Appeals and Punishments

I've wondered this for a long time, why does SteamRep not have certain punishments?

What I mean is, in the current state of SteamRep, if you get banned, repay your victims, and appeal, you still will be almost guaranteed a 2 year+ ban because of backlog of appeals. That being said, it is almost worthless to make a appeal.

To make this more clear, why does SteamRep not have offense specific punishments? It could include:
PayPal Scam: 1 year ban
Attempted Scam of any sort (not successful): 6 month ban
Steam Wallet Scam: 6 month ban
etc, etc, etc

If the scammer repays the victim, their ban is decreased 50% from the day they repaid in comparison to the amount of time remaining on the ban. (ex. 50 days left in ban when repaid, now only has 25 days left)


It seems as this would help the whole appeal backlog, especially for people who were banned 2 years ago, appeal now, and then have to wait 1-2 years for their appeal to be handled.

We've discussed such (well, not exactly the same as your example) internally and even with the partner communities in the past. Problem we ran into is that various admins didn't like the "automatic" removal after x time at all.
We're still looking into ways to improve on it, but we found back then that automatic time based bans is not what a large portion of the admins would support.

Also, administering the ban decreases etc would be the same as appeals etc, so that would also not be very effective imo.

The appeal system is mostly in place to:
- Remove tags on innocents.
- Have ppl with remorse overcome their tag, after jumping some hoops like payback to their victim(s), being hones with their interview etc. Which is not always granted btw, depending on the issue and the scammer's handling of it after it.

SR is there to warn its users of people that have problematic trade history. Such doesn't easily "expire" for after a year they can still be scamming.

So sounds like the main issue is you just need instructions for those who are scammers and for who are innocent.
Maybe something like this.

"When posting an appeal, you must be 100% honest. Do not try to hide something from us. If you were wrongly accused, we will try to get that mark removed eventually.
If you are a scammer, please admit it. Then you must do the following. 1. Pay back the victum(if you stole items). 2. Admit every scam you even attempted. Once these two requirements are met, we will remove you're tag in 2 years if you can prove you changed. Abandoning the account for 2 years will not count!"

You'll have to reword the whole thing, but it at least let's scammers know not to make an appeal unless if their willing to do those things.

the appeal system is so out dated, that if you get banned, you are guilty no matter what. You'll be serving a 1-2 year ban with the delay, which makes that point not matter