So I just looked through the player lists of all the games listed on the Mafia Running Order thread, and Sarvasti isn't on any of them, so this is her first game on these boards unless I missed her among the horde of S names.

Does anyone else think Daganev is being awfully jumpy? I didn't read anything confusing in Shaddus's sarcastic or goofy 'fakeclaim' post since I interpreted it as something not to be taken seriously, yet Daganev managed to quibble about the difference between 'don't think' and 'know.'

Re the list above: Who would you 'brand' as being lurking, then?

I think you are misunderstanding me. I was just pointing out to Shaddus, that in his zealotry to join in the fun of fake name claims, he make himself look like an idiot.

Also, Sarvasti played in this game: (it's a fun game to read btw)
http://forums.lusternia.com/index.php?show...43&hl=mafia

Personally, I always consider anybody who has less posts than the mod as being "lurky". However in this case, I'm most suspicious of the people who have voted but only have 4 posts.

I did miss her then, oops. But that game was three years ago!

And I see about the Shaddus bit. Okay. But you did come off as rather flustered, which was what confused me, since I didn't see what you were so worked up about.

I'm not sure if jumpy or legalistic is the right word here. It's odd to quibble over "scum tells" in such nitpicky details. It completely voids any value in the rules of thumb. The whole point of such rules of thumb is to provide a convenient frame of reference and memory cues so that you aren't trying to reinvent the wheel every time you play. Holding up the scum tells like a sort of rulebook that gets you lynched every time an action can be construed as a violation thereof is misleading and dangerous. It is far, far more productive to actually look at the particulars of a person's actions and ask yourself, "Does this person appear to be part of an informed minority who benefits from making outsiders look like the informed minority while protecting his/her and his/her teammates?"

When you get down to it, that's 100% of the basis behind every scum tell:
1) Does this person appear to be part of an informed minority?

This game is a major exception to the rule in that we already know quite a bit about the setup. One of the scum advantages is being able to see likely setups. For example, if you're in a scum group of five in a game of twenty-two, you know there's only one scum family. Of course, we all know that now, but sometimes someone letting slip that they know things about the setup that they shouldn't is a great clue.

In addition, the scum are masons of a sort. They know their teammates powers. They know who their teammates target. Townies have to ask, "Maybe that's a scum roleblock?" Scum might type the same words, but they have the advantage of knowing and coordinating.

The inverse of this is that not all information is available equally. Townies probably have more insight into things like town themes and the existence of complementary roles. Also, investigators in Lusternian mafia games tend to be overpowered variety of guaranteed sanity, reveal role and alignment together type supercops, so there is a high probability of eventual confirmation.

2) Does this person benefit from making outsiders look like the informed minority?

This is pretty straightforward. Townies guess all the time, so guessing wrong isn't bad or counterproductive. Did this person lie in a way that implicates someone else as scum? Lynch it and never look back. Don't even wait for the roleclaim. It's not like you can tell the difference most of the time anyways. Is the person drawing on very shaky logic and subsequently reinforcing it with nothing more than emotional appeals? Watch closely, because this is probably scum.

To some degree, lurking falls here. People outright suck at making decisions based on the absence of sensory data. It's part of our wiring. You only notice what you notice, and rarely notice what you didn't notice. It's so ingrained in the way we behave that there's not even a good way to express it in English. It's so ingrained that you are even hardwired to fill in the gaps in your memory by way of imagination, and there's no evidence that you can train yourself out of this habit. By providing minimal amounts of data to be analyzed, you are less likely to be noticed. Luckily, since the forums are at least semi-permanent and have handy ways of tracking activity, there are very noticeable ways to notice lurking.

3) Does this person appear to be protecting teammates?

This is where post and vote analysis comes in. One vote is never a good indicator, because townies guess all the time (but people use one vote count as evidence on Lusternia's mafia games with alarming regularity, so don't jump on this as a scum tell). A pattern of votes is a good indicator. A better indicator is when someone backs out of a well-supported scum lynch at the last minute.

"Ninja-lynching" falls here, but it's a poor indicator. Lynching someone means that everyone else doesn't get lynched, which is a great way to protect your teammates. However, there is such stigma attached to being the last vote that you can pretty much guarantee that whoever finalizes a lynch between day 2 and about a third of the way through the game isn't scum. See the above point on lurking for why.

There's a lot of theory out there on post analysis, but the only one I really like is the selective application of skill. Is someone with a great memory or quick research skills forgetting things? Is someone with mind-bending logical prowess missing non-trivial fallacies? Or, better yet, is someone who thinks he has one of the above qualities applying his imaginary M@D SkIlLz haphazardly? If you can discern a pattern from it and confirm it from an apparent teammate, lynch them all.

===

Now, let's look at practical applications!

Dag says Llandros was "fishing," which means that he thinks Llandros was trying to get confirmation on something. This is a potential violation of the inverse of rule one, not all information is available equally. Fishing has always been a poor indicator, since most information benefits the town more than the scum, but because it showed up on MafiaWiki, people believe in it like they believe in their gods. In my opinion, this is not even a good example of fishing (which is still a bad indicator anyways), because the information is of fairly limited value to scum, considering that it's made extremely apparent from the mod.

So, by extension, I voted for Dag for a similar reason. Not all information is available equally. After reading the setup and getting my PM, it was pretty obvious that we were heroes and not tarot cards. The fact that Dag even noticed such a thing leads me to believe that he received a different message from reading the setup and his PM. Occam's Razor says that it's the PM that created the discord, which would make him non-town.

Zynna then turns around and votes for me. Her reasoning is that I was being too hard on Dag's logic. This is a potential violation of rule two, making outsiders appear to be the informed minority. In my opinion, it's a huge stretch, but that's where the rubber hits the road. Townies guess all the time. Maybe Dag's town. In fact, Dag is probably town. That's just how the math works out.

I in turn expressed my suspicion of Zynna for, again, similar reasons: trying to make outsiders look like the informed minority. The application fit much better. It was a shaky claim later reinforced by a mild emotional appeal. Then there was the aspect of protecting your team in what I perceived to be an implication of the bomb role. For what it's worth, I agree with her much more logical presentation in her wall of text (why hello there, kettle) a couple pages back, and no longer suspect her of anything. I think her vote for me can be chalked up to townies guessing, which is fine.

Oh man, I was re-reading that post, and I just tl;dr'd myself. Baaaad sign.

Who are the ones who have voted with little posts? I agree we should start looking at the quieter people.
unvote.

I disagree with some of your points, but only on personal preference nothing on logic there.

In this case, your okam's razor is wrong. The reason I noticed Llandros's post was because it wasn't a random vote. It was the only post at that point that had content, and further more, it was the only post at that time that on first glance was giving us information to work with. When I looked at it more closely I realized that he didn't actually give any information that we didn't already know. However he WAS asking for information, as if he wasn't sure of it himself. This made me think he has scum potential.

However, after Casilu bringing up the point that this is normal Llandros behavior I backed off. However, again, Rika and Furien did not back off. Instead they supported you without giving reasons of their own. Reasons, that people like Zynna obviously disagree with.

Now that you have explained yourself however, I can feel confident in removing my vote.
Unvote

I wonder if there is any chance of Rika or Furien actually explaining themselves, because somehow I doubt that they voted for me because they were curious why llandros's post stuck out at me.

Well now that the blood is clearing from my eyes, i'm going to change my vote.
UNVOTE

VOTE ARIX

Now this is more than simple OMGUS. Arix thinks that Dag is shady, FOS' him and then buys into his logic and votes for me.
Why would any townie bandwagon with somone they suspect is scum?

My analysis:

daganev 36 - Talkative and active
Zynna 23 - Talkative and active
Othero 18 - Talkative and active
Xavius 17 - Talkative and active
Silferras 17 - Talkative but too many non-game related posts.
Kiradawea 16 - THE MOD
casilu 16 - Talkative, most likely town, but too many non-game related posts.
AllergictoSabres 14 - Active
Ilyarin 12 - Semi -Active
Shaddus Mes'ard Semi-Active with non game related posts. (has he said anything game related? I can't remember)
Llandros 10 - Making weird statements about towness. (mafia-puppy?)
Furien 8 - Voted, but not saying much else. Keeps backing up Xavius?
diamondais 7 - Not saying much.
Dugan Diluculo 6 - Not saying much, but pointed out game's lack of progress?
Arix 6 - really not saying much. (but his behavior is normally what I expect from him.)
Salvation 5 - not saying too much.
Ayisdra 4 - can't remember anything about Aysidra. (did she make the comment about too much speculation or was that just Sirvasti?)
rika 4 - Not saying much, but voted to back up Xavius.
Solanis 4 - mostly silent, came to the game late.
thisismydisplayname 4 - can't remmeber.
Sarvasti 4 - Random name claim for the sake of RP.
Aerotan 4 - Replaced deschain, hasn't added much yet.

I'll go back and check on Ayisdra, TIMDN, and Salvation and see which look the lurkiest to me.

I already gave you my reason why- the claim of rolefishing on Llandros was flimsy at best and of minimal value regardless of how he was answered.

I forgot about that... but Arix says that almost every game. It's like he feels obligated to tell everyone that he always finds me suspicious.

I also, often find myself defending Arix from people not understanding the way he plays. Arix isn't lurking as much as the fact that he rarely posts alot of info. Normally, I find he posts more when he is scum. When he is town he'll be silent until he makes some random roleclaim, or has info from his night results to give.

Again, llandros NEVER rolefished.

There are two types of "fishing"

One, is fishing for roles. example: "Hey, who is the cop? Let us know so the doctor can protect you"

Two, is scenario/fake claim fishing. example: "Does this game have a lot of power roles, or are most of us going to be vanilla?"

Just so everybody is clear: I was originally accusing Llandros of the second type of fishing: i.e.:

That is , when I read this:



What I saw was an example of this:



And therefore I posted this:



Can someone explain where they thought I accused Llandros of role fishing?

I suppose that works.


This is actually a good point. At the time, you had the most votes on you, so Arix's vote could contribute to a bandwagon. Backpedalling on one's intuition without a word as to why shows a touch of opportunism. Good eye, Llandros!

Unvote: Daganev
Vote: Arix

Ack, sorry about not talking much. It kinda got weird and I was busy with work, OSAP stuff, cleaning, company and various other things. Could someone summarize what has been going on the past couple pages?

incase someone is active, can you tell me which page Arix's post was on? I want to see why he voted for llandros, and if there was a wagon on llandros yet at that time or not.

Post 119.

...aaaand I suppose I shouldn't have taken Llandros word for it and gone allll the way back to Arix's vote and not just checked the order.

Unvote: Arix

(I wish these forums had better search features. )

Xikue has just replaced Ruiku who has been absent for over 72 hours with no indication as to why.

Sadly, I think it's all on this page here. (save the random posts from people explaining why they aren't lurking, or saying nothing but "we should go for lurkers!") And then there was the revelation from Casilu that we have 5 mafia members, and 3 unkowns who are most likely not town.





At the time that Arix wrote this the vote count was :


Arix voted third for llandros so that puts him up on my scumdar, but I think he explained well why he voted for llandros and not myself or Dugan.

So unless Arix starts lurking (now that it's monday), I think we should focus on another lurker.

heh, should have refreshed faster and saved myself some time... oh well.

Wait, did Llandros lie about something?