Minecraft Name: Revanrose6 Suggestion: I'm going to begin this with the following statement: I am not even sure I agree with this idea; I am putting it out there to see the pros and cons (Something our community is great at producing). So onto the idea. Give major scammers a probationary period.For how long? Well there are two ways we can go on that one: 1) Until the money is repaid. 2)For a set period of time. What does this probationary period mean? No lotto. No transactions worth over $10,000 without a moderator being aware and present. No rule breaking (Minor rule breaking might be passable simply because if we added it to the three strike system the probation would not work. Everyone would just be banned.) It also means that there would be a three strike system. Break probation once, get a mark. Twice, another mark. Thrice and you are back to being banned. How would we implement this? Each player who is deemed 'up for probation' upon appealing their ban would get assigned a probation officer. This officer would be a supermod+. Any player/staff who witnesses this probationary player breaking a rule from his/her probation (which should be outlined in the appeal) can PM his/her probation officer with evidence. Reason: Keep scammers under watch and thus reduce future scams.
While in probation would users still be able to Lotto? Ive seen countless times where users recently unbanned after scamming return to ECC only to play the lottery with money that could have been used to repay the users he had scammed. That being said, this sounds like it would make many, many scammed user happy to hear that the scammer is making their money back. However, with the prices of tools 10k seems very low, pumpkin axes and eff5 pickaxes are already going for 10k+ and if the user has no way to make the money they may just turn back to scamming as a last resort.
I believe I wrote: So no. I've always felt that lotto is a serious problem. A lot of scammers are lotto addicts. I don't think letting them play lotto is a good idea.
I really like this idea but I think assigning a probation officer might be a lot of work for you mods, you all have a lot on your plate anyways these days. I think limiting the loto for people under probation is cool though, that way someone has to earn there way back. not just loto there way back.
+1 This seems like a good idea. Would it solely be monitored through the community reporting back to the probation officer? Or is there a possibility for some of it to done automatically, such as preventing a user from lottery completely? Two issues jump to mind straight away however (May think of more later). Firstly, who would be considered a major scammer? 50k+, 100k+ etc? Secondly, a more practical issue, Supermods+ are already extremely busy and have limited time available as it is. Granted, this may not be a common procedure to use if the 'major scammer' definition is set relatively high, but I think it would need to be looked into whether the supermods+ had the capacity to give time to this. Even if this isn't implemented as a full probation procedure, I do think playing lottery when in significant debt needs to be debated/considered. I regularly see players in debt lose more money in the lottery.
Well for me at least, its less about them 'earning it' and more about worrying they'll fall into the same behavior that got them there in the first place. Ie: "Lotto is fun." *lotto money, lose* "Oh no, I'm out of money but want to keep playing. I'm sure a loan will fix that." *Takes out loan, lottos money, loses* "Oh no, outta money again." *Continues vicious cycle until caught*
This is addressed by the fact that the probation officer has the ability to authorise payments over 10k. If the the probation officer believes that spending 10k on a pumpkin axe will be beneficial to earning the remaining money, then it can be authorised.
Frankly, that section is in there to stop people from attempting scam transactions. i.e.: "I'm going to buy a 500k melon sword." Probation officer gets called to verify and realizes that their player on probation only have $5,000. Or just if the player is purchasing something completely frivolous and counter productive to their paying off the loan. I mean we could make the system much more complicated and I can already think of ways that would work. i.e.: The probation officer goes "You have been given a month to pay off 300,000. This means you need to make at least $10,000 a day. Anything over $10,000 you can play with, minus lotto. Then said player can save and etc. I just feel more oversight would really lower problems. Andrew and his staff are essentially our government. The crux of this is the following question: Does our player base want MORE governmental oversight or LESS.
I'd like to see this implemented as an official system that we use. I've seen in the past where staff members have forced users to sign contracts stating that they can't do lotto or other things until their scam was repaid in order for them to be unbanned and I thought it was a good idea.
revanrose6 my ONLY problem with this, is there are probably a LOT more scammers out there than supermods. Moderators could be able to do it, but they usually aren't as experienced.
I feel that this is a good idea, in ways we have done things similar, and I feel an official system would work out great... +1 Only thing is when a user reports lotto or payments they would need screenshots.
This is a great idea. Too bad it will never happen. If it does, the lotto aspect will undoubted be dropped. I doubt Andrew will approve of anything remotely anti-libertarian as this.
I'm sorry, but I would have to -1 The sorry part is for: It will probably NEVER be implemented due to the fact that scamming is a very good way to take money out of the economy and this is a good thing, but a bad thing to the user. Although many people do not like being scammed, scamming is a big way to take money out of the economy, and thus, helping the economy in a good way. Also, even if they 'Lotto' the money, it will also benefit the economy by taking the tax. You see, if we do implement this, this will create money an easy thing to have. We'd keep getting money, and money, and money. The cycle repeats and repeats and this will cause a huge inflation in the economy. Again, great idea, but bad at the same time. P.S. Couldn't someone just do /pay *name* 9999.99 over again and over again instead of doing /pay *name* 10,000 or over?
Yes, but that would still be a transaction of 10k total or over, and as such still violates the probation.
This is why we don't refund players that are scammed. Yes, it is unfortunate but true. However, not doing something to help players that did scam and quite possibly have a lotto addiction... really? Taking money out of the economy by scams is just an unintended benefit. Not something we try to achieve whenever possible. You're basically just saying "scamming is good because money is being taken out of the economy".
On a side note, thats not why we don't refund scammers... We don't refund scammers due to the mathematical problem with refunding players. Generally that money is already back in the economy by the time the scammer is caught. Refunding the player literally pops money into the economy. I do agree that any money lost to the economy is an unintended benefit.
