Dealing with Chronic Lurkers

[Fiasco]

The point is that instead of a forced "hi" post, you'd have to say either "hi, no time" or "hi, nothing to say". In case of repeated "hi, no time", you should be replaced; in case of repeated "hi, nothing to say", you should be lynched instead, because if you're a townie, there's always stuff you can safely say.

To me lurkers are by far the biggest problem of Mafia as played on mafiascum.net. I don't think a universal "48 hours silence = modkill" policy is the solution. I do think that

not all games should assume the same level of participation

. Fast games should be strict in excluding players with any history of unexplained lurking, and the lurking glacier fetishists should have their own games where they all get to bore the crap out of each other for years.

[Fiasco]

I like the "verbose usergroup" idea too. How would you decide whether to admit people? Have one person look at people's posting records?

[Fiasco]

Come to think of it, another approach I think has a lot of potential is the tag-team approach (as in Two-Headed).

Hey! You know what'd be fun? A game where everyone could play, with the whole site divided into a number of "players" based on something like the first letter of their username or their join month. Anyone making their first post in the game thread would be sent one of the roles. Team F for the win!

[Fiasco]

I think the M's might be a little unbalanced. They have 3 of the top 5 posters.

Fritzler will eat them for breakfast.

But yeah, some letters might have to be split into two and others (Q and X?) might have to be combined.

[Fiasco]

Go Team M!

Which one?

[Fiasco]

You could make it a mini.

AB-CD-EFG-HIJ-KL-M-NO-PQ-RS-T-UVW-XYZ ?

[Fiasco]

Well, yes, but it wasn't

this

mini.

[Fiasco]

That one's different, though. This would have site-wide teams determined by starting letters. There would be no signups, because

EVERYONE

could post. They'd receive the role PM for their letter after their first post.

I'm imagining one game with one role for each letter, not one game for each letter.

Signup month-based teams would also work well for a mini, though there'd probably be a bias toward "recent" months. Team September for the win! (I'm trying to ruin the site here by raising a lot of primitive tribal consciousness and strife and division and stuff. Please humor me and play along.)

[Fiasco]

Kinda, but with a two-headed-mafia-like mechanic, and potentially site-wide teams that are known in advance. Letters don't flake as often as individual people.

[Fiasco]

Maybe mafiascum.net would be better off with an ethic that says "don't sign up for a game if you're not going to be enthusiastic about participating in that game". It seems hard to be enthusiastic about 10 different games at the same time.

[Fiasco]

It's possible to post regularly, and not be enthusiastic. I'm willing to believe that you're at least as enthusiastic about each individual game as the average player in that game, but you'd probably be more enthusiastic about them if you played fewer games, and that in turn might inspire the other people in those games to post more...