Yes, trimmers, that's sort of the point I'm making... Policy is strict, enforcement cannot possibly be that strict. The policy gives no leeway (because it can't, really), but enforcement is all about external events.
If either party goes to the police for example, the policy comes into play to protect
MA.
If NEITHER party goes to police, but one of them establishes a pattern from repeated support cases,
MA steps in and uses their judgement to determine if something is fishy or not.
That's why I linked this with another recent issue, too.
MA is slow to react for a reason. A "knee-jerk" reaction is bad and causes a lot of stress on people (witch-hunts, cry-baby support requests, etc.). However, once a pattern of behavior is established, judgement allows them to be pretty confident that an "adjustment" is needed. At this point, policy becomes the instrument that ALLOWS them to hand out justice without it becoming an official investigation and bringing outside efforts in. I really don't see why people have a hard time understanding it, but many do -- usually the people that think policy isn't good unless it's black and white, or that people should be allowed to defend themselves against it. It's really simple, by the time the policy is enforced, it's no longer about whether any specific violation occurred or not.
If this were *your* business, you'd want to have that "tool" available even if you never intended to use it. Because eventually, somebody will pretty much force you to (ahem, rhyms with chuckles and their mob trains
). You won't accuse them of anything they can outright deny or argue about, you'll just clamp down on them for being stupid and ruining the game for others -- because the policy allows you to.
In other words, Policy is strict, but enforcement is reserved only for the most severe cases because YOU aren't a dick. Take that policy away though, and the person that IS a dick will be out there saying "I didn't do anything wrong!" and you can't point to anything concrete as a response.
Last thought: this is not very different from all those restaurants with signs saying "management reserves the right to refuse..." -- it's what allows them to keep the riff-raff out without being too specific about why.