I don't know how many people know about this, but sometimes, when you petition about a lost item, the ark/gm will give you a link to a website that has a list of every single item on your character, and where it is, so you can find it yourself, and solve the problem of the item being missing. That only works if you have the item, just can't find it.
My idea is that instead of having this for only when you petition, have it locked to your account, so that if you have an item on your account, and can't find it, but know it's not lost, you should be able to just log in and hit the search function in your browser. Would cut down on the number of lost item petitions the ark's have to handle, and would make it easier to find items that you pass around your characters, because you could just search them all.
Make it passworded, and locked to your account, so nobody else could access it. Also, take out the "lost" items, that it shows, as you don't need to see that unless you really do need to petition, and there is no reason I can see why you shouldn't be able to search through all the items on your account to find the one your looking for.