Yes please, I've never been scammed before but I feel sad to the ones that have been.
Scammers should deal with everything you stated since they deserve such punishment.

 

+1 except that people might want to use lotto to get money.

 

-1 It would require tons of staff. Most of the complaints i have seen lately are over scamming, and with all the work smods do now, how much more can they do? We would have to promote all currents mods to smod and have many mods come in. That is my main concern -staff shortages/overworking them

 

-1
Over personally been scammed on a bunch of thing from a loan to donations features
It hurts but you learn live and move on
There's too much of a chance that the scammer will try to scam again and more people will be hurt
It also makes the punishment for scamming alot less
I rather the large scammers just be banned and they learn there lesson
I don't want ANY scammers on ecc but we can't stop them until after they do something


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No! Rule enforcing is soft enough as it is. If people don't want to be bannned they shouldn't scam. If you want a probation period have one for something thats more of a gray area, but scamming is straight up illegal and it hurts another player/s. If you make a probation period for scamming why not make one for griefing, advertising, etc.
If this probation period is added scamming will go up because imo its worth the try knowing that if you don't get caught you get away with some cash and if you do get caught you just behave and continue playing like nothing happened.

 

I would rather make it so that they cannot have any more loans, rentals or any of those sort until they have repaid all the money / after the set period of time. The people on probation are to be kept on close, any single rule broken, even if its a minor rule that will result in only a mere warning would mean a mark. Anything serious such as taking a loan / renting a eff 7 or melon sword when you are not allowed to since under probation will result in three marks immediately. The item will thus be returned to the player. There should also be a tag indicating that the person is on probation (or a different colored name) so that players who want to lend this player money would know that this person is under probation and thus not lend money to him.

 

Not all problems require moralistic solutions. Just because an action causes an unfavorable outcome does not mean that society ought to enact moralistic punishment against the person responsible. For example, suppose a doctor administers the wrong medication resulting in the death of the patient. The society at this point has two options, they can enact punishment against the doctor for malpractice or they can engineer the vials so that it is impossible to administer the medications incorrectly. Which option would likely result in a better outcome? Surely the second.

Instead of moralistically establishing ways to punish those that scam, why don't we just engineer the system to prevent scams? We don't need a leviathan for the system to work effectively; the staff team is not capable of deterring scams, they are only capable of acting after the fact. For the reason, their bans are intrinsically meaningless. I could set up a simple basement server and ban all of ECC, but it wouldn't matter because no one would value my stupid basement server in the first place. The only way to stop scamming is by making the server valuable to the potential rule breakers, and by making the server remain valuable for those who have broken a rule and successfully returned to the community.

Probation would just cause rule breakers to have a hard time coming back to the community, thus making it less valuable. This would directly cause more noncooperation. Probation would simply cause more scams.

 

I read many of your posts and disagree with about 80% of what you write (when you are actually on topic). I guess we are on opposite sides of the spectrum. I usually hold my tongue, but in this case since I am posting anway, I figured I would address your post.

In your first paragraph, you imply that we should not be punishing that doctor? If his actions were purposeful, then absolutely we should be punishing him. And then IN ADDITION, we should find ways to prevent it from happening again. Possibly by making the vials biometrically secure or whatever. One action does not preclude the other.

In your second paragraph, you contradict yourself, in my opinion. You say that we need to "engineer the system to prevent scams" and then go one to say "the staff team is not capable of deterring scams, they are only capable of acting after the fact". I don't see how you can have a system of preventing scams that would not include staff. I don;t think they are the ONLY solution, but they are a part of it. Education is another part. There are others.

Next, your last paragraph. I'm willing to concede that probabtion would make it harder for the scammers to reintegrate. But I think this will deter scammers, not cause more. Why? Because people will not want to have to go through that. Players don't want to be embarrassed or outed or have their hand held and felt like a child. Just the fact that they might have to go through this, would be a detterrent. Yes, some do it anyway, and this is not an ideal solution. But it isn't flawed for the reasons you state.

To say that Perma-bans is not a deterrent for x-ray and exploit abuse, is wrong. Fear of punishment is always a motivator, whether we agree with it or not.

Now with that out of my system, I have to say I feel proud of our community. A lot of the objections raised have to do with not wanting to overburden the staff. I am in agreement. I think our staff works very hard as it is. It feels good to see that our community recognizes this and appreciates it.

I want to +1 it, but I can't. I like the thinking in the suggestion. I just don't know how feasible it is. I know not all staff has access to logs, so I am wondering HOW we would implement this.

I know holding people up to public ridicule is frowned upon, and the staff doesn't want to "mark" the scammers.

What about the probation is going to stop someone from getting loans or playing lotto or going back to their old ways? How is the 'probation officer' going to keep track of this person? Perhaps if you tried a smaller test of this suggestion with including certain rules in the "you are unbanned" spiel.

You will be temp banned for 15 hrs and upon your return you must pay back michaelwm the $90,000 or purchase multihome for him within 2 weeks.
Make sure to screenshot all payments.
Any report of you playing lotto or applying for a loan during this time frame will result in an automatic re-ban.

If we include it in the post that allows them back, you don't have to have a staff member 'hold their hand'. We have plenty of community people who will be more than willing to hold that scammer up to the light.

Or you could just make it a rule. "Any player banned for scamming and allowed to return upon a successful ban appeal must not play lotto or take out any loan until which time all previous scams have been resolved or for one month (whichever is greater)."

Even this would require a staff member to check a "scammer list" when approving contracts. So, again I am on the fence.

Just a thought.

 

OK I see where you are coming from. Then let me throw this out there. What if, for the high end scammers, they had a timeline. So if they have to pay back 100k or whatever and need to do it in 2 weeks, that the scammer has to "check in" on a regular basis, to show they are making continual progress. Every 3 days, once a week, whatever. This will keep them on track and they won't go 13 days not doing anything and coming upon the 14th day in a panic.

Something along those lines seems like it would be Real World comparable to a probabtion type scenario, and put the requirement back on the scammer. If they fail to check in (I would guess via Forum PM) and show progress, the staff member could help "steer" the scammer with whatever staff deems appropriate.

The Staff doing the unbanning would appoint a mod/supermod to each person as you suggested earlier. And upon their unbanning, one their first actions would be to start that Conversation.

Just thinking outloud as I type. :)

 

You missed the point. The case about the doctor was based on an utilitarian model, where the outcome is the only factor that matters. Its irrelevant whether the doctor acted intentionally, because his intention would not have affected the outcome. So, if we settled this problem by just punishing the doctor, we would be failing to correct the outcome, so therefore the utility in the model would be left unchanged—its like not doing anything at all! However, if we engineered the medication so that it could only be administered to the correct patient, regardless of how irresponsible the doctor, then a disaster like that would never happen again. Your argument for whether we should punish the doctor is irrelevant, because we are not trying to moralize the situation. I concede that justice must be done, but justice is only for the sake of justice and not societal well-being.

I did not contradict myself. I stated that the system has to be engineered to prevent scams rather than having the staff act after the fact. Prevention is always pre factum. So unless the staff can see into the future and ban the future criminal—before the crime—then they are irrelevant to the solution, at least in the sense that the staff cannot prevent the act. For example, if I knew of a person that intentionally planned to commit the crime of donation scamming, and I did not tell anyone and he didn't tell anyone but me, then could the staff predict the scam and act to prevent it? The answer is that they could not, because they would have no knowledge of it. Punishment (intrinsic) as prevention is an oxymoron.

The fear of punishment is never an intrinsic deterrent. It is rather the fear of what punishment will deny the punished person. Punishment is always an extrinsic deterrent. Lets say I start up a club and I declare that the club will neither host an event nor meeting, ever. Then, I ban every single person on earth, beside myself, from joining the club... solely for the fact they're humans and not me. Would anyone actually care about the 'punishment' I enacted against them? Of course they would not. This is because that punishment denied people nothing of value, they did not lose anything as a result of my punishment. In the case of ECC, making it harder for criminals to enter back into the society—making the society less valuable to them—will only decrease the effectiveness of the staff's punishments, thus promoting more noncooperation. The punishments used by the staff team rely on the fact that the criminal actually wants to play on this server, so if one makes ECC unpleasant for the criminals, then they will just have more reason for acting against the rules. I agree that justice, for the sake of justice, is needed, but its easy to favor this rationale over actual results.

Emau

 

-1 (sorz) solely because it seems like a large expense of time and effort by mods who, I'm sure, are already busy enough. Besides, I don't see why the system we currently have needs to change.

 

I like the idea of probation terms/period of time. I don't know if I like probation officers though. I understand that if mods had a certain flock to tend to, they can be more familiar with them, but if a flood of complaints comes in, they have to wait till the attending probation officer is available.

I think the key is information centralization. If all matters pertaining to a person's probabtion history/status/strikes were consolidated to one location for that person, all the available online mods can assist as they can quickly see a more full brief of the probation history.

 

Im not sure why but nearly everyone posting on this thread says something of similar words to this. 'must not play lotto or take out any loan until which time all previous scams have been resolved' as quoted from Emau's thread. Im fine with not taking out loans but why no playing of lotto? Sometimes, not always lotto helps people earn money faster than any other method of mining or farming on ECC. If you are in a 500k debt and win a 500k lotto which took you only 1k to purchase 1 ticket to part in, it will cost you barely any time to repay the debt. Yes, I know it is not possible to always win these kind of lotteries, but I have seen it happen multiple times. They may spend 100k on 100 tickets to win 120k and make a profit of 20k in less than 15 minutes (lottery draw time). In which mining for an hour will only around you approximately 20k. Yes, you may sometimes lose 100k to a person who bought 1 ticket. But the fact that you win 90% of the time with such a high amount of ticket is still there. Thus, if lottery is banned from these players, they may take a longer time to earn back their debt. Im using the word 'may' there as some players will just spend all their money on lottery and be even more in debt, some others may not even play lottery, but some may earn quite abit from lottery itself. My point is, allow user's who are on probation to play lottery but do not allow them to take any loans or rent any items.

 

I think you were saying that the ability to predict future crimes is the only scenario where punishment should apply. You're probably right that punishment is silly on its own as it pertains to singular events. But this is not a bottle. Evidence in the facts, perpetrators may be prone to committing crimes again. I do agree with you that other measures that could try to solve the destructive habbits are worth looking into - alas, it is a problem all societies have toiled over for at least centuries, and to no avail.

I don't think the punishment system on ECC is solely for rehabilitation. I think it's primary purpose is protection of the users who are good citizens. If someone repeatedly swears at everyone in chat, and you don't want to kick/ban them because you want to try to.... reeducate/explain/or do something other than kick/ban to make them stop... Then everyone in the mean time must suffer their wrongdoings and misguided acts. That is a punishment to everyone else. How do you propose to balance this?

I do feel those who have a strong desire to help people should try, but not at the expense of other relevant individuals. #1, the perpetrator is responsible for his/her actions, not the society (well, I actually could contest that it is the society's fault in a real world scenario, but our society on ECC is not all encompassing enough to even attempt to deal with the source of misbehavior issues even if we wanted to try to -- and even if we could, it is not our mandate). As we must believe they are responsible first, that gives the society levity to tender a punishment to defend the rest of the public. The entire public does not serve the faults of the one. The one must serve repentance to the public for the ones faults. Appeal threads are a start to apologizing to the public - and act as a background blemish to inform other members of the public.

 

Minecraft servers are an interesting case for justice, because the only factor that matters to a player is whether he enjoys playing. If a player's affinity for a server diminishes, then he will not be motivated to act in accordance to the laws of that server, because the absolute worst thing the server could do is ban him... a punishment that is not effective if the player already thinks of the server as valueless. In the case of probation, it just extends the cycle of punishment inefficiency to players who actually want to come back into the community.

Example:

• Player dislikes the server.
• Punishment requires that the punished person likes the server.

Therefore,

• Player is not affected by the server's punishments

If a player is not affected by a server's punishments, then that player can act however he desires—he is above the law! However, his actions may result in a ban—but this is inconsequential because it merely bans that player from something he dislikes. In some cases, the banned player may come to realize he was wrong to dislike the server, in such a case this will happen:

• Banned player starts to realize he was wrong to dislike the server, and he starts to like it again.
• Punishment requires that the punished person likes the server.

Therefore,

• Banned player starts to be effected by the punishment.

This causes the banned player to seek appeal:

• Banned player is now effected by the ban, and desires to come back to the server
• Banned players can appeal their bans

Therefore,

• The Banned player is unbanned and allowed back to the server... but with probation.

This probation makes the server less enjoyable, so this will happen:

• Probation is not fun.
• The player on probation came back to the server so he could enjoy playing it.

Therefore

• The player on probation, as a result of the probation, now dislikes the server again because the probation made it unpleasant.

This causes the cycle to repeat. I honestly can't understand how someone could support this suggestion, when it obviously promotes more noncooperation.

In the case of the obscene language, just ban the player and have him realize, or not, that he actually wants to play on the server enough to obey the rules. If he doesn't value the server enough to follow the rules, then he will cause himself to be banned without the will to return. However, if this player does have the desire to return, then DO NOT make his return unpleasant. Making his return unpleasant will just influence him to act illegally.

OnSceneReporter

 

I quite like this softer-touch approach. It is something that wouldn't take much time to carry out from a Staff perspective, yet it would be effective in keeping the debt in the mind of the debtor. It would make people at least think about their debt, rather than forgetting about it till a few days before it is due when there is no realistic chance of them actually amassing the money in time.

Additionally, a simple forum pm/chat in game wouldn't make it harder for people to re-integrate into society, thus alleviating Mendiboi's concern that a tougher probation mechanism would only reduce how valuable the server is to them. (I don't fully agree with that point, although I do not wish to go into it here as this post is more aimed towards discussion of a different procedure to which Mendiboi's post addressed).

This, I think, should not be seen as a punishment or a tough oversight mechanism, but rather the staff member offering a helping hand to assist in paying back the debt. A real life example of this for me would be when I was at school. My mum never forced me to do my work, or nagged me about it, but merely regularly reminded me that I had work to do. I always ended up feeling guilty about not doing it, and without telling me to go do it, she indirectly made me do it. I think that a similar thing could be useful in this situation. Sure, the Staff aren't here to 'mother' users and perhaps that example is not the best, but I do see the benefit of a few messages to check up on a debtor's progress.

 

Y not allow what happens in real life? When you take a loan out small ones are can be against your personal credit that's basically your word that you will repay and your past history.. But normally at a higher interest cause it high risk
But for a large loan you need to put collateral against the loan in order for the bank to consider it
So what about allowing people to use there towns as collateral? Player x takes loan from player b then fails to repay loan player b gets players x town and full ownership of it
But for this to work it would require a contract and for player b to gain full control of the town.. Not just the partial control we now have ie unable to apply for features and things


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