts in reaching out the scam victims. I can't see what's being done behind the scenes (whether or not there's PM's being sent or if they are being contacted privately), but atleast I did try to lookup their contact details on Sythe (Skype/Discord) and contact them there.

This by the way is also a great way of determining how sorry the scammer really is - after all he did scam someone of his hard earned money, so I do feel an apology is in place to the scam victim.

Pardons I'm referring to:

1. Ape requesting a pardon
   
2. Stream Punk - Requesting DNT (DNT not pardon, but still)
   
3. Pardon

And more.

 

Im kinda on the fence on this one, regarding ape's pardon the staff saw no activity on the victim's account and instead of delaying the process chose to remburse the victim (should he come back) through the community fund (which i believe would be locked for a period of time equal to the wait).

This move is quite commendable as anyones task should be linear as possible.

 

During my time with pardons I saw many users go inactive due to the amount of time they had to wait for the victim to respond. This is a waste of everyone's time and ultimately a missed opportunity for funds to return to the victim(s). Some pardons are 'spur of the moment' and I believe capitalizing on that is in the best interest of the site - repayment never guarantees a successful pardon and while its best that they repay the victim, its still good to get the funds back.

Discord being the preferred communication platform is a problem, you can lose your ID due to inactive nitro subscriptions, change of names, etc. This causes a lot more issues which I'm sure you're aware of - its far easier for us to verify repayment when its sent to a wallet that a staff member owns. When Skype was popular we didn't have an issue due to the names being actually unique and easily verifiable.

A Victim's funds are held in the community repayment wallet until they return. This means they can return a year (or more) later and will see the notification and know to contact us (This has happened several times and each user got their funds).

 

Keep in mind I’m not suggesting a change to the current rules, I’m simply saying we should stick to them. I for one disagree that repayment is all we’re after- instead I believe we should be after actual proper pardons where the user also attempts himself to reach out to his scam victim(s).

A very important part of the pardon process is now being skipped while rules still state a different process.

 

We've updated it to reflect that the user pardoning will need to make contact prior to pardoning with the victims. If there is proof of that, then we can collect the money right away to hold for the victims upon their return.