Lord Gurgi wrote:That was the point I was trying to subtly put across. Glad you got it. Lynching groups of people isn't effective because the averages aren't in your favour.
The problem is that lurking people produce far fewer other scumtells, by dint of the fact that scumtells other than lurking tend to be found in posts. So you have to be willing to lynch lurkers, or at very least, count small scumtells from players who are also posting sporadically as much bigger deals than from players who are giving lots of content.
Xyl made a really good post in a similar thread a couple of years back. People are a lot more inclined to remember 'scummy' things people have done, than townish things they haven't. Scumminess by commission rather than by omission, as it were. The guy who's trying but makes one illogical argument or opportunist-looking vote is likely to be labelled as scum by several people. The guy who stays in the background, takes a couple of popular, non-controversial stands and doesn't stick his neck out is likely to be tagged 'neutral read.' I mean, I bet in every large normal game, you'll be able to find a list of all the players (which are scummy in themselves) with at least one entry that says 'Hasn't posted enough to get a real read. Neutral.'
I mean, that's the whole point of this thread, isn't it?
Magister Ludi wrote:The point is by lynching lurkers, you force lurkers not to lurk, which forces them to pretend to be more towney, which grows harder as the days roll on by. If you don't lynch lurkers, you're forced to confront them eventually.
Or you get to the stage when there's only lurkers and scum left, scum having killed the townies who're trying if they haven't been at each other's throats to the extent of getting each other lynched already. And Ludi's right. Often merely applying pressure with the credible threat of lynch is enough to stop lurkers lurking. The key word being 'credible-' if they make an 'I'm going to lurk, either lynch me or learn to live with it' ultimatum, you lynch them.
