Yeah, but would you just go around asking: "Hey, can anyone Skype message me the exploit?"

 

Good people won't, but then they probably wouldn't steal from an unlocked chest, either.
Others, well, as long as you're advertising that a form of locking isn't secure are just going to ask.

also see above, I'd hardly call it an exploit if added back

 

It is not about good or bad people. It is about not allowing any kind of discussion of it. Making it at least difficult intel to get.
I don't see people stealing from the existing donation chests everyday.
And seriously, why can't it just be fixed?

 

Wow an exploit isn't being abused as much because we've taken efforts to minimize abuse? What is this nonsense?!

Seriously though you simply don't know what you're talking about at this point.

 

Not to interfere with what's going on, but:
I just wanted to say that I have found good uses for donation/[display] chests at many times. For example, a silent auction. Have the items on display in the chest as long as the player is informed on how many are stacked(if we follow with the zero-stacks), and have them for viewing. I had been willing to use a donation chest for this until a mod told me they had been removed. The casino too, this could prevent a lot of them from being untrustworthy. I think would be worth it, as long as it comes with a warning. I'm sure you may have thought this out already, but can you bypass/punish the use of exploits in donation chests?

 

By that reasoning I'm gonna trap-kill people in mining and take their assets: the mechanics of the game allow me to do it, so "it's entirely justified honestly". (and if you tell me that "but trap-killing people in non pvp areas is forbidden": of course it is, as it would be to steal from donation chests!)
Basically you're just saying that if something is allowed by the game mechanics, then it should be allowed by the rules. But then what would be the point of rules in the first place, if they just describe what is already factually possible and what is not? The point of rules is to distinguish legit, factually possible behavior from non legit, factually possible behavior: both are factually possible but the rules distinguish among those.
We're advocating for a system (donation chests) that, despite being technically bugged, does still provide a cogent way to distinguish honest mistakes from truly malicious intent: if you take stuff from a donation chest exploiting some strange mechanics, then you're obviously doing that deliberately, and therefore the "Thou shalt not steal" rule can be applied.

Honestly I don't even care whether how the exploit works is public domain or not: we can safely assume it already is. But it doesn't matter at all: whenever you open a donation chest you are prompted a Notice and in order to get stuff from there you have to deliberately activate that weird mechanics; you can't possibly take stuff from there by mistake: if you take stuff from a donation chest, you're surely doing that deliberately, and this is enough to enforce the rules against this.
And this is not even going to require loads of work for staff: people know donation chests aren't reliable (and if they don't, you can just prompt this information whenever one tries to make one, it takes 2 minutes of coding), so they won't put valuables inside them in the first place, and therefore the amount of additional complaints due to donation chest exploits will be roughly zero.

You're right, and in no way I want this discussion on donation chests to jeopardize the original suggestion. But I know no plugin doing that (so it would mean custom, therefore hours of development), while on the other hand bringing back donation chests would run with the hares and hunt with the hounds.