Funny enough, ill be the first to admit the admins and mods were the first group of people to fight against the dispute systems, because of the exact reasons you are listing. They prefer to deal with the ticket and not be accused of being lazy. It was the seniors that kind of just... did it. Adjustments obviously have to be made as its a new system but thats natural with anything new we will announce. I will say, looking at the numbers, out of 1,445 disputes that have already been submitted, there is roughly a ~66% resolve rate through disputes. Thats roughly ~900 bans that were either avoided or reduced. Long term think about how that effects population on our servers. My numbers can 100% be off, but this was just at the quick glance I had.
Everything is logged on our end, even if you cant find their steam id, we 100% can. Doesnt matter if they have a forum profile or not. A dispute is looked at during player reports, and if comp was received its very likely they will not be punished, however it is a case by case basis. As for the search name feature, it actually does exist but for people within life control only. Reason being is because there is so many duplicate names it would be just as hard to find with that name as it is without a PID if not worse. Also this post below says it best:
Im sure if you sent a PM to the denying staff member, or asked for an escalation in your case certain exceptions can be made. This is not a promise on my end for comp, but it sounds like if the situation is really scuffed against you, the staff team is more then capable of handling it if necessary.
Read my statement above about the search name feature.
Every report/dispute is a case by case basis. We just want to see a dispute being placed to see that there's at least effort being put in to resolve your issue and not a witch hunt for a ban.