Mini #1004 - Popularity Mafia (Over)

[vollkan]

OMGUS

Vote: Friend

for not liking Edgeworth.

I didn't claim any role, just a hint as to where I am on the "popularity meter".

I'm glad Mini 951 taught you something

I thought of RVS voting vollkan for the same reason, but opted against it, Prana

Why opt against it?

I know that a mass popularity number claim wouldn't be hugely beneficial in terms of scumhunting, but it would help ensure success at neighborizing. That's all I wanted to get.

The only risk I can see in such a mass popularity claim is that scum may have knowledge that they can use to link popularity to power roles. That seems unlikely to me, though, since it seems that the popularity just affects the neighbourising.

The most obvious, but highly unlikely, advantage of it possibly catching scum fake-popularity-claiming

The other main advantage I see requires more than just a mass popularity claim. The advantage is that a mass claim will maximise the discussion that occurs. I should note that for these purposes, I think we should require people I am generalising here, but it's most likely in scum's interests not to have to talk to townies (risk of being interrogated, slipping up, etc); if popularity remains unclaimed, scum can try avoid having to talk to at least one townie by targeting somebody they think is higher than they are. Having everybody's popularity out in the open would remove any excuse for scum not talking to somebody. In addition to this, I would also say that I think we should implement a policy of requiring people to identify explain their choice of conversation target; it will force people to use the ability for sensible reasons which is both pro-town and anti-scum. At this stage, I think that it's probably best that we don't, as a matter of policy, require the conversation itself to be disclosed (eg. a cop might claim to somebody they have an innocent on) - but it might be a good idea in particular cases.

[vollkan]

It also re-solidified the fact that uber-town players who survive N3 must be scum.

I was seriously quite surprised that nobody asked IK or myself why the hell we were still alive come D4.

We also might have PRs that actually use this neighborizing mechanic. Say we have a town player who can increase the popularity of a fellow player by one. Or a mafia player who can decrease the popularity of a player by one. /setup speculation

Interesting point. I'm not sure if it is a flaw, though. My reasoning proceeds as follows:

1) Assuming that such a role could be used in passing period

n

and then the target has the new rank in passing period

n + 1

, then the biggest risk is simply that the person they speak to, if it is somsebody that they could not have spoken to before, will accuse them of having lied about their ranking.

2) However, we already know that it will be impossible for scum to lie at the initial claim stage because they will get counterclaimed.

3) Accordingly, any purported change in popularity ranking will have to be true

The fact that the changes would be caused by a power role (though, we don't know of what alignment) instinctively makes me think that such changes should not be changed. Reason being is that, as a general rule I think, a person would want to increase the ranking of somebody they consider pro-town (so as to give them more choice) and decrease the ranking of somebody they suspect (so as to reduce their ability to pick their scumbuddies and avoid exposure to the town); hence, claiming changes, (publicly, since people might well target somebody they think is likely town and tell them about the change) could out a PR. So, at this stage I don't think changes should be publicly claimed.

Regarding the bolded bit there, they wouldn't be able to. If we all said "target the person below you in the list" then anyone who didn't would be automatically pointed out as scum. They would basically be forced into neighboring with the person below them or being known as scum.

The problem is that saying "Target the person below you" or any other rigid formulation removes any ability of town to individually target and interrogate a particular player they suspect, or collaborate with somebody they think is town. Hence, we need to have a free choice; in which case, we need to claim those choices and (because reasons are always good) the reasons why.

I think most of us are in favor of this...so who wants to start? Andrius and then we can just popcorn from there, or go by the playerlist, or have everyone shout it out at once, doesn't really matter.

I can't see the point in popcorning this early in a game.

I'm ranked

fifth

in popularity.

[vollkan]

Oh so you're saying they shouldn't claim (assuming that such a power exists, of course). I don't see how this could out another PR.

I'm not rigidly against it in all cases, I should add.

For instance, I think claiming is probably appropriate where a player who is generally regarded as being likely town (ie. the player knows that a relatively high proportion of the other players think they are town) goes

down

in their ranking. Reason being that such a fall most likely indicates that scum are trying to cripple them a bit, so it could be a valid towntell for that player. Obviously, though, if that X is the player whose ranking goes down despite being regarded generally as town and X is heavily suspected by Y and Y is also town, then X probably shouldn't claim. Basically, it's probably a judgment call thing best left to the player whose ranking goes down.

I don't think speculating about the possibility of popularity-changing roles does any good. If someone's popularity gets changed overnight, they need to say so.

You don't think there is a risk of outing a PR?

[vollkan]

Well, okay, let's say I get bumped up to 7th overnight. I'd say so, we'd change the rankings. I don't think it would necessarily out a PR - the person who did the changing would keep quiet and that would be that. I'd assume the role, if it even exists, could probably use the popularity-upper on himself, so the scum couldn't use PoE to figure it out either.

You're missing the point.

Assume the PR is town. Scum will know this (because the PR will not be one of them). Scum see you get bumped up. It's trivially easy to then look at all players in ISO and then see who thought they were pro-town.

Of course, actually, you could do that ISO work yourself and work out a) who the player is (and not claim the change); or b) determine that there is nobody who clearly thought you pro-town (and claim the change).

So basically, I am

not

against claiming changes. I just think that it's something that has to be thought through carefully.

[vollkan]

first, I'd like to bring up the good old IioA-point... we shouldn't worry so much abut the setup...nobody would be so stupid to fake a popularity change, that could so easily be verified, it would just out them as scum... so even if there are popularity-manipulating roles, I really don't see the problem...
and I really don't see the big power of such (hypothetical) manipulating roles you attribute them...

I'm going to be using my 0 = town, 100 = scum scaling for everybody in this game, as I am trying to get back into the habit of it. Basically, everybody starts at 50. Scumtells push it up, towntells down.

The above merits a +2. Reason being is that IIoA, while it is always an easy label for lazy scum to throw around, is not a scumtell at page 3 of a game where not even everybody has yet to post. Moreover, whether or not you think that the chances of popularity-manipulating roles is likely (and I note that nobody has suggested that it is), it's clearly something that due diligence required us to address in relation to the mass pop-claim strategy.

And, as others have already pointed out, it smacks of hypocrisy that you would accuse other people of IIoA and then have IIoA yourself. To be clear, my problem is not with your IIoA, it is with your hypocrisy of attacking people for IIoA

Vote: Tasky

third, please don't talk about other games if they are not relevant to scumhunting in this game

More early-game self-righteousness.

And why would you like to start a wagon on vollkan, who has arguably been one of the most pro-town players so far in this early game?

Obvious buddying is obvious.

unvote; vote: Tasky

You want a wagon, you got a wagon.

oh yeah... have to jump on that... after all I hate bandwagons, right?
UNVOTE:
VOTE: Tasky

Now that you are no longer wagonning me (despite the fact that you haven't had any response from me), mind saying what your mystery reason for wagonning me was?

[vollkan]

where exactly did you see an attack in the above?
I didn't attack anyone for IioA, I just pointed out that it is pointless and that we should altogether stop... nothing more, nothing less
nowhere in that post do I say someone is scummy for that

I really hate it when people play the curt "But where did I attack people?" card.

You accused players of IIoA. When the phrase "IIoA" is used, it is always used in the context of an attack. If you didn't mean it that way, you shouldn't have used that particular phrase. It's the same as when player X might make a mistake in expressing their understanding of player Y's views, and then player Y calls it a "misrepresentation", rather than just an "error". In short, it's inflated language.

The reason we have label scumtells like "contradiction", "IIoA", etc. is precisely so that we don't always have to go: "You did X. X is scummy."

no... the reason was not about wagoning you... I just picked you because you had most votes... the reason is about wagoning someone... the problem is just that atm there is no wagon-target who I could wagon (since you all despise self-voting)...

I'm calling your bluff. I want a vote to force Tasky to reveal his reason. Obviously, I vote in favour.

By the way, would quick lynches be good in this game? Considering the nifty neighborizing idea?

+2. Noob scum throwing out a fishing line to see if there is support for an utterly insane idea.

ok, just wondering

that was a joke

How was that a joke? It could have been a joke if you'd said: "Wow, neighbouring sounds awesome; let's quicklynch to get to it", but you didn't. You asked a question to everybody, and then claimed it as a joke when the idea was swiftly kicked.

I am too,

but I figured this might be a special circumstance

+2 Great. Thankyou for admitting you just lied.

Unvote, Vote: Xite

[vollkan]

Uhm, can I just say something real quick?
Youre a dumb

And you're missing a noun.

I was saying the we're alsmost surely going to lynch tasky today was a joke
I was saying that it might be better if we each kind of interrogated each one people on our own one at a time, not that it was for sure it'd be good, but a possibility

It was an idea to end day 1 early so that scumhunting might be easier. I wasn't even saying every day, I was saying day 1

Fine; I can see how you could have meant it that way. But, you really should quote what you are responding to so that you avoid ambiguity like that

Unvote, Vote: Tasky

. -4

I think we should agree on some pre-fixed order for neighborizing, otherwise scum could avouid having to talk too much more easily...
there should really be a good reason not to hold too such a pre-fixed order...
IMO, the everyone-targets-the-person-right-under-them-in-popularity-way is a good one, since it can not be influenced by scum...

Definitely not.

Yes, it makes it slightly easier for scum. But it also prevents town from targeting where they think they can have the most impact.

PS: why do you talk about wanting to force a vote but then go on to unvote?

I meant everybody votes to force you to reveal your reason.

[vollkan]

I think we should agree on some pre-fixed order for neighborizing, otherwise scum could avouid having to talk too much more easily...
there should really be a good reason not to hold too such a pre-fixed order...
IMO, the everyone-targets-the-person-right-under-them-in-popularity-way is a good one, since it can not be influenced by scum...

Definitely not.

Yes, it makes it slightly easier for scum. But it also prevents town from targeting where they think they can have the most impact.

I don't agree with this... giving everyone free choice let's scum more room to dodge discussion... and you are forgetting that scum could be hiding in the crowd during day and not let you spot them, so that you never even think about talking to them at night... but since by the mentioned method everybody has to talk to somebody, that's just not possible...
if you think somebody is scum, you say it in the thread and then by the method there are usually two neighbors who can do the interrogation... it is highly unlikely that both are scum, so that at least on interrogation will be done by a townie... and if your reasons for thinking someone was scum were good, that townie will understand them and do a good interrogation

If a player thinks somebody is scum, they can individually target them. If a player thinks somebody is town, they can target them and possibly reveal useful information.

And if scum keep targeting each other, my proposal to force people to give their reasons will quickly expose that.

The small cost of having scum talk to each other under my method is greatly outweighed by the benefit of giving the entire town free choice. Whereas, your method basically removes any ability for it to be used strategically by town in ways that they might not want to publicly reveal.

Here is my opinion on outline of proposed actions towards neighbouring:

1. Enforced "You must pick this person" - Opposed
I as the most popular person and an adequate scum hunter feels that I should be allowed to pick whoever I wish. Say I felt like picking a scummy person to pick at some argument then I want to be able to do that. Say I want a townie to argue with I want that possibility too.
2. Explaining Choices of Masonships - Support
I feel that this is necessary. Scum cannot hide behind their actions saying "I had to". Only ranks 11/12 have no choice of who to pair with and that means that everyone else's choice can be analysed.
3. Claiming Tonight's choices in advance - Opposed
Do I really need to explain why? It would give scum information going into night one that the town would only use day 2.


Seriously. This conversation needs to be finished pretty quick. It's evident people will have different abilities however as this is the most powerful tool town power (I guess) we have to use we should make sure we don't forget the more important one. Lynching.

Completely agree with this.

Xites wall-o-text seems like scum desperation.

Explain this.

Those bolded times? That's all the times he responded to my case by saying, oh you're wrong but in your terms mostly, or your case is null or such and such. Dismissing it as nothing... Just seems like an interesting reaction to me, and it seems to make the rest of you think the same way

What is the point of this? He has been explaining why he thinks your case is crap; in which case I'm happy for him to say that he thinks your case is crap.

[vollkan]

I see my including of the gut argument as a deliberately weak argument (although I didn't include it whit that in mind, thinking about it, I'm happy I did)...
the big difference in discussion between a townie and scum, is that scum want's to get information, and will agree with the "opponent" if they say something right... for a townie, it's not about winning the argument, it's about discovering the other's alignment...
scum on the other side, want to score points and want to win arguments... the way you attacked my "gut-feeling" argument, which in fact is (by far) the weakest of my arguments you are looking for a quick win over my arguments... the problem with that is that you do as if nullifying that argument will kill the whole case, while you still have to attack the other, the strong arguments...
if you were really interested in what I am saying, you would discuss more the major points (the one about you looking for reasons to copy other people votes without looking like copying)... instead, what did you do? you went for the weak argument, the one that wouldn't stand a chance alone if you really had a way to nullify the other arguments... and why? to make me look stupid, to score points in our discussion..
and that is a scum-tell, since townies don't want other people to look stupid, they want to find out their alignment...... (actually I had enough scum-tells, but now I'm even more sure)

To clarify the extent of your case against xite, could you please list your non-gut points briefly? Reason being is that, if it is true he only singled out a weak argument to attack, that is a valid scumtell; but the sheer size of your exchange with him means that each individual point isn't clear.

Sando seems a little too aggressive.

Aggressiveness is not bad, but I think Sando is being a little overagressive. Scum is usually more aggressive than town.

+2

Aggression is NOT a scumtell and accusing Sando of being "overaggressive" is just throwing around an empty smear label that discredits him despite not actually relating to any flaw in his argument. Aggression is entirely a playstyle thing.

First, I admitted that my original case was weak, but it's getting stronger, at least in my mind.

Why is it getting stronger?

[vollkan]

So who's your +2 on now?

Sorry. I had in my head that "Xite is the one with the twee avatar". I will now remember that you are powerpuff girls and not kitten.

he basically joins the discussion and wants to jump on the attack you guys carry on me and xite, whether that attack is valid or not is another story... since he doesn't want to look like he is just sheeping, he picks two very weak reasons (that question I asked and xites wall-o-text) just to join the bandwagon...
my problem is not with the attack on me/xite, it is how he blatantly does it for the wrong reasons, namely because everybody else does...
and even that could be ok, I mean, one can get convinced by other's arguments, but he didn't even admit this, but instead looked for reasons to join the wagon and look like he was actively scum-hunting...

Thanks. In that case, your case is legitimate.

@Sando: Coming back to the post by you that Tasky identified:

Not much, but he's taking the opportunity to throw out attacks without actually calling someone scummy, FOS/Voting them etc.

What's your point? You present this like it is some serious trangression when all it basically amounts to is that he is accusing people without voting, which is extremely common and, even if it wasn't, I can't see why it is scummy.

Xites wall-o-text seems like scum desperation.

This time you are basically taking a pet hate of many people, walls of text

+- Player Points are related to my above explanation. Note that these DO NOT have any indication to alignment, just my interpretation on players on how well their future QT witness testimonies can be trusted(ala, Phoenix Wright

This doesn't make any sense to me. Are you saying that you are going to trust people based on how skilled they are as a player? If so, that's an exceptionally bad way to play. An experienced player is just as likely to be scum as a new player.

xite, you didn't even respond to my last post. You saying I'm ignoring or shrugging off your case is a blatant lie.

Also:
UNVOTE: xite91
VOTE: Tasky

I'll put more pressure on. I think VV has a point about xite's overeagerness.

Huh? You reiterate that xite is avoiding you and agree with a new point about xite, but instead you jump ships, coincidentally to the largest wagon on the vacuous ground of "pressure". +3

I don't like this post, he is basically saying that he doesn't want to read the exchange between me and Sando thoroughly since it's to big in size... I think a townie who is interested in scum-hunting would want to read it, reread it, and read it again if necessary...

That wasn't why I asked you to summarise it. Your posts on point were in argument with Sando. The rest of us weren't your target audience. Having a snapshot summary just helped put the rest in context.

I'm not entirely sure I like him. I'm going to wait a bit, I read posts and think they're good. But then I have this underlying feeling that he is scum. I need to think about this one.

EDIT: Having thought about it since yesterday I think he's town. Though I can't be too certain yet.

Just a thought, and you can ignore this if you like because I am asking purely for personal meta reasons, is it possible that the "feeling" is something akin to the "Vollkan can't be trusted" thing coming from PD and Andrius?

How come you find the time to tunnel incessantly on me, but yet can't make a case on anyone else in the game?

What do you mean by tunnelling? Do you think it is scummy?

[vollkan]

You really don't see the scumminess in making accusations without backing them up with actual commitment? Townpersons commit to things, scum commit to whatever is most beneficial to them, and try to appear townie while doing it.

Casting a vote, let alone an FoS, is in no way a "commitment". It means nothing other than "you are the person I most suspect". The reason WHY somebody suspects somebody else is far more important and meaningful than the fact that they have a vote on somebody.

Don't get me wrong, if somebody is consistently pushing a wagon and yet, come late in a day, refuses to vote them, that is scummy (if only because of the inconsistency between words and action), but this early in a day, I honestly couldn't care less if nobody was voting anybody.

I said his wall-o-text looked scummy, I did not say that every wall-o-text is scummy

I said it looked like scum-desperation, he starts getting a lot of attention, and he suddenly starts bringing up these major wall-o-texts.

Wow, those two quotes make your argument extremely compelling.
"It's not always scummy, but it is here" - mind explaining why?
It "looked" like scum-desperation. As above, this has absolutely no reasoning to support it. He starts getting a lot of attention, and a lot of material to address, of course he's going to start posting more. Nothing he posted was unreasonably large; and I'm not having trouble imagining that, if he didn't address everything, you would then be turning around saying "He's avoiding arguments".

Attacks for not voting and posting walls suggest either that your brain isn't functioning or that you are scrambling to find non-following reasons to justify suspecting the apparent consensus candidates.

Oh, sando, if you'll read games I'm in you can see that I always post walls for cases, because I feel it's considerate to show what your case is on and then make the case. It wasn't panicked or desperate at all. I simply scum hunting and Friend is my best choice as to who's scum.

*shock* You mean that the amount of words people use is a product of personality and not a town/scum litmus test?

[vollkan]

Thanks for putting words in my mouth with that one. It's not unusual for scum to try to lay low until forced to post meaningfully and then overcompensating.

It's not unusual for anybody, faced with an attack against them or any argument against another player, to post more than average. Something isn't scummy just because scum do it; something is scummy when scum are more likely to do it.

You're weaving this story that makes out that xite was somehow posting an unreasonably low amount and then suddenly bombarded us with an unreasonably large amount. In reality, he's playing just how you'd expect anybody to play in the circumstances. People were arguing against him; it's only natural he'd post more .

*shock* You mean that when I said that not all Wall-O-Texts were a town/scum litmus test, I actually meant it?

I wasn't specifically addressing you there. I basically have a general dislike for a whole heap of boiler-plate scumtells that aren't really scumtells (walls, lurking, self-voting, etc.). Xite's post just nicely reaffirmed my position

That said, I will remind you that you've still failed to provide any explanatino as to why xite's walls are scummy.

The only thing you've provided is that they "feel" like desperation. Which is gut for starters and invalid as a matter of psychology (see my point above - everybody posts more in argument; that mightn't be ideal, but it's completely understandable)

You do realise I've posted other reasons why I find Tasky scummy right? You being too lazy to ISO me isn't a lack of brain function on my end. ISO 7 by the way, enjoy.

You do realise that scumhunting largely involves paying reasonable attention to people's bad reasons, rather than just praising them for decent ones.

Now, about those other reasons:

Saying something is gut then giving a non-gut reason doesn't seem like gut to me.

I can say justifiably that I am the most anti-gut person on site (there was a MD thread a while back on "Theory Schools" where I was basically deemed the poster-child of hating gut).

Tasky's vote for gut reasons was therefore bad from the outset. He acknowledged that though, because he said it was "just" gut, and his subsequent behaviour showed that he wasn't going to follow the gut.

I don't like it in the sense that I think it was unnecessary, but that doesn't make it scummy.

His vote on me is fairly OMGUS. And Tasky, voting someone for attacking you is OMGUS, pointing out that a lot of people doesn't diminish from this. Attacking people for things other than voting you would be avoiding OMGUS.

Speaking of boiler-plate scumtells that aren't really scumtells.

There is NOTHING scummy about voting the person who is voting you.

There is something very scummy about voting the person who is voting you if your reason for voting them is bad.

Tasky justified his vote as follows:

wowowo... if everybody who likes to post wall-o-text was scum, we'd have to lynch almost everybody on MafiaScum...

putting those two things together it looks to me like Sando came here, saw the case against me and Xite and wants to join it... but he doesn't want to look like he is just blindly following the others, so he looks for some (rather poor) excuses to do so...
this looks very much like scum trying to get on a bandwagon...

That's a perfectly legitimate justification. Smearing it as OMGUS is just again employing a lazy label rather than having to actually ask why something is scummy.

Self-voting is blatantly scummy, as previously said.

More boiler-plating

No. It's usually anti-[your faction], but that's only because there are so many people around who have a silly hatred against it.

Refusing to claim and claiming that I'm threatening him, is obviously a complete distortion of what's happening.

Please explain.

The attempt at wagoning Volkan was silly and pointless, and IIoA was silly, and points to a tendency to play according to the wiki. It's the same as attacking Xite as an easy target to appear pro-town. Scum tend to want to do things on D1 that looks so pro-town that everyone thinks they're town. My general rule is that the first person to accuse someone of role-fishing is scum, because it's so obviously anti-town to role-fish, that anyone accusing someone of role-fishing is obviously town (sarcasm there btw). Same applies with things like IIoA,

it's a classic tell so accusing people of it is an easy way to get town-points.

"scum laying low", "walls", "OMGUS", and "self-voting". The irony of the above quote actually has me smirking.

In seriousness, though, the points you make in the above quote are valid ones.

He's trying to portray his attack on Xite as required because he was saying anti-town things and noone was bringing them up, yet Volkan had already brought Xite to heel:

Where did he attempt this portrayal?

It's also not unusual for town to do the same. Town will frequently give minimal effort until they can be bothered to make a case against someone. I frequently do the same.

/agree

One is doing it when forced, one is doing when sufficiently bothered. I realise that town, especially on D1 or when posting is lacklustre, will often not bother to post much, then force themselves to make a huge post to make up for it. I don't think that is the case with Xite.

It comes back to a broader general point: people are basically lazy and are more likely to post when something directly concerns them.

Yes, it would be much easier for town if everybody was super-focussed, but they aren't. It sucks, but that's the reality.

[vollkan]

Scum are actually more likely to do it, you disagree, all we're doing is contradicting each other, it's tiresome.

It isn't a mere difference of opinion. You just asserted that scum are more likely to do it (and did so again in the above). I (and now Max) have provided a psychological justification as to why everybody does it. You haven't engaged with that argument beyond continuing to assert your "scum like to lay low" cliche.

Your sarcasm was quite deliberately aimed at me, I don't really care, but I'm also not going to ignore something I disagree with simple because it's not addressed to me specifically. 'Walls' is not a boiler-plate scumtell, I've never been in a game where walls in general were considered a scumtell (I have been in one where NOT posting in wall-posts was a scumtell though). I've also never tried to claim that posting a wall is a scumtell, in fact I've clarified that point many times now. I have provided an explanation, you disagree with it, as I have no real interest in getting Xite lynched right at the moment, I really couldn't give a damn. Not providing an explanation, and not providing an explanation that meets your rather bizarre set of rules are 2 different things.

The "boiler-plate walls tell" is either that it is a sign of desperation or, somewhat relatedly, that it is an effort to obfuscate. You've again asserted, with no explanation, that the walls here seemed like scum desperation. When, in fact, to restate the same point, it's just a natural reaction to having more to address that specifically concerns you. It's a nulltell.

Much as I complain about the wiki, it's bang-on in relation to its definition of scumtell:

The working definition of a scumtell is an action that is more likely to be taken by a scum player than a town player. This relies on motivations, as most things in mafia do. When a player takes an action, evaluating it on the basis of

"would this action more likely come from a town player, or a scum player"

should be the way that players determine the scumminess of that action. It is worthwhile to note here that subjectivity plays little to no role in this distinction. POSSIBLE motivations for scum to take a given action are not sufficient to call an action a scum tell. An action is scummy if and only if it can be deemed more likely to come from scum than from town,

A perfect example of this occurs in mini 636: Gangland mafia. Kuribo asserts that an action is a scumtell to him, because he can think of A justification for scum to do it, but neglects, as vollkan points out, to show that this reason is likely.

The debate we are having now echoes the debate I had with Kuribo in Mini 636. You keep claiming why what he did could be done by scum, whilst completely ignoring other possible, and more general, motivations.

I can honestly say that I don't care, I won't try to convince you with my gut, but in some instances it will motivate my actions. You can disagree with my methods all you want, but I will never change my play style simply to suit you.

Ahem....

Now you're just contradicting yourself, you had a reason, that scum wants to point out something, and now it's gut. Guts a great thing isn't it? You don't have to justify it, you don't get called out on it later.

Do as I say, not as I do?

Well for starters he misrepresents what I said about Xite, bad reason 1.
Secondly, he doesn't actually provide reasoning for how my argument is bad, merely states that it is, bad reason 2.
Then he boldly states that scum simply want to get on a bandwagon, with no reasoning as to why I would want to do that as scum, bad reason 3.

For starters, we are arguing whether "OMGUS" is a scumtell. I said it wasn't - and that the question was always whether a person's reasons were valid or not. Now you're just moving the goalposts to debate whether the reasons were good or bad, which is a completely different issue.

On the reasons themselves,
Assuming that the misrepresentation accusation relates to his comment that "wowowo... if everybody who likes to post wall-o-text was scum, we'd have to lynch almost everybody on MafiaScum...", then you're wrong. Let me go through this step by step:
1) You've claimed that Xite's walls are a scumtell
2) You've claimed that walls are not always a scumtell
3) You've failed to provide any decent* reason as to why Xite's walls are distinct from any other wall

(By "decent", I mean that saying that the walls "feel" like desperation does not make for a legitimate case. Tasky's point that everybody posts walls is just another iteration of the point I've been making about people always naturally posting more in certain circumstances)

I've never said that only scum lay low, or that only scum post walls, or that either is a scumtell in itself. You yourself have said that OMGUS is scummy, you just don't agree that it was OMGUS. And self-voting is scummy, and it's not an 'easy accusation' to make, he did it, no two ways about it. Other than that, yeah, really ironic...

So basically, the accusations you've been making relate to things that aren't always scummy, but they are here because your gut says so. Great.

And, where did I say OMGUS is scummy? I said that voting somebody (including the person who is voting you) for crap reasons is scummy. That isn't OMGUS.

In his ISO 22 when he tried to claim that instead of simply attacking the easy target of Xite, he was asking a legitimate query that town needed to be asked, when it didn't.

ISO 22 is below.

Also dudes. Get used to sando, he gets going after a while, you'll warm to him .

Hi Max My non-abrassive game was just utter fail, so I stopped trying, back to my good old self

as I said, just gut...

What? Your gut, my gut?

For me saying "nice try" feels scummy...

but he really believed it, and it was nonsense... not pointing that out would have been anti-town...
I didn't even vote him for that, just pointed out that his idea was ridiculously wrong...

Yeah I know you didn't vote him, it's part of my point. You're continuing to insist that it was scummy, yet you didn't feel the need to vote him... This further reinforces that you were simply pointing it out for no real reason other than to appear townie.

wait... it's you insisting that it was scummy... I pointed out an error in his judgement, I did not attack him for that, I didn't even think he was scum, I just wanted a clarification... you are clearly trying to turn a worthless argument into something by manipulating evidence

Pretty sure Andrius put you at L-1, Trasky needs to claim. Vote goes back on if the next Trasky post isn't a claim.

I am not going to claim just because you threaten me... it would just hurt town...
all I need to claim is that I am town-alligned and that you are scum...


this is to everybody... please examine the discussion between me and Sando carefully... I really don't see how you can miss his obviously scummy behaviour...
he picked one point of attack and insisted on it manipulating all the rest of the discussion around it just to make it fit his idea... that's not a reasonable attack to me...
there should really be more votes on him by now...


PS: my name is Tasky, not Trasky...

Where does he make that portrayal of necessity?

Vollkan, after all of this, one thing becomes clear, you hate gut, OMGUS, self-voting, etc. Why are you fixated on my case against Tasky and not others, who have professed only these suspicions of Tasky, when I have actually posted reasons that you actually appear to agree with?

Who else made those accusations?

A) All the scum are already on the wagon
B) Tasky is scum who isn't going to be hammered by scum
C) Everyone's too lazy/fearful to hammer
D) There really isn't a majority of people willing to see Tasky dead

Discuss the likelyhoods of A and B.

A) Possible
B) Doubt it - if Tasky looked like a set lynch, scum would hammer. It's still early days so this merges with D and Prana's E
C) No evidence to suggest this
D) There's probably a majority willing to vote for Tasky, but not enough to see him dead at this point

[vollkan]

Fun, by the way, using the word 'psychological' doesn't make your argument any more sound.

I know. And nothing I said suggested that it in any way did. My point, which you haven't addressed, is that asserting one reason why scum could do something and completley ignoring a more all-encompassing explanation based simply on natural human responses is a terrible way to scumhunt.

You're also not addressing the key phrase 'more likely'.

Theory point, but relevant, so I'll address it briefly:

It's hard to define it more precisely. Ideally, this is the sort of game where you'd have statistics on every single player and every single scumtell - but we don't. Instead, it's a matter of asking why someone (in the particular circumstances of that game and with the characteristics of the person you are scrutinising) might do it as scum, why they might do it as town, and why they might do it simply because of unavoidable human flaws (laziness, etc). If at the end of that you cannot confidently rule out the "town" and "human" explanations, then you shouldn't treat it as a scumtell.

Yes everyone does it, scum are MORE LIKELY to do it. Consider this:

Men are more likely to commit assault than women. When an assault occurs, I can take that as an indicator that the perpetrator is a man. I might be wrong, but men are more likely to commit assault (scumtell) and therefore the commiter of said assault (scumtell) is more likely to be a man (scum) than a woman (town). Merely stating that there are some women (town) that do it as well, in no way contradicts the theory that the perpetrator is MORE LIKELY to be a man (scum) than woman (town).

The same thing applies, scum are more likely to do it, it is not a valid counter to say that 'yeah but sometimes town do it too'. Unless you're willing to state that town do it just as often as scum, then the statement of 'scum are more likely to do it' is valid. And I'll disagree with your statement if you make it, but the point is that you're not even trying to disprove my statement.

Your comparison is false for the simple reason that we have thorough empirical evidence proving that men commit assault more than women.

We don't have that in this game. Since scumhunting has to be done conservatively to avoid mislynches, it follows that a reasonable non-scum explanation (like what Max and I have been saying) has to trump a reasonable scum explanation. Otherwise, any time you assert why something could be scum-motivated, it becomes a scumtell.

OMGUS is a scumtell, you say so right here:

I said that voting somebody (including the person who is voting you) for crap reasons is scummy.

Voting somebody simply because they voted you is scummy: eg. "You voted me. You are scum"

Voting somebody because they voted you for a bad reason is NOT scumy: eg.

putting those two things together it looks to me like Sando came here, saw the case against me and Xite and wants to join it... but he doesn't want to look like he is just blindly following the others, so he looks for some (rather poor) excuses to do so...therefore UNVOTE:
VOTE: Sando

Tasky didn't vote you because you voted him; he voted you because of your reasons for voting him. There's a huge difference.

[vollkan]

Seems somewhat contradictory...

No. It isn't.

Sando accused Tasky of OMGUS for this:

putting those two things together it looks to me like Sando came here, saw the case against me and Xite and wants to join it... but he doesn't want to look like he is just blindly following the others, so he looks for some (rather poor) excuses to do so...
this looks very much like scum trying to get on a bandwagon...

therefore UNVOTE:
VOTE: Sando

Quoting every post where I give my view on OMGUS:

That's a perfectly legitimate justification. Smearing it as OMGUS is just again employing a lazy label rather than having to actually ask why something is scummy.

For starters, we are arguing whether "OMGUS" is a scumtell. I said it wasn't - and that the question was always whether a person's reasons were valid or not. Now you're just moving the goalposts to debate whether the reasons were good or bad, which is a completely different issue.

And, where did I say OMGUS is scummy? I said that voting somebody (including the person who is voting you) for crap reasons is scummy. That isn't OMGUS.

Voting somebody simply because they voted you is scummy: eg. "You voted me. You are scum"

Voting somebody because they voted you for a bad reason is NOT scumy: eg.

I've been consistently clear that voting people for bad reasons (ie. simply because they voted you) is scumy. Voting somebody because they are voting you (OMGUS) is not scummy, if the reason for your vote is that you think the person voting you has crappy reasons.

We are both agreed that both town and scum are prone to doing things like OMGUS, self-voting, etc. I think scum are more likely to do some of these things than town, you disagree. That...is...it... That's the entirety of this stupid argument.

I'll ask you this, what is a town-motivation for Tasky to self-vote?

I'd echo Max entirely here. I generally call this an "immunising strategem" (though, Max's "invincible ignorance" sounds much better). If only for cathartic reasons, I'll reiterate:
We've provided thorough reasons why what you've put forward is not exclusively scum-motivated and thus cannot be called a scumtell.
Your response has been to make demands, which in this game are just stupid if nothing else, that boil down to saying that we have to prove that it is most likely town/null to cause you to drop your case.

It's a core principle in this game that the accuser bears the onus of proof, for obvious reaosns. What you are doing is reversing that by effectively saying: "If I can pull any explanation out of my arse as to why scum might want to do something, I am entitled to treat it as scumtell unless you prove otherwise".

ie:

You and Vollkan have never actually addressed the statement that scum are more likely to do something. Vollkan is doing the exact same thing as me, neither of us have (or can) provide any hard data on whether scum is more likely to do something than town, hence we simply disagree at this stage.

You're the one throwing the accusation. It's incumbent on you to prove your case beyond all other explanations. You've failed dismally at that, and for you now to try and make your stupid accusations of tunnelling (yet another boilerplate scumtell) is doing you no favours at all.

Your persistent pushing of a ridiculous line of argument doesn't speak of someone who is genuinely about finding scum, as opposed to somebody simply interested in self-preservation.

Unvote, Vote: Sando

I feel that the Tasky wagon isn't going anywhere, and Tasky's been doing well on his own. I'm leaning town on him, but would be willing to vote him at deadline.

You've given three inconsistent positions in one post.

You say the wagon isn't going anywhere, implying that's a bad thing. You then say Tasky is seeming town to you (so surely that makes redundant the fact that the wagon isn't going there), but then you'd be willing to swap again at deadline (for somebody you are leaning town on??). Heavily suggests hedging of one's bets. +3

Continual opportunistic wagoning, and the fly-under the radar of not actually posting content/suspicions, crystalised by this latest example makes this a pretty easy vote:

Holy crap, I actually agree with you here.

I can always smell a good wagon a mile off.

Unvote; Vote: Andrius

Why is Andrius a good wagon? In 25 words or more. If you can't provide it, then unvote.

Attempts at humor, could be used to disguise malice.

Or trying to be funny, or venting frustration at inactivity, or a personal quirk, etc. Bringing up that it could be malice is just meaningless smear.

'Guys, you won't regret lynching this guy. He won't help you out anyway, he's a VI a detriment to Town. By telling you this, I am absolving my hands off his Town flip!'

This interests me. Vas, I will vouch for the fact that in the game PD, Andrius and myself recently played, Andrius was one of the worst VIs I've ever come across. With that in mind, is it unreasonable of PD to say what he did?

@PD: Why did you link to the other cases on Andrius?

[vollkan]

Quote?

[vollkan]

As for tasky, I'm neutral - I find his postings to be a bit swingy in nature, so my read's really shaky. I'd like it if the people voting him could give a

brief

summary of the case against 'im for ease of reading (I don't do as well with reading walls of text as I used to).

Vollkan / Max:

Thoughts on players OTHER than sando would be appreciated.

I know you've changed your vote from tasky already, but I'd like a brief case still.

And your thoughts outside of sando.

Tasky case:
1. Lazy use of "IIoA" early game
2. Accusing others of bringing up other games not relevant to scumhunting here (as I said, it's a case of being self-righteous, ie "Look at me; I am concerned about the lack of scumhunting")
3. Pulling the "Where did I attack people" line, which is both dishonest and evasive

Which is fine as an early game case, but my posting throughout then and since shows that opinion-wise I was moving on from it.

I will do a summary of my views on everybody, but I am not comfortable doing one off the cuff because it would be gut.

We've provided thorough reasons why what you've put forward is not exclusively scum-motivated and thus cannot be called a scumtell.

Stop giving me this bullshit and I'll start listening to you. There is not a scumtell in the game that is exclusively scum-motivated. So according to you there are no scumtells?

I think I can resolve this much more simply by trying to delineate two ways of thinking about scumtells:
1. Analytical - the question is whether the best explanation for an action is a scum one
2. Empirical - whether something is statistically more often going to come from scum

You are basically mixing the two.

You are persistently making an empirical claim -eg.

I don't know how many times I have to say it, but I think it's pretty clear to everyone involved that my opinion is that scum are more likely to do XYZ than town, and that this is in no way diminished by Vollkan's point that town sometimes do it to. I have agreed that town do it sometimes, all I've said is that scum do it more often. Vollkan has consistently chosen to ignore this argument and bullishly pushed through with a misrepresentation of my views.

- but your rationale for this is entirely analtical - eg:

Scum self-vote because it's thought that town will react with 'no scum would ever do that'. I've seen scum self-vote and turn around the most ardent supporter of their lynch, thankfully the hammer went through before he could un-vote and he flipped scum. Townies never have to try and do things to show their towniness, scum try to.

Quite simply, you can't have it both ways.

If you are going to say that "town do it sometimes, but scum do it more" you NEED numbers. You don't have them.

You keep coming back to the phrase "more likely". In this context, as in most contexts in this game, we don't have empirical evidence, so we have to have something else.

In respect of that "something else", I stress at the beginning that it is the accuser (ie. you) who needs to prove their case. I don't have to prove that, on balance, self-voting is not scummy; you have to prove that it is. Thus, where I am able to give a town or null reason why somebody might do something, you can only retaliate in one way (assuming you have no actual numbers): to PROVE analytically why my explanation is

objectively

less valid.

I bolded "objectively" for the simple reason that you keep subjectivising this by talking about your "opinion". Which is just a clever way of dodging the fact that you haven't actually explained why your case is convincing. All this boils down to is that you, as a personal, subjective, gut matter, think that it is most likely to come from scum - which is no way to scumhunt.

And yet Vollkan declares that I'm the one accusing others of tunneling... Yeah righto.

I interpreted this:

Ahahahaha, accusing me of tunneling is pretty funny. Yes, my posts have mostly been about Tasky recently, but that's because you and Vollkan have attacked me over my views on Tasky. You forcing me to talk about Tasky for a couple of pages then accusing me of tunnelling is hilarious.

As being you saying it was ironic that you were being accused of tunneling because Max and I had tunnelled you.

Vollkan has conveniently ignored parts of arguments that suit him. When asked to provide a town-reason for self-voting, he conspiciously ignored it, despite me answering, for Max, a reason why scum would do it:

I remember your question. I think the reason I didn't answer it is because there isn't a town motivation to self-vote (I said as much way back when I said that it is usually "anti-[your faction]".

You said scum self-vote to change people's opinions - and you raised the context of a near-deadline. They certainly can do that. But, and I say this as somebody who used to self-vote a lot myself, independently of my alignment, there's also just a certain "cat amongst the pigeons" kind of broader objective to it. FOr the same reason that random-wagonning is often done, it's just sometimes good (no matter what your alignment) to create a situation that throws up people's reactions.

And now Vollkan decides to distill my case on Andrius down to one post he agrees with, gives Andrius scum points for his actions, then attacks RC for joining the wagon on Andrius, questioning why it's a good wagon.

How did I "attack" RC?
In any event, what do you think my reason was in doing so?

[vollkan]

[quote="Sando"
So wait, me providing a reason why scum would do something, and you providing no reason why town would do it (self-voting) still requires more objectivity? [/quote]

I've already said that it's a "cat among the pigeons" thing, basically a personality trait - some people like self-voting (no matter what their alignment) as a shit-stirring technique, myself included.

The objectivity deficit is that you are effectively reversing the onus of proof. In the face of a reasonable nulltell reason for the behaviour, you aren't explaining at all what reasons (be they analytical or empirical) are compelling you to favour the scum interpretation.

I raised the context of near-lynch, but yeah... You're basically saying that scum and town have equal motivation to self-vote, and you're apparently happy with my scum-motivation for doing it, but still, scum aren't more likely to do it?

In a nutshell, yes. Both have reasons why they might self-vote. It's completely inadequate to rely on one scum motivation and ignore all others.

I thought this was an attack, demanding he provide evidence or unvote etc

When somebody (who hasn't convinced me that they are thinking independently) says "This is a good wagon", that raises a red flag for me that they are just playing follow-the-leader.

Rayfrost/Vollkan: I have a problem with the general attitude of Vollkan to the Andrius wagon. He agrees with one tiny part of my case, gives Andrius a few scumpoints, then questions (I think attacks, you can decide on the wording) one of the supporters of the wagon. It's like he realises that he has to comment on the wagon, but wants to get back to other things straight away and attempt to throw it in a weak light. Ray, it's not that it's RC, I understand you dislike RC, it's how he went about going after the weakest link of the wagon.

See above; I completely agree that a good indication of distancing can be where someone expresses weak agreement with a case, but then tries to dismantle it - but that isn't at all what I did.

Also, noting that 2 people have been attacked over the wagon very quickly, one for agreeing and basically paraphrasing before voting, one for not paraphrasing and then voting. This is despite noone actually coming up with any counters to the case(s) put up. I'm more and more convinced that Andrius is scum because of this and being defended by a buddy. At this point I think it's Vollkan.

This is because I asked RC to elaborate?

Oh, though I do like sando's analysis at the end of his post.

Why?

[vollkan]

To answer vollk's question, I'll quote the analysis to help others know what I'm talking about

Rayfrost/Vollkan: I have a problem with the general attitude of Vollkan to the Andrius wagon. He agrees with one tiny part of my case, gives Andrius a few scumpoints, then questions (I think attacks, you can decide on the wording) one of the supporters of the wagon. It's like he realises that he has to comment on the wagon, but wants to get back to other things straight away and attempt to throw it in a weak light. Ray, it's not that it's RC, I understand you dislike RC, it's how he went about going after the weakest link of the wagon.

Also, noting that 2 people have been attacked over the wagon very quickly, one for agreeing and basically paraphrasing before voting, one for not paraphrasing and then voting. This is despite noone actually coming up with any counters to the case(s) put up. I'm more and more convinced that Andrius is scum because of this and being defended by a buddy. At this point I think it's Vollkan.

The reasoning behind this makes some sense to me and doesn't feel like a contrived case on somebody. It's not so much that the analysis is

spot on awesome

so much as

the motivation behind it seems townish

.

RC's not a weak link of the wagon so much as a scummy individual on the wagon. It's not like vollk's attacking a real supporter of the wagon - RC's a tagalong that isn't giving anything of value.

I also agree about andrius scum and I do lie the fact he's pointed out nobody has come up with a counter while supporters of the lynch are still being attacked over it. I don't agree with the end conclusion, though. vollk seems town.

I already explained why the very notion that I 'attacked' RC is ridiculous (to recap: asking somebody to state their reasoning is not 'attacking'). And you seem to share my concern with the way RC joined the wagon.

How then is it not "contrived"?

[vollkan]

I already explained why the very notion that I 'attacked' RC is ridiculous (to recap: asking somebody to state their reasoning is not 'attacking'). And you seem to share my concern with the way RC joined the wagon.

How then is it not "contrived"?

I do share it, yes.

I've played with sando before (me-scum, him-town), and he had a proclivity to misinterpret the stances of other players (nearly got him lynched, IIRC) and act in a hyper-reactive manner when attacked.

Despite his misunderstandings, he has an undercurrent of

absolute conviction

that is hard to break through. His frustrations and extreme reactions are palpable to me.

Is his behaviour in his argument with me consistent with what you saw meta?

[vollkan]

Can you just reconcile this for me please Rayfrost:

I believe your perspective on it is off - finding somebody scummy for mindlessly wagoning on a good case is a natural reaction.

This is what you think is a 'natural reaction for Vollkan, yet Vollkan said this in relation to wagoning:

FOr the same reason that random-wagonning is often done, it's just sometimes good (no matter what your alignment) to create a situation that throws up people's reactions.

And Vollkan has made it pretty clear what he thinks of tells that both scum and town do, they're not tells. So it seems to me that Vollkan disagrees with what you think is a 'natural reaction' for him.

Oh, I missed that. Yeeeaaaahhhh... vollk will have to explain himself on this one.

Pretty simple. By "random wagoning" I am referring to where a person votes simply to generate reaction (fairly common in RVS). Which is completely different from what I saw RC doing, which was seriously changing his vote, but without showing independent reasoning as to why. Of course, you will often randomly wagon somebody because you suspect them and want to see how they react, but that's still different from a normal vote.

For meta evidence that this what I mean when I say "random wagoning":

Shaft.ed, I know you're an intelligent player - smart enough to know random wagoning from dodgy vote-hopping. I find it very hard to believe that you would mistakenly take issue with Adel's wagoning - and then try and peg it on meta rather than on the fact that it was apparent random wagoning.

FoS: shaft.ed

This game needs a kickstart. Since I have exhausted the actual game content, it's time to try random wagoning:-

Vote: GR for the reasons listed by Cephrir.

My read of Adel is classic random wagoning. As she said, "stirring the pot". I want to know why you seem (from this post) to have actual issues with her wagoning behaviour.

[vollkan]

So Vollkan, you're seriously going to stick with the idea that only scum will jump on a wagon without providing a thorough analysis, despite 2 people already having done so?

Not once did I say or imply that only scum will jump on a wagon without providing a thorough analysis. I asked RC to explain his reasoning; that was all. You are still spinning this as some kind of sinister attack by me when all I did was ask somebody to explain themselves. I appreciate from RF's post that you have a tendency to get tunnel-visioned, but you are just being ridiculous here.

Vote: Sando

Why?

And the whole 'I HATE BOILERPLATE SCUMTELLS' but wants to ignore it on everyone else? And that's even after they've been pointed out to him, twice, after he's specifically asked for it to be pointed out.

Sando, I honestly didn't see the instances when the other people raised OMGUS. It is scummy when they did it as well. But it's absolutely no answer to my argument against you to wave your arms and say "But they did it as well".

No wait. That's an Andyscum post. Believe you me, people.

Unvote; Vote: Andrius

Again, why?

Also

@Mod

I never voted Andrius.

~fixed

I especially find it disturbing that volk is voting for him especially since he has claimed previous experience of Andy's play.

I find it even more disturbing that I am voting Andrius, given that I didn't vote Andrius.

vollkan - a lot of his accusations feel forced, some of them aren't even in context or are just plain false.

If this is true, you have a good case against me. It surprises me then that you'd only give a single sentence with no evidence.

I don't like how vollkan makes actually decent points against Sando yet leaves his vote on Tasky. There's a link there to look back on later methinks.

This is a meta thing. I consider reasoning important and votes unimportant, except at deadline/lynch.

[vollkan]

Yessir.

You didn't give a reason there. You said "personal tell", which is utterly meaningless.

[vollkan]

V/LA until Monday

[vollkan]

1. Let's say two town players got neighbored that are avid scumhunters, yadda yadda yadda. In this instance, claiming it would give scum more information as to who to target, yes? I think the information should be kept secret until the town's gotten some information from it.

Agreed.

I also distinctly recall that we agreed not to follow the "one below you" popularity plan. It limits scumhunting of those in the higher rungs of popularity through their power.

There was never any agreement to that plan. Some people floated it, but it wasn't agreed to.

I targetted Tazaro and it worked. Yoohoo.
Also volkann targetted me.

MOD: CAN YOU COPY PASTE MY NAME. IT'S THE 3RD TIME I SEE YOU MESS IT UP

Anyone wanna tell me what happened ?

Also

Mod: Can we use the QT only during night time?

Why would you claim this?

I don't agree with the lynch cause it ended in a townie death.

Possibly an archetypal newb-scum tell. To wit, @vezo, how many games have you played before?

I didn't read the game too much.

I would never have guessed

RayFrost is scum cause I have a gut feeling about him.

*facepalm*

Gut is

not

a legitimate basis for suspecting people. Either come up with actual reasons to suspect RF, or stop calling him scum.

RayFrost is scum based on Friend's meta.

Who is Friend? What is his meta? Why is it relevant?

Tasky is scum just based on his first post. He is not any kind of scum. He is probably the Godfather.

*headdesk*

This is Parama scum at is finnest. Please lynch this guy.

WHY IS IT SCUMMY?!

(it's becoming apparent to me that Vezo has the playstyle that I hate the most - absolute certainty and absolutely no reasons)

Meta is completely useless btw. Don't even start arguing this with me.

I don't agree. But it's a theory point that I am not going to bother arguing now.

[vollkan]

Yay. I just figured one obvious scum.
Sad thing is he is so scummy that makes me think I am scum too. Now he is just buddying up with me. WIFOMing the hell out of us.
Please die.
unvote
Vote andrius

First, you completely ignored my previous post.

Second, nothing in your latest post makes any sense. Why is Andrius obv-scum? Why does him being scummy make you think you are scum? What is your evidence of 'buddying'? How is he WIFOMing?

vezok + andrius scumteam with vezok failbussing.

It seems likely. His language concerning Andrius is unusually bombast (compared to his attacks on other people). Jumping ahead to something later on, but I will address now, is his later post of:

Wagon on me.
RayFrost sees me scum everywhere.
I stil support a Parama wagon or Ray Frost wagon. Or even Andrius.

Despite the fact that he seemed most 'eager' to have Andrius lynched before (in terms of language), Andrius drops off to his third preference in the above more recent post. He's clearly a newb, but newb-towns who have the same absolute certainty that Vezok has in his posts (as in, "Andrius is scum. Please die") tend to get tunnel-visioned on their main suspect. Whereas, Vezok has only been inconsistent in relation to Andrius; acting exactly how you would expect newbscum to act if they were trying to rack up bussing points ("Please die", etc.) without also exposing their partner to lynch risk (by not seriously pushing Andrius as a lynchee).

@volkan: Why did you vote for Sando when you agreed with (part of) his Andy case?

I don't accept the premise of your question. If you've ever played as scum, you should be aware that making a case on somebody you know to be a townie is trivially easy. The fact that somebody makes some good points doesn't significantly impact on the likelihood of them being scum.

I'm also assuming this is the reason behind you saying:

volkan's "I agree with you about Andy being scummy but I'll vote you anyway." is suspicious as fuck. It screams inside information, and him being a major force in the Sando lynch is not good. (I don't think Sando would have been lynched if it weren't for volkan.)

Wagon on me.
RayFrost sees me scum everywhere.
I stil support a Parama wagon or Ray Frost wagon. Or even Andrius. [/quote]

[vollkan]

If RayFrost sees you scum everywhere, vollkan, then that's a null tell, no?

I was quoting Vezo there, hence the messed up quote tags. I can't see what what you mean.

Andrius/VV/vollkan scumteam

Let me just review your attacks on me for one moment (for the people who hate walls, just scroll past):

I'm going to give you a preview of my reads:

vollkan, Friend, and Sando are all scum.

and it looks like Friend was replaced by RayFrost so I mean that vollkan, Rayfrost, and Sando are the scum.

vollkan - a lot of his accusations feel forced, some of them aren't even in context or are just plain false.

Everyone point the town-finger at vollkan gives me bad vibes, because obviously people aren't bothering to see through weak accusations that look good on the surface but are really false if you look into them.

I don't like how vollkan makes actually decent points against Sando yet leaves his vote on Tasky. There's a link there to look back on later methinks.

vollkan provided arguments against Sando that were much stronger than his on Tasky but didn't switch until he saw a wagon forming.

Friend mentions vollkan a lot but never really says anything concrete about him, just calls him town. The disassociation coupled with his caution bugs me.

We need to lynch the scum (Sando, Ray, vollkan)

Prana/vollkan/Sando scumteam

Yeah, those are the vibes vollkan's giving off. I like a vollkan/VV/Andrius team very much but vollkan can stay alive just because if he IS town he's more useful than the other two if they're town (there should be at least 2 scum in that grouping for sure, however.)

Um, that's not it. I just think VV and Andrius are more likely scum than vollkan. A lot of my issue with vollkan is a gut read though there's some evidence against him as I have stated prior.

Andrius/VV/vollkan scumteam

What's my point? Not once have you ever explained why you suspect me. The closest you came to it was the "You didn't switch to Tasky" thing which I have already addressed (and your suspicion began well before you made that point).

You also had an issue with secretly weak accusations, which you made absolutely no explanation of.

Your entire suspicion of me just seems to be gut.

I want to see if vollkan's going to vote for anyone; he makes me suspicious for not doing so.

I've been fairly transparent for a while now about my suspicion of RC/Vezok (the reason I neighbourised him). My count is that my vote would put him at L-1 though.

My deliberation has resulted in this:
VOTE: Andrius

And the reason you aren't being open about what evidence you relied upon to reach that conclusion is?

You are AtEing now. That is not a good mood. Cheer up man.

That isn't AtE.

Not like I've ever been suspicious of him, right?

Not like you've ever had reasons to suspect me, right?

[vollkan]

From what I saw of volkan, he is also kind of scummy. He needs to start posting his ideas and standpoints on players, and of course actual cases, instead of, oh that's not scummy.

I agree with your evidence (I haven't had any strong cases), but I don't agree with your conclusion (that it makes me scummy).

Bit of self-meta: My scum game generally looks more pro-town than my town game. The reason why is that I am naturally skeptical of whether things are town-tells or scum-tells; it makes me ultra-conservative as a player (as in, I am more likely to see many things as null-tells than most people). When I am scum, that natural skepticism can fly out the window, so I can (and Andrius can attest to this) make really awesome-sounding cases which are logical, even though I think they are bullshit.

I had this issue in Mini 987 as well, which is my most recently-finished town game. What helped me there was to do a short paragraph on each player and give them a numerical ranking, so I will do that here.

The fact that he flipped town just makes you more likely to be scum.

No.

Townies commit 'scumtells' all the time. Townies are legitimately lynched all the time. Being on the wagon of a townie does not make a player more likely to be scum unless there was some defect in the wagon.

[vollkan]

For the uninitiated, my system works as follows. Each player starts at a score of 50 (on a 0 - 100 scale). Scumminess pushes it up. Towniness lowers it. It is uncommon for people to ever actually go below 50. So that I don't have to repeat this ad nauseum later, a score of 50 at the end of the proces does not mean "no opinion"; it means "neutral".

All post #s are ISO numbers.

Xite

:
1: Reasoning on mass pop claim is very weak, and worse that he couples it with an accusation of role-fishing. Newbish; whether it is scummy depends on how this carries forward.
2: Reiterates the weak reasoning about scum convincing town that they (the scum) are town in QTs
3: Says he is eager to join Tasky's wagon (despite not joining it earlier:

Tasky/Xite scumteam evidence

)
4: Joins the wagon. Adds at the end "I'll help push him". Newb bussing tactic of declaring your eagerness:

Tasky/Xite scumteam evidence

5: On being asked to claim, he does - despite his strong opposition earlier. +1
7: Floats the idea of quicklynches, but in ISO8 says it was a joke...
14: Really bad attack on Friend, who rightly said that a mass pop claim wouldn't help scumhunting but would help neighbourising, in saying: "So you just want to because it could help neighborizing? but not scum hunting... hmm". Not only is the logic to this weak, but Xite presents it like something really intriguing (ie "Hmm"). +1
20: Rehashes the same weak argument, but in even strnoger language with: "And the reason it was scummy that you would push a claim was that you even said yourself that it wouldn't be beneficial to scum-hunting". +1
26: Really simplistic attack on Friend for allegedly simply dismissing what Xite said, but Friend's posts are much clearer and it isn't mere dismissal. +2

Nothing useful from Shify and CSL

50: Really bad attack on Parama, purely on the basis that Sando flipped town, which also serves to make Parama-scum seem dangerous. +2

Score: 59

VV

:

[vollkan]

How new is this scale, vollkan?

Very old.

When I first did it, I did it by custom in all games, but it's progressively become something I do when I am without a clear candidate. I should also say that a score of 70 is my theoretical voting threshold. I find more and more that people aren't getting to 70 (ie. I end up voting the highest score, but that score isn't above 70), which is a product of me turning more and more to the view that "99% of scumtells are bullshit".

VasudeVa

2: No real reasoning or analysis here, despite conclusions
4: Weak argument against Sando based on aggression (not a scumtell) +1
5: Position here doesn't make sense at all. He leaves Tasky wagon to join another, but is clear that he still thinks Tasky is a good lynch. BUT, at the same time, says that the Tasky wagon "reeks" of scum +2
7: Every one of his attacks on Prana here simply stretches what Prana said to make the worst possible interpretation of it. +1 (only reason it isn't +2 is that since there was no wagon on PD, there isn't clear opportunism)
25: jumps onto RC, says he has a pretty good chance of flipping scum - despite earlier having said he found RC hard to read. +1
26: Then swaps to Taz, without any explanation as to why. +1

Score: 57

[vollkan]

Max

In the interests of time, I'll simply say that Max gets a

50

. I haven't seen any scumtells from him. (as in, I am not going to do a complete reread on somebody who I already have a solid read on)

Tazaro

1: Vote for Andrius makes no sense "trying to manipulate from the beginning" - that's a conclusion not an argument. +1
10: Expresses willingness to swap to Sando, on the basis that he doubts RF and RF is pushing Andrius. This doesn't make sense, since at the very least it would imply that his suspicion of RF is very serious, and yet he shows no willingness either to boost support for an Andrius lynch or push attentino onto RF as an alternative. +1
60: Noting here that he has many extremely short posts, making him very active but also very hard to get a read on. There is no sense of his thought process.
Taz gets a

52

overall, but I think that number may be soft, in that his posting style is one that I have personal difficulties with. It would I think be more accurate if he had a mid-50s ranking, at least an indication of how I feel about him.

NicolBolas

2: Reasoning is bad, but looks more null-newb than scummy.
...which is the impression I keep getting.

50

[vollkan]

Breaking out of summary mode for a sec:

Vollkan- do you think my reasoning seems bad, still?

Yeah. To be clear, I don't mean "scummy"-bad (hence the 50), just newbish/simplistic.

I vote for who other people agree with as suspects; I want to finally lynch one of the suspects; people just need to reach a consensus.

The trouble with this is, and I didn't notice it until I read you in ISO, your scumdar seems to be on rapid-fire. You've constantly been changing main suspects throughout the game, and there seems to be little sense of rhyme or reason to what you are doing. "Consensus" is only good if it gets scum lynched, whereas your approach seems to just be focussed on getting *somebody* lynched (or, more charitably, shows too little care for the reasons WHY somebody is a good lynch)

[vollkan]

I vote for who other people agree with as suspects; I want to finally lynch one of the suspects; people just need to reach a consensus.

The trouble with this is, and I didn't notice it until I read you in ISO, your scumdar seems to be on rapid-fire. You've constantly been changing main suspects throughout the game, and there seems to be little sense of rhyme or reason to what you are doing. "Consensus" is only good if it gets scum lynched, whereas your approach seems to just be focussed on getting *somebody* lynched (or, more charitably, shows too little care for the reasons WHY somebody is a good lynch)

The way you put this makes it sound like a massive scumtell. Yet by your rating Tazaro is just above complete neutrality?

Max is correct.

Taz is playing with a playstyle that I despise, principally because, whilst it isn't a scumtell as such (because plenty of people play that way), it makes analysing him next to impossible (because the playstyle is all but identical to the most brazenly opportunistic scum play). For practical purposes, therefore, while I can only give him a 52 (because I know that such a playstyle isn't scummy), I basically have to slap a massive margin of error onto that such that his true ranking (in the sense of my willingness to lynch him relative to somebody else) would be a higher score.

Andrius:

15: His reasons for not joining a wagon that would put me at L-2 is interesting. He begins in the highly qualified fashion of "At this point I won't vote him...", as opposed to doing the sensible thing and just dismissing a L-2 random wagon as dumb. But then in the second sentence we have "If I vote he will be at L-2, and forcing a claim on page three,

with 4 people missing is stupid.

" This time, his reason for not voting is qualified because people aren't here. It's striking the "safe" position for scum - not joining my wagon, expressing mild disapproval, but not fundamentally trying to attack it. +2
46: I'll just quote my earlier attack (and point-giving) on this: "You've given three inconsistent positions in one post. You say the wagon isn't going anywhere, implying that's a bad thing. You then say Tasky is seeming town to you (so surely that makes redundant the fact that the wagon isn't going there), but then you'd be willing to swap again at deadline (for somebody you are leaning town on??). Heavily suggests hedging of one's bets. +3"
51: His answer to my attack above is entirely unsatisfactory, basically only saying that meta-wise he is a "cautious town player", which doesn't address me at all. +1
...and a lot of pseudo-spam.

Score: 56

(the same issue as Taz doesn't arise because Andrius has had some content posts buried in a lot of crap posts, as opposed to being unreadable as a whole)

[vollkan]

Vezok/RC

:
Prior to reading, probably my #1 suspect

RC

6: Andrius vote is bad, and comes off the back of somebody posting a case against Andrius. Preempetively opportunistic. +1
9: Parama vote is also bad, but no evident opportunism.
18: Sando vote is bad, and opportunism, and he demands a claim at L-2. +2
- noting at this stage that RC is like a brain-damaged and more opportunistic version of Tazaro
25: And now jumps to Max (no opportunism, since there is no wagon)
26: Flips to Andrius (after RF affirmed his support for Andy being lynched). +1
- a

really

brain-damaged version of Tazaro

Vezok

- only up to post 3, and RC looks positively sane in comparison.
7: Calling Tasky the godfather is the most ridiculous thing so far
- at this point, seeing as content-wise his posts are just useless, I'm going to focus on vote opportunism (as I kind of did above anyway)
9: parama vote soon after Taz did likewise. +1
13: swap to Andrius soon after he hit three votes, seemingly backtracking entirely from his earlier very (I would say ridiculously) strong suspicion of Parama. +3
15: As far as scumtells go, this is the most serious yet. I've addressed this in my own posts already, but to repeat (because I think this is important), Vezok said: "I stil support a Parama wagon or Ray Frost wagon. Or even Andrius." This is just after he swapped his vote to Andrius. It's contradictory and scummy in and of itself, but also evidence of a scumteam for the future. +4
17: now andrius is the scum again, language is again bombast. +1
21: Now jumps onto me soon after Taz votes me. His only reason is "I agree with this" +2
23: people leave my wagon, and now he jumps away to Andrius. This guy really is textbook newbscum +3

Score: 67

Number one suspect status is confirmed

[vollkan]

Score: 67

Number one suspect status is confirmed

That's great Vollkan! So why don't you place a vote?

You should do one of those for yourself

NicolBolas just said that Vezok is at L-1. I don't think it's quite hammer time.

[vollkan]

Mainly because he hasn't responded to my case. It's the first time anybody's comprehensively laid out for him why he is scum, so it makes sense to give him a chance to address it.

[vollkan]

Volkan is wrong on many accounts.
Scums are Andrius, Volkan and someone else who I am not sure atm.
I Can't comment anything of the case.
The scoring system is broken.

Comment on this:

Vote: Vezok

[vollkan]

The reason I didn't hammer before was I wanted to give him a chance to respond. He just made it clear that he has no intention of even attempting to explain himself. So, I hammered.

[vollkan]

Seeing as it most likely 5:3 right now, NL is the right move. A 10:2 setup is highly unlikely (and even if it was 10:2, thus making it 6:3 right now, NL still would be less harmful than lynching in the altenrative).

Also, time to play a mod-WIFOM minigame!

1. Max
2. PranaDevil

3. VasudeVa
4. NicolBolas
-------------
5. vollkan

6. Sando
7. vezokpiraka

8. Twomz
-------------
9. Tazaro
10. Andrius
11. Parama
12. Xite91

1 scum in each of those groups = good theory IMO. And hey, a vollkan/Andrius/VasudeVa scumteam still works in that scenario! What a coincidence.

The fact you are even running this sort of argument gets you +2. It's not mod-WIFOM, it's just stupid.

[vollkan]

Hey look, my top 2 scumspects think my theory is wrong.

You don't have to agree with me, but it's certainly not something you should be attacking me for

I don't think your theory is wrong. I know your theory is unjustifiable. For the simple reason that your theory rests on the assumption that the mod would abandon a fundmanetal tenet of basic modding practice - namely, that the role allocation is random.

On your above post more specifically, your first sentence raises a fairly blatant insinuation that the fact that Andrius and I think your theory is crap is evidence for us being scum. Pretty much a tinfoil-hat conspiracy argument.

Secondly, your theory is something that you should be attacked for. It has absolutely no rational basis, making you either scum or a fool.

[vollkan]

@Taz: Where was the distancing you attacked earlier?

Okay, how about we all make a list of what we would like to do, as in the 3 top places we would like to place our vote, including no-lynch, so that way we can see where everyone stands.

No lynch, Xite, VV

[vollkan]

Hey look, my top 2 scumspects think my theory is wrong.

You don't have to agree with me, but it's certainly not something you should be attacking me for

Perhaps criticizing coupled wiht coaching is better way to phrase it than distancing. Sometimes criticizing is distancing, but eh Parama's suspicious.

How do you read that as "coaching"?

It's scummy because he is employing an immunising strategem by putting it down to a difference of opinion (ie "You don't have to agree me..."). But I see no basis for saying that it is coaching.

[vollkan]

@Volkan: Were you active and posting elsewhere in this site when Parama/Xite/Taz happened?

I don't know.

It's also kind of hard to say because my posting pattern is a bid weird. I am generally in two games at once. Because of uni and other commitments, I tend to limit myself to one post today when I am busy. Thus, I try to post in each game every two days. The effect of this is that I generally consistently accrue a two to three page backlog, depending on how active the game is.

What do you think of Me vs. Parama?

The argument on this page? I'm not sure I understand your point. I don't think it is scummy; I just don't follow it.

[vollkan]

@Volkan: Basically from #1063-#1074. I think it's slightly important since Taz pushed Parama to L-3 and you didn't post in that time frame. In the event that you are scum and Taz and Xite are Town, that would have been a splendid time to hammer and get the win.

I was accusing Parama's #1095 to be an attempt to buddy Twomz. Parama said Twomz is Town just because he 'agreed with him'. It doesn't make much sense to me to think that someone else is Town because you agreed with him. It makes more sense that someone is Town based on their actions. And Twomz' votal copy pasta + lazy analysis does not really strike me as something that would make a Townie say 'Twomz is Town' nor does Parama's explanation 'I agreed with him' as a reasonable defense.

Yeah, that. Thoughts on that?

On 1063-1074: I myself have already indicated that the "distancing" accusation made no sense (nor did the "coaching" one, for that matter). It's a bad vote as it is, but for a MYLO vote, it's terrible. Xite's defence of it in 1074 is interesting, in that while Taz allegedly "claimed he would do it last night", the ostensible reasoning for the vote is based purely on something that occurred today (or, more accurately, something which Taz says occurred today).

On 1095 issue: I think you are blowing it out of proportion somewhat. If we're going to be pedantic, the yes it's true that agreeing with somebody is not the same as thinking they are town. But it's a reasonably common colloquial thing to say that somebody is town if they post something you agree with. I don't do it myself, but it doesn't strike me as unusual. If Parama is scum, then it's very likely buddying and so may have implications for Twomz' alignment, but it isn't a scumtell.

Yoda talks: majorly iffy, vollkan is.

In between 20 and 200 words, why do you suspect me?

[vollkan]

The suspicion I have is of your aloofness in this game, and I trust's Xite's suspicion of you, too. The town reads I have are Twomz, NicolBolas, and Xite.

Okay, meta time.

Alternative Vote Mafia finished earlier this month. I was town. I was lynched D3. The following may give you a sense of deja vu. In short, though, when I am bored I become aloof, .

Also you continue your trend of only asking questions, never contributing anything.

vollkan: Since you asked me a question based on a misattributed quote, do you have any other questions for me?

Yes. Why did you ask me that?

Feel like posting something that doesn't end in a question mark?

Your not scumhunting at all, just asking a bunch of fairly weak questions without following them up or doing any analysis of people answers.

My response to that:

Feel like posting something that doesn't end in a question mark?

Your not scumhunting at all, just asking a bunch of fairly weak questions without following them up or doing any analysis of people answers.

I primarily scumhunt by analysing reasoning. Basically, as you saw when I criticised the "scum don't pay attention" thing, I am very skeptical of many of the commonly considered scumtells. The only one I tend to find reliable is people's reasoning.

Now, when I gave my 1-6 list thing, people just said wrong, without explanation.
When I asked about why Jason's reaction wasn't natural, which was a quote of your's (albeit misattributed), you didn't respond. Your answer was:

SV didn't say that; I did. Also to answer your question; experience. It's not a matter of motivation for the scum, it's human bias.

Also you continue your trend of only asking questions, never contributing anything.

If I am short on analysis, the default is at your end.

That's a crock of shit.

So it's our fault your being as useful as tits on a bull?

Quote yourself calling someone scummy or town.

I haven't. I've pointed out where I've seen bad reasoning, but I'd be loathe to make an alignment call simply based on a few isolated instances thereof.

So you think nothing of note has happend this game?

Damn it's going to be tough to cast your votes eh?

Apart from the two examples I have given, tell me just one other thing that you think I should be seriously considering as a scumtell.

^ bolding mine. Sound familiar?

Subsequent to that, I then posted one of my 0-100 summary things.

vollkan does a lot of debating and not a lot of scumhunting D1 (except for possibly his back and forth with TBM which was... weird).

This is a meta-trait of mine.

I'll ignore all the mechanics shenanigans and look through the whole game later, need moar pom and volkan.

[vollkan]

vollkan- do you believe that we should take meta seriously? you could be manipulating your meta.

First, that is far from the only game where I have received such criticisms (just the most recent and I didn't have the time to go through the archives)

More principledly:
1) This game is always played with an assumption that other people are going to play by the rules.
2) One of the most important rules in this game is that you should play to win.
3) Deliberately playing poorly as town in order to manipulate one's meta is a serious violation of 2).

That's the right accusation, Nicol, manipulation of meta; I don't see why suspicions should be disbanded due to meta that was in another game waiting to be cited in case one eventually becomes scum in another game.

See above. You're accusing me of serious misconduct.

[vollkan]

Playing to win does not necessarily mean that you're always passionate about winning. Meaning, I understand the aloofness coming of as apathy even if you're still playing to your wincon.

It's not an accusation of misconduct, it's an accusation of bad play(ie. aloofness, from Taz's point of view anyway) that generally shouldn't come from a player(seemingly, due to the scummy) as good as you.

What do you say about that?

He's not accusing me of "bad play"; he is accusing me of "

deliberate

bad play" (ie to manipulate my meta). If a player is deliberately playing badly for reasons not related to that particular game, they are by definition not playing to win. It's akin to alleging that a sprint athlete would deliberately go slower in a race in order to get put in a lower division.

Also, on the point about "a player as good as you": I don't think anybody here will dispute that aloofness is not inherently scummy. That is, it is something that depends on a player's meta. That means that for the purpose of whether aloofness is a scumtell vis a vis me, my meta has to be considered. It's nothing short of inconsistent to use meta to hold me to a high standard of play because I have a reputation as a good player without also considering meta factors which indicate a tendency toward aloofness.

[vollkan]

I would argue that it could be possible for a player to play poorly in one game, then try and use that to justify playing poorly in another game as scum.

Yes. However, unless you accuse me of misconduct, you have to accept that my play in the game I referenced was a genuine and recent example of me playing as town. Therefore, any attack on me based on accusations that are almost identical to the ones that I received in that game is necessarily severely weakened if not invalidated

[vollkan]

He very clearly isn't responding to what you said and is simply announcing a read, so claiming that he has committed a non sequitur is just silly.

[vollkan]

Ok. Tazaro, you attack Parama early in the game, then back off, saying you believed what Parama was saying, then you go after Parama because of what xite said, then you drop it and start accusing vollkan for his aloofness.

Explain this, please.

In which ISO posts does this change occur?

(Reason being is that I want to cross-check against the thread in general to see whether his shift coincided with other people attacking me for aloofness)

[vollkan]

Iso 41- his first attack vs parama.
Iso 52- said that he believed parama
does not think parama is scummy. Starts to suspect the v's of the game, along with andrius.
Then on the beginning of this day, he goes back to parama, without regard to previous suspicions.
When people started pointing out vollkan as possiblescum, tazaro unites, votes no lynch, then starts to attack you after I asked him about his other suspicions. I find it odd that he would jump between his suspects at end of the last day to parama and then back to you, part of his orginal suspect list.

If it wasn't MYLO, I would be willing to vote Tazaro for the above shifts in postion.

I've checked myself, and your account is accurate. @Taz: Why the inconsistency?

Correct me if I'm wrong vollkan, but I'm pretty sure you once told me that self-meta is useless and WIFOM-ridden.
Only when other players bend over backwards (and read Scum QTs in finished games) is it helpful.

I've had a good look through my posts our previous game and I can't see anywhere where I said that. Magnaofillusion did say that he hates meta-defence "with a passion", so you are probably getting me confused with him.

In any event, I was scum in that game, so anything I said can't be taken as an accurate representation of my position. I also doubt I would have said anything against meta because I'd not only be contradicting my established meta for considering meta important (irony...) but I'd also be contradicting myself in that very same game, because even there I indicated a few times that I considered meta important.

First, I want to say that self-meta is worthless, and it causes just a lot of noise that is unnecessary

How is it worthless? I've quoted objective evidence from another recently finished game.

Think about it: if any other player had gone to that game and found those quotes, the substance of the defence would be entirely the same. I cannot see at all how the mere fact that I am the person bringing up those quotes somehow deprives them of any value.

Also, I try to play some ways some games and some others, regardless of alignment, just to confuse people with my meta.

Which is fine. That's very different to deliberately playing

poorly

in a game.

Yes, you could have multiple games that showed this as town, but you could ALSO have multiple games that show this as scum.

If I do something in some games as town and in some games as scum then, by definition, it is a

null-tell

. The important thing is that people have been claiming my alleged aloofness was scummy. I've shown that I can be aloof as town. It follows that the attack is blunted.

I honestly feel it is a better choice than no-lynch because he seems way too much like scum for people to start second-guessing. Which WILL happen tonight, I'm sure.

Explain to me why you think a no lynch would be less beneficial than my lynch. No matter how strongly you suspected me, I can't see any reason why you wouldn't want to no lynch. Only scum benefit from us lynching today.

Maybe you guys would understand 'dirty lawyer' better.

From his defense, I get that feeling. It's like this: A murder case where in a lawyer constantly attempts to push it down a notch to 'manslaughter' by nit-picking the prosecution's choice of words. I mean, I know it's legit but it doesn't feel.... clean.

Volkan's 'It's not accusation of bad play, it's accusation of deliberate bad play' and then good logical defense afterwards rings to the tune of 'dirty politician lawyer' in my head at the very least.

Am I communicating this properly?

I am a law student

I can't see what you mean here. "Deliberate bad play" is a serious accusation of misconduct by me as a play. Whereas "bad play" is something that can establish meta. I understand that it 'looks' like semantic nit-picking, but it really isn't.

It has a lot to do with his reads, and how he comes to them. I remember reading them and going *facepalm* more than a couple times, for some things because it's already been discussed (in one case, by HIM no less), and for some things because it just looks like he's trying to add suspicion where it's not due.

This is just unfalsifiable guff. Either quote to me exactly which reads made you *facepalm* or DIAF

As for raising things that had already been discussed: for starters, you haven't even provided a semblance of an explanation as to why that is scummy. Moreover, my reads were based on me rereading people so OF COURSE they covered old ground. What are you suggesting - that I say "I suspect Mr X" but don't explain why because (shock!) some of the reasons for my suspicion have already been articulated.

Also, why would he post on every player instead of just the scummiest players?

Because it is good for a player to be clear on their positions? Because as a matter of policy it holds people accountable? Because some people may judge my alignment based on the consistency of my opinions with theirs?

On the flipside, why the hell is that objectionable?

[vollkan]

I find most meta worthless, and self-meta to be the worst of it all. I don't find any point in using old games to explain actions in new ones.

You've said that already.

I've explained amply why meta is valuable, and why the supposed distinction between "meta" and "self-meta" is crap.

You've failed entirely to justify your position.

I SAID why I didn't want a no-lynch. Because you are scum and if people wait another night to lynch you, you have more of a chance of swaying them, first, and second, they will second guess and WIFOM the hell outta themselves until they think you're town (I've seen it happen)

You're so confident that I am scum that you consider the risk of an instant loss from vollkan-town's lynch to be less serious than the risk that vollkan-scum could fool every other player?

And as for that last part, it's objectionable because you're throwing what you can out there and seeing what sticks? Not always in all cases, but that more was a question to see your reasoning for it.

"throwing what you can out there and seeing what sticks" is just a way to put the worst possible spin on having comprehensive opinions.

[vollkan]

Oh my god. Thread explosion.

...
1137 - not good enough
1139 - stopped reading at "Okay, meta time."
1142 -

vote: Tazaro

1157 - :goodposting:

*confused* Your refusal to read my 1139 suggests you are anti-meta, but you then vote Taz (in MYLO no less) after his stupid allegation that I would delibeately play badly in another game to influence my meta. The two aren't inconsistent per se, but it strikes me as odd because the main reason people tend to be anti-meta is because they are concerned about manipulation, the very thing you are atacking Tazaro for. So, other than prospect of manipulation, why are you dismissive of my meta?

And I'll ask you the same line of questioning I asked Xite: "Explain to me why you think a no lynch would be less beneficial than my lynch. No matter how strongly you suspected [Tazaro], I can't see any reason why you wouldn't want to no lynch. Only scum benefit from us lynching today."

Vote: No Lynch

That's NL-1 people

[vollkan]

Because I don't know who to vote for most of the time.

BS. You've been one the most certain players in times of finding a lot of people vote-worthily scummy. And not once have you made any indication that you are genuinely struggling to juggle a number of serious suspectes; instead you've just been jumping from one to the other on a seemingly ad hoc basis.

[vollkan]

you've just been jumping from one to the other on a seemingly ad hoc basis.

That doesn't give you any indication that I don't know what I'm doing?

It doesn't indicate that you don't know what you are doing. You are not playing like somebody who is uncertain. Not once have you shown the hesistancy that you would expect from an uncertain town player.

It's too far in the game to rp=eplace :/

I am going to give you an ultimatum.

Henceforth, every single vote you make has to be backed up by at least 30 words specifically on the player in question (none of this 'narrowing down' crap). If you can't vote that way, then you replace out - yes, it might take a while for somebody to come, but if you are scum we already have a good read on you and if you are town you aren't adding any value.

[vollkan]

Vollkan- i don't think that was nessecary, just to kick out a player because his play was not up to par. I think you should have let him stay, but encourage him to play better, not place ultmatums.

In terms of this game, it's a net positive for the reasons I gave in my previous post (ie. we have a solid read on scum-Taz, and it prevents town-Taz from doing a major stuff-up that gets him lynched).

More generally: I like ultimatums (ultimata?). They tell a player what is expected of them and then leave the ball in their court as to whether or not they remain or leave. If he needs somebody to guide him on how to play, there is an entire sub-forum of the site dedicated to that.

Ugh. I almost want to vote no lynch just to move the game on to the next day where we're at lylo cause no one's taking any action. But I'm going to vote: Taz I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

Ahem: "And I'll ask you the same line of questioning I asked Xite [and Parama]: "Explain to me why you think a no lynch would be less beneficial than my lynch. No matter how strongly you suspected [Tazaro], I can't see any reason why you wouldn't want to no lynch. Only scum benefit from us lynching today."

[vollkan]

EBWOP: That last question was addressed to Twomz

[vollkan]

*confused* Your refusal to read my 1139 suggests you are anti-meta, but you then vote Taz (in MYLO no less) after his stupid allegation that I would delibeately play badly in another game to influence my meta. The two aren't inconsistent per se, but it strikes me as odd because the main reason people tend to be anti-meta is because they are concerned about manipulation, the very thing you are atacking Tazaro for. So, other than prospect of manipulation, why are you dismissive of my meta?

BZZZT. Tazaro obviously had no clue what he was talking about in 1142. The post makes NO SENSE. He acts like he knows what Nicol is talking about and agrees with him in order to make a shoddy attack, but he really has no clue what he's accusing of.

P.S. Meta fails forever

Okay, that makes sense enough.

Taz just cracked under pressure. Methinks scum.

"scum crack under pressure" is just a boilerplate scumtell that I don't think has any bearing out in reailty.

I'm not sure. Over the space of a few pages he not only saw his own 'case' against me torn to shreds but he also came under fairly serious criticism himself. I think his reaction is also consistent with newb-town (ie. it's simply a newb-nulltell, but of course his play itself during the game has been newb-scummy.

Ok, I think I understand this, kind of. So, if I'm positive someone is scum, and I can get people to vote that person then and catch scum, it's better than waiting and people second-guessing their reads. I'm pretty sure I already said that though.

I wasn't agreeing with you...

If we lynch wrong today, it's game over.

If we no lynch, scum has to make a kill (unless they want to be forced into Happily Ever After), which necessarily gives us more information.

You have no rational basis for being "positive" I am scum. Even if for argument's sake only I said you have a good case against me, you still do not have grounds to say that you are 'positive' that I am scum. If you are wrong, the game is over.

As for the spectre of me being able to persuade people off my lynch: the first point I would make is that your argument begins from a presumption that I am scum. You are entirely ignoring the prospect that vollkan-town could legitimately persuade people off what he sees as a crappy case (ie see what just happened to Tazaro). Secondly, if your case is really that strong, vollkan-scum shouldn't be able to wriggle out of it - if I've managed to do it in the past as scum in other games it's only been because the case itself was dodgy (but just by luck happened to be on vollkan-scum).

Ok. So lynching Tazaro:
1) He's careless scum.
2) He's dumb and lazy as hell VI_town, and we lose.

Not really liking the whole "we lose" idea. >_> But that's for lynching everyone, ain't it?

*cough* Exactly like you in Mini 951 *cough*

[vollkan]

I can agree with the no lynch. It's a sound decision to make at this point in the game. But, if we just no lynch without pushing people or trying to figure out who is most likely to be scum anyway we'll just be in the same position tomorrow except we can't no lynch to get out of it and the scum will have that much easier of a time quick lynching a townie. I really think Taz is scum at this point and I'm willing to vote him to show that.

This ignores the basic question: what negative consequence of no lynching justifies taking the risk of an instant loss?

I agree we should be pressuing and so forth today, but your post seems ambivalent as to whether you think that we should be lynching today or not - which was the focus of my question to you.

[vollkan]

Now that I actually have a case to respond to:

First was on Tasky, his ISO 4, after there's a pretty big wagon on him already, with 3 reasons, "obvious buddying is obvious," "early self game righteousness," and pretty much an OMGUS pressure vote

There was a wagon on him for a good reason. Rather than demonising my vote for mere fact that I wagoned, you should actually look at my reasons. Speaking of which,

First, You ignored my main reason for voting him altogether:

The above merits a +2. Reason being is that IIoA, while it is always an easy label for lazy scum to throw around, is not a scumtell at page 3 of a game where not even everybody has yet to post. Moreover, whether or not you think that the chances of popularity-manipulating roles is likely (and I note that nobody has suggested that it is), it's clearly something that due diligence required us to address in relation to the mass pop-claim strategy.

And, as others have already pointed out, it smacks of hypocrisy that you would accuse other people of IIoA and then have IIoA yourself. To be clear, my problem is not with your IIoA, it is with your hypocrisy of attacking people for IIoA

Vote: Tasky

Second, the "obvious buddying" point was addressed at Friend, not at Tasky.

Third, explain what is wrong with my accusation of early-game self-righteousness.

Fourth, what do you mean by "pretty much an OMGUS pressure vote"? My vote very obviously wasn't OMGUS because I had reasons.

Then in 5, he turns around and votes me based on quotes from someone else (that he puts in my name)

What quotes from somebody else?

You said:

By the way, would quick lynches be good in this game? Considering the nifty neighborizing idea?

ok, just wondering

that was a joke

I am too [against quick lynches], but I figured this might be a special circumstance

I voted you because you apparently flip-flopped over your stance on quick lynches (ie saying it was a joke but then saying you thought it was serious). But you then explained that "that was a joke" was in relation to something else. And I unvoted accoridngly.

I'd also note that you didn't have a single vote on you at the time when I voted you,

which immediately shuts down

your claim that "Wow, not one of his votes WASNT jumping on a wagon..."

Then, when I prove him wrong, he turns back around and revotes Tasky

I love the way you smear this in the worst way possible. I voted you based on a reaonable misinterprtatino of your post. You clarified. And so I returned to my previous suspect.

You present it, though, like some great inconsistency.

His next vote isn't until his ISO 14, and guess what? It's another wagon, this time the sando wagon. Right after Andrius starts getting a few votes, he starts pushing the sando lynch.

Yes, I joined the Sando wagon and as my post made clear, if you had bothered to analyse it properly rather than superficially focussing on the mere fact that I voted, you would see that I had good reasons for doing so.

His next vote is ISO 36, after quite a bit of questioning of his votee (Vezok). Perhaps to see if others would go with him? Oh, and look at the 5 other votes on him/her before he even votes.

Golly gosh! I voted after "quite a bit of questioning"! How scummy?

Seriously, the argument you make above is just conspiratorial bullshit. Questioning a votee is EXACTLY what townies should do in this game. But you, again, put the worst possible spin on it by implying that it was to test the waters.

(Also, look at the two words under my name "The Interrogator"...they are there for a reason)

ISO 52 is his no-lynch vote, again he waited to see if he had support.

No. I just wasn't in any haste to vote NL. Unlike voting a suspect, voting NL doesn't place pressure on anybody. I'd been clear from the outset where I stood. And again, you are assuming the worst possible motivations for my actions

Review of the case thus far:

In a number of his attacks thus far, he indicts my actions on the basis of an assumption that my actions are scum-motivated. In other words, he is committing the logical fallacy of begging the question - because his argument for why I am scum assumes that I am scum in the first place.

mixed with him usually having a lack of attacking anyone, Instead he has huge posts of why everyone else is wrong or right, but very little saying anything about who is scum.

For starters, I think that it's fair to say that I've been far more transparent than many other people in this game. I think I am the only player to date who has posted a proper summary on every player in the game.

I also think that here you are just attacking my playstyle. I scumhunt by analysing reasoning. Necessarily, that involves huge posts on whether things are right or wrong. I also am one of the most skeptical people on site about scumtells and towntells (as in, I see the vast majortiy of things as nulltells).

I don't make stupid posts like:

Xite is scum

Because they don't tell people anything and I hardly ever have that degree of certainty.

2) I see reasoning AND analysis, point out where you don't plox?

His page 1 comments are all playstyle-related and not scumhunting related
His page 2 comments are focussed on the pop claim and he says "Ugh Tasky" (which isn't "reasoning and analysis" by any stretch of the imagination)
His page 3 comments are a playstyle thing on Nicol, "Ewww @ Tasky's Selfvote.", and asking somebody to explain a vote
His page 4 comment is that you seem to be posting without thinking.
Page 5: all playstyle
Page 6: Popularity, concludes without explanation that you seem newb, and concludes that he doesn't think Firned is buddying (again, no reasoning)
Page 7: says he gets a malicious "vibe" (a word I hate) from Tasky and he likes my playstyle
Page 8: doesn't like Friend's "it's too soon to be claiming" (why??)

And he then expresses broad conclusions

No reasoning and analysis.

4) I'm not really seeing what you're seeing. What he said IS scummy as hell, but more because he thinks Tasky is town and Sando is scum and votes Tasky, from my interpretation. But then you say it's not a scumtell... but add points?

I gave him a point for voting Sando based on "aggression" because aggression is a typical boilerplate scumtell that isn't actually a scumtell

5: Position here doesn't make sense at all. He leaves Tasky wagon to join another, but is clear that he still thinks Tasky is a good lynch. BUT, at the same time, says that the Tasky wagon "reeks" of scum +2

I'm feeling temporarily tired of the Tasky case(Although he is a fine deadline lynch.) and I want to see where a Friend wagon would take us. Plus the Tasky wagon reeks of scum, possibly 2 of them in here(Right now, I'm thinking its Sando and Friend.). And I do not see anyone(bar me, as of this post) defending him.

^ This is exactly what he said, way to misrep. Unless you're reading into a different part of that post that was about tasky and sando, if so, I'd love for you to point it out. [/quoet]

Are you paying any attention at all? He is very clear that he wants to leave Tasky but still thinks Tasky is a "fine deadline lynch". But he also says that the Tasky wagon "reeks of scum". In the very thing you quoted..

7: Every one of his attacks on Prana here simply stretches what Prana said to make the worst possible interpretation of it. +1 (only reason it isn't +2 is that since there was no wagon on PD, there isn't clear opportunism)7)

Or that's the way he sees it?

It's the same thing I attacked you for just above. You CANNOT accuse somebody of being scum based on an interpretation of their behaviour that assumes that they are scum.

It's like saying: "I think Mr Smith murdered Mr Jones, because if you assume Mr Smith wanted to kill Mr Jones, then it makes sense that he would kill Mr Jones"

25) Or he was able to read him at that point?

Nothing he said indicatd he was able to read RC now.

I find it very odd that you are willing to make the worst possible interpretions of

my

actions, but you are willing to extend such generosity to Vas

26) Oh you mean this no explanation?

"votehopping is like woah" is not an explanation.

Huh... no real points against the two people without any real suspicion on them... afraid of getting attacked for making bad cases people will notice?

You ever stop and think that maybe the reason they don't have any real suspicion on them is because they aren't suspicious?

Again, you are doing the same conspiratorial bullshit. It's clear that people didn't suspect them and it would be entirely reasonable that I would be in agreement with that consensus.

But no! The reason I am not suspicious of them has to be because I am "afraid of being attacked". Fail.

15) Uh... huh. Or he was giving his reasoning for why he wasn't voting?

First,

You are now very clearly being unfair

This is the second time that you've been willing to give somebody else a very generous benefit fo the doubt at the same time as you persistently make the worst possible interpretations of my actions.

And of course he was giving his reasoning - my problem was that the reasoning was noncommital and his only qualification was based on the number of people, rather than substantive comment on the wagon

46) I do that as town. Sometimes it's better to get a lynch you don't agree on than not to get a lynch at all.

Good for you. But objectively it is inconsistent and thus can be validly treated as a scumtell

13) Why ridiculously strong?

This:

These two posts are what ticked my scum-o-meter.
This is Parama scum at is finnest. Please lynch this guy.
unvote
Vote Parama

15) What scumteam?

For distnacing purposes, scum will usually have one of their buddies in their top three suspects. Now, vezok had said:

15: As far as scumtells go, this is the most serious yet. I've addressed this in my own posts already, but to repeat (because I think this is important), Vezok said: "I stil support a Parama wagon or Ray Frost wagon. Or even Andrius." This is just after he swapped his vote to Andrius. It's contradictory and scummy in and of itself, but also evidence of a scumteam for the future. +4

It makes no sense that, at the same time as he is voting Andrius, he would be expressing support for Parama and Rayfrost "Or even Andrius" (which bizarrely means that his "or even" candidate is the very one he is voting). The inconsistency between his declared suspicions and who is voting suggests a scumlink

[vollkan]

QUOTE FAIL IN PREVIOUS POST

Now that I actually have a case to respond to:

First was on Tasky, his ISO 4, after there's a pretty big wagon on him already, with 3 reasons, "obvious buddying is obvious," "early self game righteousness," and pretty much an OMGUS pressure vote

There was a wagon on him for a good reason. Rather than demonising my vote for mere fact that I wagoned, you should actually look at my reasons. Speaking of which,

First, You ignored my main reason for voting him altogether:

The above merits a +2. Reason being is that IIoA, while it is always an easy label for lazy scum to throw around, is not a scumtell at page 3 of a game where not even everybody has yet to post. Moreover, whether or not you think that the chances of popularity-manipulating roles is likely (and I note that nobody has suggested that it is), it's clearly something that due diligence required us to address in relation to the mass pop-claim strategy.

And, as others have already pointed out, it smacks of hypocrisy that you would accuse other people of IIoA and then have IIoA yourself. To be clear, my problem is not with your IIoA, it is with your hypocrisy of attacking people for IIoA

Vote: Tasky

Second, the "obvious buddying" point was addressed at Friend, not at Tasky.

Third, explain what is wrong with my accusation of early-game self-righteousness.

Fourth, what do you mean by "pretty much an OMGUS pressure vote"? My vote very obviously wasn't OMGUS because I had reasons.

Then in 5, he turns around and votes me based on quotes from someone else (that he puts in my name)

What quotes from somebody else?

You said:

By the way, would quick lynches be good in this game? Considering the nifty neighborizing idea?

ok, just wondering

that was a joke

I am too [against quick lynches], but I figured this might be a special circumstance

I voted you because you apparently flip-flopped over your stance on quick lynches (ie saying it was a joke but then saying you thought it was serious). But you then explained that "that was a joke" was in relation to something else. And I unvoted accoridngly.

I'd also note that you didn't have a single vote on you at the time when I voted you,

which immediately shuts down

your claim that "Wow, not one of his votes WASNT jumping on a wagon..."

Then, when I prove him wrong, he turns back around and revotes Tasky

I love the way you smear this in the worst way possible. I voted you based on a reaonable misinterprtatino of your post. You clarified. And so I returned to my previous suspect.

You present it, though, like some great inconsistency.

His next vote isn't until his ISO 14, and guess what? It's another wagon, this time the sando wagon. Right after Andrius starts getting a few votes, he starts pushing the sando lynch.

Yes, I joined the Sando wagon and as my post made clear, if you had bothered to analyse it properly rather than superficially focussing on the mere fact that I voted, you would see that I had good reasons for doing so.

His next vote is ISO 36, after quite a bit of questioning of his votee (Vezok). Perhaps to see if others would go with him? Oh, and look at the 5 other votes on him/her before he even votes.

Golly gosh! I voted after "quite a bit of questioning"! How scummy?

Seriously, the argument you make above is just conspiratorial bullshit. Questioning a votee is EXACTLY what townies should do in this game. But you, again, put the worst possible spin on it by implying that it was to test the waters.

(Also, look at the two words under my name "The Interrogator"...they are there for a reason)

ISO 52 is his no-lynch vote, again he waited to see if he had support.

No. I just wasn't in any haste to vote NL. Unlike voting a suspect, voting NL doesn't place pressure on anybody. I'd been clear from the outset where I stood. And again, you are assuming the worst possible motivations for my actions

Review of the case thus far:

In a number of his attacks thus far, he indicts my actions on the basis of an assumption that my actions are scum-motivated. In other words, he is committing the logical fallacy of begging the question - because his argument for why I am scum assumes that I am scum in the first place.

mixed with him usually having a lack of attacking anyone, Instead he has huge posts of why everyone else is wrong or right, but very little saying anything about who is scum.

For starters, I think that it's fair to say that I've been far more transparent than many other people in this game. I think I am the only player to date who has posted a proper summary on every player in the game.

I also think that here you are just attacking my playstyle. I scumhunt by analysing reasoning. Necessarily, that involves huge posts on whether things are right or wrong. I also am one of the most skeptical people on site about scumtells and towntells (as in, I see the vast majortiy of things as nulltells).

I don't make stupid posts like:

Xite is scum

Because they don't tell people anything and I hardly ever have that degree of certainty.

2) I see reasoning AND analysis, point out where you don't plox?

His page 1 comments are all playstyle-related and not scumhunting related
His page 2 comments are focussed on the pop claim and he says "Ugh Tasky" (which isn't "reasoning and analysis" by any stretch of the imagination)
His page 3 comments are a playstyle thing on Nicol, "Ewww @ Tasky's Selfvote.", and asking somebody to explain a vote
His page 4 comment is that you seem to be posting without thinking.
Page 5: all playstyle
Page 6: Popularity, concludes without explanation that you seem newb, and concludes that he doesn't think Firned is buddying (again, no reasoning)
Page 7: says he gets a malicious "vibe" (a word I hate) from Tasky and he likes my playstyle
Page 8: doesn't like Friend's "it's too soon to be claiming" (why??)

And he then expresses broad conclusions

No reasoning and analysis.

4) I'm not really seeing what you're seeing. What he said IS scummy as hell, but more because he thinks Tasky is town and Sando is scum and votes Tasky, from my interpretation. But then you say it's not a scumtell... but add points?

I gave him a point for voting Sando based on "aggression" because aggression is a typical boilerplate scumtell that isn't actually a scumtell

5: Position here doesn't make sense at all. He leaves Tasky wagon to join another, but is clear that he still thinks Tasky is a good lynch. BUT, at the same time, says that the Tasky wagon "reeks" of scum +2

I'm feeling temporarily tired of the Tasky case(Although he is a fine deadline lynch.) and I want to see where a Friend wagon would take us. Plus the Tasky wagon reeks of scum, possibly 2 of them in here(Right now, I'm thinking its Sando and Friend.). And I do not see anyone(bar me, as of this post) defending him.

^ This is exactly what he said, way to misrep. Unless you're reading into a different part of that post that was about tasky and sando, if so, I'd love for you to point it out.

Are you paying any attention at all? He is very clear that he wants to leave Tasky but still thinks Tasky is a "fine deadline lynch". But he also says that the Tasky wagon "reeks of scum". In the very thing you quoted..

7: Every one of his attacks on Prana here simply stretches what Prana said to make the worst possible interpretation of it. +1 (only reason it isn't +2 is that since there was no wagon on PD, there isn't clear opportunism)7)

Or that's the way he sees it?

It's the same thing I attacked you for just above. You CANNOT accuse somebody of being scum based on an interpretation of their behaviour that assumes that they are scum.

It's like saying: "I think Mr Smith murdered Mr Jones, because if you assume Mr Smith wanted to kill Mr Jones, then it makes sense that he would kill Mr Jones"

25) Or he was able to read him at that point?

Nothing he said indicatd he was able to read RC now.

I find it very odd that you are willing to make the worst possible interpretions of

my

actions, but you are willing to extend such generosity to Vas

26) Oh you mean this no explanation?

"votehopping is like woah" is not an explanation.

Huh... no real points against the two people without any real suspicion on them... afraid of getting attacked for making bad cases people will notice?

You ever stop and think that maybe the reason they don't have any real suspicion on them is because they aren't suspicious?

Again, you are doing the same conspiratorial bullshit. It's clear that people didn't suspect them and it would be entirely reasonable that I would be in agreement with that consensus.

But no! The reason I am not suspicious of them has to be because I am "afraid of being attacked". Fail.

15) Uh... huh. Or he was giving his reasoning for why he wasn't voting?

First,

You are now very clearly being unfair

This is the second time that you've been willing to give somebody else a very generous benefit fo the doubt at the same time as you persistently make the worst possible interpretations of my actions.

And of course he was giving his reasoning - my problem was that the reasoning was noncommital and his only qualification was based on the number of people, rather than substantive comment on the wagon

46) I do that as town. Sometimes it's better to get a lynch you don't agree on than not to get a lynch at all.

Good for you. But objectively it is inconsistent and thus can be validly treated as a scumtell

13) Why ridiculously strong?

This:

These two posts are what ticked my scum-o-meter.
This is Parama scum at is finnest. Please lynch this guy.
unvote
Vote Parama

15) What scumteam?

For distnacing purposes, scum will usually have one of their buddies in their top three suspects. Now, vezok had said:

15: As far as scumtells go, this is the most serious yet. I've addressed this in my own posts already, but to repeat (because I think this is important), Vezok said: "I stil support a Parama wagon or Ray Frost wagon. Or even Andrius." This is just after he swapped his vote to Andrius. It's contradictory and scummy in and of itself, but also evidence of a scumteam for the future. +4

It makes no sense that, at the same time as he is voting Andrius, he would be expressing support for Parama and Rayfrost "Or even Andrius" (which bizarrely means that his "or even" candidate is the very one he is voting). The inconsistency between his declared suspicions and who is voting suggests a scumlink[/quote]

[vollkan]

1) But IIRC you hadn't even said anything about him before that post, and as you being "the inquisitor," wouldn't you normally grill him for information? Also, I could say that almost any wagon on someone was "for good reasons." Also, I totally skipped over your other reason, so, ok, your main reason was for hypocrisy of his IIoA, which he could have not realized was IIoA. Ok.

Having "The Interrogator" doesn't mean I always interrogate before voting (especially early game), but it is an indication of how I tend to play. I raised it before because you made out that it was unusual that I would extensively question somebody before voting; I pointed out that it wasn't.

It is true that you can say that a lot of wagons are "for good reasons", but, if this game is to be anything other than a game of luck, wagons on townies should tend, on average, to have worse reasons than wagons on scum. That makes it critical, for the purposes of deciding whether a wagoner is scum, what reasons they gave for their vote (this, by the way, is the main reason I hate gut-voting and unexplained/under-explained votes so much)

2) It's a null tell.

For starters, I will note that even if you disagre with me about it being a scumtell, you haven't discharged your burden of proving that my stance is scummy.

Secondly, I think it is a scumtell. Early game self-righteousness (I am referring here, for those reading who don't know the context, to Tasky telling people not to bring up other games that "are not relevant to scumhunting in this game") is scummy because it suggests a mindset of wanting to emphasise that you are

really

pro-town. It's important that Tasky made no explanatino of why he thought that the other game references were harmful.

3) Your reasons were for pressure based on his attack on you were they not? AKA an OMGUS pressure vote.

OMGUS is where you vote somebody because they are voting you.

OMGUS is NOT where you vote somebody because

of the reasons for which they are voting you

Way back then, I did also attack his vote for me, but that was because his reason for doing so was that he kept hidden what he hoped to achieve. That is, I was attacking his reasons

4) In that post, I don't think you had asked me about the misunderstanding about my joke, but I'm too lazy to check, so correct me if I'm wrong.
But I meant you quoted friend, and labeled the quotes in my name. Then gave me +4 altogether for it, but when I corrected you, you took the +4 off of me, but did nothing to correct it toward friend, ironically the person I was voting for when you voted me. Sorry I didn't explain that fully.

Every quote I attirbuted to you in that post was something you actually said. So, I think you are mistaken

And, yeah, you're right, I forgot I hadn't had more than a vote or two (friend's OMGUS and someone else IIRC) on me, but suspicion? Plenty.

Yes, but that does away with your claim that I've only been hopping to wagons.

And again, you are putting a negative spin on my actions by implying that I was following the suspicion of others.

5) I love the way you try to discredit me by saying I'm smearing things in the worst way possible. I'm not the first person you did this with am I?

What do you mean? If you are asking whether you are the first person I've ever made this argument against, then no. IF you mean in the context of this game, probably, but I'd say other people have probably done it; it's just that your arguments are ones that have been specifically brought to my attention to respond to

Not responding to the sando one because it's going to be the same argument again and again. I am not just twisting what you're saying into something scummy, perhaps I am just looking at it like it is and you ARE scummy.

I am going to quote the wiki. Read this slowly. Then read it again.

The working definition of a scumtell is an action that is more likely to be taken by a scum player than a town player. This relies on motivations, as most things in mafia do. When a player takes an action, evaluating it on the basis of "would this action more likely come from a town player, or a scum player" should be the way that players determine the scumminess of that action. It is worthwhile to note here that subjectivity plays little to no role in this distinction. POSSIBLE motivations for scum to take a given action are not sufficient to call an action a scum tell. An action is scummy if and only if it can be deemed more likely to come from scum than from town, A perfect example of this occurs in [url=http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8923] mini 636: Gangland mafia /url]. Kuribo asserts that an action is a scumtell to him, because he can think of A justification for scum to do it, but neglects, as vollkan points out, to show that this reason is likely.

(NB: I did not write this part of the wiki. But it exactly represents my position, which is probably obvious from the fact that it raises me as an example )

Now, you are doing to me something similar to what Kuribo did in Mini 636.

You are saying that a number of my actions, eg my returning to Sando, is scummy because you can think of

a

reason why vollkan-scum might do it

However, you have failed entirely to prove why that explanation of my behaviour is the best explanation

Hence, you have failed to show why my actions are scummy.

6) As in, you waited to see if you had support and didn't vote until you saw that there was enough support for it.

See above. You are assuming a scummy motivation without explaining why that motivation is best.

7) Oh boy! You're discrediting what I'm saying again! Once again, you're saying that I'm making a case going into it thinking you are scum, and therefore putting a scummy twist on everything you say, but maybe you are just scummy.

See above again.

8) Which I honestly feel is just a way to say, "c gaiz, i iz scumhuntin!"

I honestly don't give a toss what you "feel" about it.

You first accuse me of not scumhunting. Then I point out scumhunting well in excess of everybody else. And now you basicaly say it isn't "real" scumhunting. DIAF

9) Oh, you mean attacking you based on how you're playing? There's another way to attack someone?

No. Attacking my playstyle.

10) If you ACTUALLY think you would be able to see the analysis. Granted, I could see this being a stretch, it just depends on the person

Good; you've conceded that this point can't be sustained without making assumptions

12) "A fine deadline lynch" means nothing in the sense of "I think he's scum." If a lynch is solely because of deadline, it's usually meant for information.

Yes, but it encourages the lynch. If he genuinely thought that he was not scum, he wouldn't have used that sort of description.

13) Uhm.... what?
14) Yeah, way to misrep that one.

Prana made attacks which assumed scum motivations. Your defence of this was "Or that's the way he sees it? "

My point is that how you or Prana "see" somebody's action is irrelevant. You have to have objective reasons for why that expanation of their behaviour is best. Simply having a gut feeling that my actions are scum-motivated is worthless. As I said: "It's like saying: "I think Mr Smith murdered Mr Jones, because if you assume Mr Smith wanted to kill Mr Jones, then it makes sense that he would kill Mr Jones"". It's not a misrep

15) The vote didn't?

He voted somebody who he had previously said he couldn't read. That's a prima facie inconsistency. Somebody contradicting themselves does not mean "they changed their mind"

16) Do you WANT the worst possible interpretations? Because I can make it look like you killed your whole family, and two sets of neighbors and framed it on the dog based on what you say (I have done that one before to a friend). The case I made against you is me being fair to you and taking things pretty much at face value. If you want me to do more, though, go ahead and tell me.

For every single thing you have accused me of, you should be able to explain why the scum motivation you are relying on is a better explanation than any town motivation

18) But really? No scummy points against him at all? That's just odd because even the towniest of players do at least one scummy thing in a game.

Exactly! This is why I am skeptical about scumtells. If it is true that townies commit things that are often considered scumtells, and it is, then those things are not scumtells. I respond to that by not treating a lot of things as scumtells, which means that I am legitimately able to have people with no scumpoints

19) Giving the benefit of the doubt to someone =/= something being pretty obvious to me.
The second was what happened.

But why is it obvious? And why were the scummy motivations obvious in my case? My point is that a lot of this seems to come down to your subjective reactions

[vollkan]

1) This is why self meta is worthless.

No. I am going to address both instances where I have raised meta to show why you are wrong here.

Me vs Tazaro

Tazaro's argument had the following internal logic:
1) Passivity is a scumtell
2) vollkan is passive
3) Therefore, vollkan is scummy

That leaves hanging the question of what a scumtell is. Referring to the wiki definition above: "an action that is more likely to be taken by a scum player than a town player". In applying that definition, one

has

to consider a player's meta. If I have a tendency to do a certain action regardless of my alignment, it becomes, by definition, an action that I am

not

more likely to take as scum. Ergo, it ceases to be a scumtell.

Importantly, also, the notion that "self-meta" is somehow distinct from normal "meta" is a load of crap. What is really at issue is evidence:

• If I had said, for instance, that passivity was not a scumtell for me because I often am passive, then it would be entirely legitimate to ignore me. Reason being that I am defending myself by making claims which have no objective basis in evidence. If we are going to have a separate concept of "self-meta", this is it.
  
• In contrast, the "meta" that I raised here was a meta argument that anybody, including yourself, could have made - because the evidence for the argument is entirely objective. The value of the evidence is not delegitimised merely because I made the argument, unless you make an assumption that I am cheating in other games by not playing to the best of my ability there.

Me vs You (ie. "The Interrogator")
I raised "The Interrogator" in response to the following reasoning from you:
1) Interrogating without voting is scummy
2) vollkan argued without voting
3) Therefore, vollkan is scummy

My response to the above (which I quoted had two elements:
1) A reasoned refutation of the claim that it was scummy
2) A meta defence that interrogating is something that I have a particular notoriety for

Two point to note about this second meta defence:
1) I never said that I only interrogate as town
2) I never said that I always interrogate as town

In short, interrogation is for me a nulltell.

You then turned this against me with the following:

1) But IIRC you hadn't even said anything about him before that post, and as you being "the inquisitor," wouldn't you normally grill him for information? Also, I could say that almost any wagon on someone was "for good reasons." Also, I totally skipped over your other reason, so, ok, your main reason was for hypocrisy of his IIoA, which he could have not realized was IIoA. Ok.

The simple problem with this is that you are making shit up. Nowhere did I say that I always interrogate as town or even that I am more likely to interrogate as town, which you need to prove in order for your argument to be tenable.

5) Way to not respond to the actual point I was making about you trying to discredit me.

I am saying that most of the points I'm bringing against you are things scum would do. I am not saying they're things a certain person scum would do, because I don't really care enough to meta.

You clearly haven't understood the wiki definition, because it has nothing to do with meta. As one example to (hopefully) get this through to you:

ISO 52 is his no-lynch vote, again he waited to see if he had support.

I took a while to cast my NL vote, despite me voicing strong support from the outset. Consider two possible reasons for my action:
a) That I was scum waiting to see if I had support - (ie your interpretation)
b) That there was no good reason to quickly vote NL, since it doesn't pressure anybody (ie mine)

In order for my action to be reasonably considered a scumtell, you have to show why explanation a) is a more likely explanation than explanation b). You could use meta to do that, but most likely you would make some general principle-based argument (which would take the form of "It is unlikely that a townie would not vote NL quickly because...")

6 and 7) Ironically, you do that whole discrediting my posts thing again, but don't address the actual points.

I referred you to the wiki point where I explained what was generally fallacious about your arguments.

8) First off, you weren't really scum-hunting, you were just pointing things out about everyone. That just clogs the thread and can confuse people that are playing.

I pointed things out about people which were pertinent to my assessment of their alignments and gave them rankings accordingly directly indicating how much I considered them scum. How is that not scumhunting?

9) Yeah, based on how you're playing. Remember I don't do meta, and even if I did, I'd STILL attack you for the way you've been playing

If I do X as both town and scum, how is X a scumtell for me?

16) I DID explain it? What more do you want?

Conscious of how big this argument is getting, just take the no lynch one which I raised above under 5) as an example.

[vollkan]

What I want to hear from both of you is just this: What you think of each other? Do you think one of you is scum or is this a Town v. Town argument?

My read of Xite (and this is a read from the process of responding, not clinically going back over) from that argument is tunnelling newb, possibly slightly town but mostly null. He's being inconsistent in the way he treats me versus others (if you didn't read the debate, basically there a number of points where he attacks me by assuming the worst possible motivations for my actions but also attacks me for not being generous enough in my interpretations of other people's actions), but, importantly, he didn't resort to misrepresentation or strawmanning and he did seem genuinely confused about the whole "definition of a scumtell" (and his confusion on that point is a factor in me not taking his inconsistency.

[vollkan]

Nope; it's still at 4. Nicol was voting NL, then unvoted to vote Parama, then revoted NL. There isn't any sense delaying any longer - Xite and I have argued out as much as we can, and the lack of posting is a good indication that people have nothing furhter to say.

[vollkan]

@Xite:
1) You're an alt?
2) I wasn't accusing you "tunnelling" in the conventional (and stupid) sense of "continuously attacking somebody". My point was that you are simultaneously reading scum motivations into my actions (ie. not giving me any benefit of the doubt) while attacking me for not being generous in supposing town motivations for other people's actions.
3) There's a big difference between choosing to attack somebody because a possible town motivation is unlikely (ie almost every single action has some possible town motivation) and attacking somebody whilst ignoring much more reasonably likely town motivations
4) Then how would you define a scumtell?

Unvote
I'm going to re-read and see what the hell is going on. Try to wait. I'll be able to have re-read the entire thread by Saturday or Sunday.(I get Monday off, though, so, if I am running late, I'll definitely make it by then) Until then, try to hold off on whatever is going on atm.

No no lynching until he catches up.

Unvote

(to prevent hammer)

[vollkan]

2) Then that's not tunneling, which was a word I saw specifically IIRC (which was why I responded to it). Also, I gave you the benefit of the doubt when this game began, by saying, "oh, it's probably just his playstyle" but as the game progressed, I can be almost positive that you deserve no benefit of the doubt.

I said "any" benefit of the doubt. That's important. I am not attacking you for not subjecting me to strict scrutiny. My point has been consistently that you are attacking me because my actions could conceivably have a scum motivation, without proving that it is

likely

that they do (ie. that the scum explanatoin is better than any town one).

3) So.... it's different for you than it is for everybody else?

No. Where I have attacked people, it has been for actions that I consider unreasonable (ie. that a townie acting reasonably would be unlikely to do them). I have not attacked people because there is the possiblity that their actions are scum-motivated.

1. Do we have any idea of the numbers on the scum team?

It's a mini, so (conservatively assuming worst-case-scenario) it will be 3.

2. Are we at MyLo?

If you assume 3 scum, then yes.

3. Why are we voting NL?

With 3 scum, the setup at the moment is most likely 5:3 (ie. 5 townies, 3 scum).

If we mislynch, it becomes 4:3. Plus scum's NK, it becomes 3:3, which is a loss.

If we No Lynch, it stays 5:3 and then scum's NK makes it 4:3, the difference being that we then have more info coming from the person's death (and possibly power roles)

[vollkan]

vollkan is still scummy, and a 'V'. Though he's not QT'd with me... Parama and Twomz and Tazaro ARE though.

Why am I still scummy?

[vollkan]

No lynch is now at NL-1 again. Please nobody hammer until Hinduragi has said his piece.

[vollkan]

Yeah, scum tend to be more interested in their slots.

I've never been replaced in a game in all my time on site. (But you don't believe in meta do you? So I guess you couldn't possibly consider that fact relevant ).

Also, what's your evidence for saying scum tend to be more interested in their slots?

I don't care about Hinduragi's reads because Hinduragi is scum regardless.

If you're genuinely convinced he is scum, that's all the more reason to want his reads - to work out his partners

[vollkan]

Also, vollkan, how the hell are you still alive? All throughout D1, people have called you a pro-town read. Btw, still not done reading but Im over halfway and should be done by late Sunday.

First of all, people's opinions of me fell quite significantly D1.

Secondly, the sort of NK speculation you are engaging in is extremely unreliable.
a) It ignores power role speculation by scum
b) It assumes that scum saw me as a more of a threat than PD (ie. I may have been thought pro-town D1, but my suspicion on Sando was wrong)
c) It ignores WIFOMing by scum
d) It ignores the prospect that scum may have thought I would come under suspicion D2 for my role on Sando's wagon

[vollkan]

What I want to know is: Why do you think you're still alive?

I am not really interested in possible speculation(s). I am not going to engage in it either because, if you ask me, it's useless and distracting.

[vollkan]

That being said, I would like to ask everyone who all of their qt's are and who they targeted last night for a qt.

:embarrassed:

I've stuffed up, and I won't be surprised if this gets me lynched.

I've had it in my head for the entire game that the neighbourising was one-shot. Reading your post above literally had me going "WTF". I can confirm that my role PM does indicate I can target somebody each passing period; I just forgot what it said

[vollkan]

Vote: No Lynch

That being said, I would like to ask everyone who all of their qt's are and who they targeted last night for a qt.

:embarrassed:

I've stuffed up, and I won't be surprised if this gets me lynched.

I've had it in my head for the entire game that the neighbourising was one-shot. Reading your post above literally had me going "WTF". I can confirm that my role PM does indicate I can target somebody each passing period; I just forgot what it said

Lulz, okay, but what qts do you have?

@Vollk: Who did you target then?

I had one with Vezok (I targeted ReaperCharlie because I was hoping I'd have more luck forcing him to actually give reasoning if I had a QT with him). I can confirm this, because Vezok mentioned it in thread (in ISO#0):

I targetted Tazaro and it worked. Yoohoo.
Also volkann targetted me.

[vollkan]

Let's wait. Can't really hurt.

Agreed. There's no reason to rush.

[vollkan]

ReaperCharlie (ie Vezok) night one, and nobody since

[vollkan]

Actually it's, Andy, Xite, NicolBolas. Screwed that up.

Note to self: Don't post while you're doing something else.

Excellent slip on a QT partner. Im done no lynching. Parama, you can suck it if you don't want to lynch in MyLo. First this guy mentions lynching lurkers at LyLo to Xite, then he defends Andrius to the brink of warfare, and now he gets his night targets messed up. I originally wanted to wait yesterday, and even today. Now I'm done waiting. I know who I think is most likely to flip scum and my opinion won't be changing much.

Unvote; Vote: VasudeVa

1) What the hell is the 'slip'? He didn't state his targets correctly...so what?
2) Why is lynching a better strategy than no lynching? Your bravado "I'm done" and "Parama, you can suck it" doesn't hide the fact that there is no good reason for lynching today.
3) In which post did he advocate a lurker lynch? (genuinely asking)
4) Defending Andrius is scummy because?

None of Hindu's reasons for lynching VV are even good reasons for a normal vote, let alone a MYLO vote with the huge risks that entails.

Okay, Hindu. When DO we lynch lurker scum? How can we win if we don't lynch lurker scum? Hmm? D1? Oh dear, it's not D1 is it?

Wait..you ARE advocating a lurker lynch?

Hind attacking VV makes me think he's scum trying to force a mislynch, so I think we should stick to the 'force scum to NK' play and tomorrow we should be able to hit a scum (hopefully).

^ This

[vollkan]

2. For me, it's a fine strategy. I am not ready to see more town die off. It's great that the NK can generate info and all, but unless VV dies, I still see his chances of being scum highly likely.

And that's a perfectly good explanation of why you want to see VV lynched - BUT it doesn't at all explain why lynching is better than no lynching. There's absolutely nothing wrong in this situation with being ready to see another "town die off"; it makes sense on the numbers and gives us more info.

4. You don't think considering someone confirmed town since D1 to MyLo, possibly LyLo, is scummy at all? If they're scumbuddies, it's the equivalent of never having to bus him.

My recollection on this point is fuzzy - did he actually call Andrius confirmed town? I thought it was just consistent defending.

[vollkan]

I didn't actually say Andrius was confirmed Town, I said he was probably Town based on his actions/our conversation in the QT.

Assuming this is correct, then I ask @Hindu: what is scummy about this?

[vollkan]

We have 8 alive and there have been, what, 4 posts in the past 2 days? Where is everyone?

It's not surprising. There's very little incentive to do much right now because all important issues have basically been argued out already and people are only going to find new material to discuss after another flip.

Or, in short: somebody hammer.

[vollkan]

Let Charlie catch up

I'm replacing in and looking at the alive players list, I'm familiar with Xite91 and Twomz. I also played a bit with VasudeVa and vollkan before. I'll have to take some time to catch up, and any quick summary would be helpful.

I don't think have played together before. In /invitatiional 8 (ongoing, but I am dead) I replaced in after you had died...

[vollkan]

ALSO.

Why are people voting in MyLo? I'm going to be NLing until the scum get the balls to kill someone, even if it a takes a whole damn year. Discussion is fine but the discussion that's happened during today has been mostly useless crap. We sat around waiting for Nicol for a week, then he got replaced, and now we're sitting around and waiting for Charlie to make biased and opportunistic cases on me to try and push a ML on me tomorrow after he kills obvtown Xite tonight while hanging out with his buddies vollkan and Andrius.

THERE IS NO GOOD REASON TO LYNCH IN MYLO WHEN WE'RE ALMOST 100% SURE THERE ARE NO POWER ROLES (P.S. - There aren't unless they've been doing a terrible job protecting, investigating, tracking, watching etc. because I don't believe it for a second that we don't have anyone confirmed town due to roles AND these roles that could confirm townies exist)

Sounds a lot like you're flailing Parama.
I'm curious, though, how am I ovbtown again? I think that's the first time I've seen me called that this game.

Why does it look like flailing? Then again, I've got basically the same frustration with the NL opposition, so maybe I am more sympathetic...

Um, I've told you in our QT that you're my strongest town read. Twice, I think. <_<

Why is he your strongest town read?

Why would I waste my time explaining my town reads?

Because calling somebody town is a common scum buddying tactic, so it makes sense for us to ask you why you called him town, because absence of reasons = bullshit

I've seen nothing in your posts or you behavior to make me think you're scum;

*sigh*

I really wish people would stop confusing "town" with "null". The absence of scumtells makes somebody less likely to be scum, but it is not positive evidence for them being town (ie. it cannot make them 'obvtown')

Page 26: At this point I've noticed that Andrius makes a lot more posts as compared to Twomz's slot (my opposing mafia read). I can view Twomz's slot as lurkish; thus diluting the apparent "scumminess" caused earlier by Andrius.

No. Number of posts is irrelevant to alignment. Town get bored, lazy, writer's blocked, etc. etc. In contrast, scum get excited, hyper-posting, and aggressive. I am NOT saying only town get bored and only scum are aggressive (I'm a big proponent of the view that aggession is not scummy). My POINT is that lurking is a nulltell.

Page 31: Hinduragi's slot's #754 looks town.

Because?

Page 33: I disagree a lot with vollkan's #802. Sometimes gut is the way to go because logic fails.

You're ignoring the context. Vezok, who if you aren't aware is pretty much a cancer upon the game of mafia, said "RayFrost is scum cause I have a gut feeling about him."

Even if there are some rare cases where logic fails, nothing suggests that this was one of them. 99.99% of the time when people use gut, there are plenty of good logical reasons available, but they are CHOOSING to go with their emotional instincts. For a whole range of theory reasons that I shouldn't go into here, I think that's wrong.

Vollkan's previous case on her is... not leaving an impression.

My case on whom?

Page 46: ... It leads us to vollkan's #1136 which is terrible! He ends up in a worse position than VasudaVa. Aside from his vebrose post, he's trying to sell his points of view and make it sound like a fact. That's bull crap right there. Vote vote vote!

My 1136:

@Volkan: Basically from #1063-#1074. I think it's slightly important since Taz pushed Parama to L-3 and you didn't post in that time frame. In the event that you are scum and Taz and Xite are Town, that would have been a splendid time to hammer and get the win.

I was accusing Parama's #1095 to be an attempt to buddy Twomz. Parama said Twomz is Town just because he 'agreed with him'. It doesn't make much sense to me to think that someone else is Town because you agreed with him. It makes more sense that someone is Town based on their actions. And Twomz' votal copy pasta + lazy analysis does not really strike me as something that would make a Townie say 'Twomz is Town' nor does Parama's explanation 'I agreed with him' as a reasonable defense.

Yeah, that. Thoughts on that?

On 1063-1074: I myself have already indicated that the "distancing" accusation made no sense (nor did the "coaching" one, for that matter). It's a bad vote as it is, but for a MYLO vote, it's terrible. Xite's defence of it in 1074 is interesting, in that while Taz allegedly "claimed he would do it last night", the ostensible reasoning for the vote is based purely on something that occurred today (or, more accurately, something which Taz says occurred today).

On 1095 issue: I think you are blowing it out of proportion somewhat. If we're going to be pedantic, the yes it's true that agreeing with somebody is not the same as thinking they are town. But it's a reasonably common colloquial thing to say that somebody is town if they post something you agree with. I don't do it myself, but it doesn't strike me as unusual. If Parama is scum, then it's very likely buddying and so may have implications for Twomz' alignment, but it isn't a scumtell.

Yoda talks: majorly iffy, vollkan is.

In between 20 and 200 words, why do you suspect me?

How on earth is that "verborse"?

Second, I hate the "fact"/"opinion" distinction you are trying to draw here.

The distnacing and coaching claims were bullshit. AFAIK, nobody has yet refuted what I said. If I was wrong, somebody should be able to explain why.

And on 1095, I didn't even say I was absolutely correct, merely that I thought it was being blown out of propoertion.

Following that he has a Wall of Quotes/Wall of text which is also unimpressive. Who are you hoping to convince with those points?

Walls are not scummy. They are a playstyle thing. Some people like only making brief posts; others like me like being comprehensive and having a record of everything.

Page 47: The bottom half of this page consists of vollkan defending himself from the trouble he stirred himself up into, akin to digging his own grave. People expressed that they don't agree to his line of thought and he subsequently says stuff. This is manipulation at its finest, people! vollkan is purposely generating content from nothing. We should vote him now. Law students cannot be trusted. VOTE: vollkan

Why is it manipulation? You keep repeating that word without any justification. You've also failed entirely to explain why you don't 'buy' my meta defence.

[vollkan]

I think I've lost my bearings, but at this stage:
1) Hindu
2) Charlie

[vollkan]

Also, who received/sent new neighbors? Twomz neighbored with me last night.

I targeted Xite, and VV targeted me

Massclaim:
Everyone's vanilla.
Seriously, I don't see how we could have PRs AND not have any of them NKed, lynched, or outted, AND no investigative PR catching scum.
Unless PRs and scum alike have been failing to hit each other.

This is a safe bet.

And, while we have to play as though it is LYLO for sure, this also increases considerably the likelihood of there only being two scum, since I don't think by any stretch of the imagination it can be said that the neighbourising mechanic favours one side or the other, let alone to the point of balancing a lack of actual power roles.

Just a quick glance: Parama is still playing very emotionally. It is hard to tell anything about him. On one hand I've played like that as Town facing an impending lynch. On the other hand, I've totally done the same as Mafia too, without thinking much before posting.

So you're saying it's a nulltell.
Why are you bringing it up in the first place?
Oh because you need to look like you're scumhunting so that town doesn't suspect you. Right. Carry on then.

^ This

And also he's structured an attack in a plausibly deniable 'testing the waters' way: flagging the issue, saying he's done it as town in a specific situation, then saying he's done it as scum much more broadly. As in, Parama is not under any particular threat of "impending lynch", so really he's saying he thinks it is scummy - only he isn't coming out and saying that for some reason. Or, Prama, am I wrong?

VasudeVa (1): Parama
Andrius (1): Charlie
Hinduragi (2): Vollkan, Twomz
Charlie (2): Vollkan, Parama
vollkan (2): Charlie, Hind
Twomz (4): Andrius, VV, Parama, Hind
Parama (5): Andrius, Charlie, VV, Twomz, Hind

I PROPOSE AN ANDRIUS/VV/HIND MAFIA GROUP, TARGETTING MYSELF AND PARAMA AS MISLYNCHES

Agree/Disagree?

Why does the above tend toward Andy/VV/Hind scum over any other group?

But I also

feel

you could be scum, Twomz.

Ooh, good idea! In that vein, I'm looking at the bottom of my empty coffee cup right now and I can vaguely make out the letters VV in the grind muck at the bottom. He's probably scum.



(translation: D5 LYLO is no time for gut)

Andrius, here's 3 arguments as to why a Twomz-Me team is basically impossible.
1. I started the day with him as my #1. Obviously I'm trying to push a mislynch. NOTE THIS HAS CHANGED OKAY?
3. I've been truly pressuring Twomz up until his NL thing actually made sense.

1) Can you clarify this?...it doesn't make sense to me
3) Assuming this is correct, it makes it less likely but not 'basically impossible'

[vollkan]

Why did you target Xite?

I had suspicion of him given his behaviour in relation to my meta defence and his attitude toward NL.

In our QT, Xite said that if Vollkan neighborizes with him and he's the NK, to lynch him fast.

Even knowing that his intentions were probably have been pro-town, I can't see any rational basis for that attitude.

I'm not even sure why he said that but he was my last town read. I don't know who is town/scum but, hell, I will believe the only guy who I know is town at this point. Vote: vollkan

*blink*

So, at LYLO, you are casting your vote based on something that Xite said which, by your own admission, you don't actually understand?

Also, Xite's reasons for suspecting me were nothing short of crap. As I said in a neat summatino:

My read of Xite (and this is a read from the process of responding, not clinically going back over) from that argument is tunnelling newb, possibly slightly town but mostly null. He's being inconsistent in the way he treats me versus others (if you didn't read the debate, basically there a number of points where he attacks me by assuming the worst possible motivations for my actions but also attacks me for not being generous enough in my interpretations of other people's actions), but, importantly, he didn't resort to misrepresentation or strawmanning and he did seem genuinely confused about the whole "definition of a scumtell" (and his confusion on that point is a factor in me not taking his inconsistency.

He was genuine, sure, but utterly wrong.

[vollkan]

So, at LYLO, you are casting your vote based on something that Xite said which, by your own admission, you don't actually understand?

Yes, my reads are that bad. I know it sounds like a scummy excuse to have my vote but if Xite said lynch him fast, then I'm confident he had good reason to do so, given how much analysis and input he had on the game.

He had a lot of input. But, and if you go over my exchange with Xite this should become clear, a lot of his input in relation to me was rubbish.

Why'd you target Xite, specifically?

I've explained. I'm not sure what else you are looking for. He was somebody I had issues with and so I figured it would be good to have the opportunity to question him directly.

[vollkan]

You didn't suspect, with people calling him obvtown and town or saying he's a town read, that he would be NK'd? Seriously, I was 100% that one of three things would happen last night: No NK, Xite NK, or me NK. With Xite NK being the leading one due to scum seeing that a lynch was coming so no NK would be bad for them and a me NK bad for them because Xite would protect me.

The question of "would Xite be likely to get NKed" didn't enter my head when I was making my decsion - probably because I definitely didn't see him as obvtown.

Step by step, my thinking process was:
1) So I can use my conversation power again. Who is still alive? Hmm, I will go to page 1 and look at player list (time, t=0 seconds)
2) Hmm...I didn't like Xite's attitude toward me or the NL, so there is probably value in targeting him (t=5 seconds)
3) Hey Seraphim, I'd like to target Xite (t=10 seconds)

[vollkan]

People! I'd like to properly respond to stuff tonight, but for now let me say that Xite is a she.

Then I'm sure Xite will be

delighted

to know that I always thought of him as a slightly immature (if weird, see: powerpuff avatar) 14 to 16 year old boy

[vollkan]

Did you express this suspicion of Xite beforehand? (Day 4 material only, please)

No, I didn't. But that's mostly because it was suspicion in the sense of "I want to question" rather than in the sense of "I want to lynch" (see my summation paragraph I quoted before)

[vollkan]

@Vollkan's #1189 regarding #754: Back then, as I was reading that post I find myself agreeing with most of those points. I assume that same thinking = same alignment, therefore town.

Then you're wrong.

Town commit scumtells and scum make good cases in resopnse. The mere fact that somebody makes what you think to be a good case does not make them the same alignment as you - it ignores the gapingly obvious possibility that maybe you just mistaken.

Regarding vebrosity: Don't deny that you've used some pretty high class level of language there. I, personally, feel that this is a good scumtell because only scum have the need to be so specific. Town posts are usually succinct.

Again, bullshit.

What on earth do you mean by "only scum have the need to be so specific". If anything, it's in scum's interests to be vague and general. Likewise, I can't see any basis for saying town is usually succinct - it's a playstyle thing.

Also, while I readily admit that I have a proclivity toward prolixity, this is just a part of my playstyle. I even have meta-support for this:

you joined 6 weeks ago, your still under the newbie headline... hell Im under the newbie headline. 1. nonverbose =/= anti town however not explaining what you are doing is, I do feel however, probably the wrong game to say with vollkan here but too verbose I find anti-town, its just peoples differing opinion and almost everyone gets called scummy at some point.

(note that the above doesn't just say that I was verbose in that game - but actually refers to me having a meta for it )

///The following isn't necessary to read to understand me - I say this because people are complaining about my verbosity - but I give it as substantiation of my history of reaction-gathering //

[quote="Ortolan in Mini 701, attacking me (again, I was town) for verbosity

on balance I still would be quite content with a vollkan lynch at present: and to be sure, my argument against him is different to the one OP made in his last post. It is not just "vollkan might be scum so let's lynch just in case" but rather "apparently vollkan is good, but his play this game, while being verbose, has shown little evidence of actually being useful in catching scum. Furthermore I've seen him make some really bizarre arguments which couldn't possibly be useful for catching scum consistently". [/quote]

Regarding walls: Yes, I also feel that walls are not scummy i.e. a playstyle thing, but I feel that you've overdone it with the walls.

*blink* So it isn't normally a scumtell, but for some reason I've crossed the magical invisible line that makes it one? Bullshit.

I'd also point out that 'walls-of-text' is something I have a particular rep for:

The "I Shoulda Known Vollkan Would Do His Wallz" Votecount

(The above quote is particularly important because you have a moderator actually pointing out during the game that I had a meta for something)

OMG guys its just walls and walls of text. I'm trying to read and come up with comments, but u are making it really hard...

This really is annoying me now. I just looked at your posts in isolation and the lack of anything meaningful is frankly pathetic.

This game is going to be content-heavy and will only get more so from here. You aren't keeping up with the discussion on D1, so I dread to think of how poorly you will do as things progress (and the posts get inevitably longer).

I know for a fact that I am not going to be cutting down my posts, and the other players who post wallz will most likely also be unable/unwilling to. So, rather than complaining, get used to it.

I did leave a game and sign up for another straight up, but I feel I was justified. I was in the middle of my HSC and couldn't deal with Vollkan and Gemelli doing WALLZ-O'-TEXT back and forth and so signed up for another game. By the time that game started my exams were almost through (except my last, abnormally late one), and the game still hasn't gotten to WALLZ yet.

It was simply that I didn't have the time to commit to that game, but did to another game that would consume less.

[vollkan]

I targeted Hindu, though I want him to swing today.

[vollkan]

Watch this:
Me or Charlie is scum, this is blatantly obvious. Everyone has posted enough such that scum would have had a chance to quickhammer if Charlie and me were both town.
And since I know I'm town, YAAAAAY Charlie is scum. Like I've been saying.
Hey Charlie! Can you go die please? It'd make me happy

This is extremely weak reasoning; it should be obvious that a quicklynch is quite difficult for scum to execute

[vollkan]

unvote, vote: vollkan

unvote, vote: Charlie

scumteam right here, callin' it

Struck a nerve with my last post it seems?

I had the scumteam pegged as Charlie and Hindu, but this is really interesting. You make a stupid argument against Charlie, I call you out on it, and you snap into calling a scumteam.

[vollkan]

Parama, why is Charlie scum? I don't see his reasoning fault as much of a tell.

1) Sorry? That doesn't explain why Charlie is "town".

2) Why don't you see his poor reasoning as a tell?

3. The scumteam is in Parama/VV/Vollkan.

There are 5 people alive. There cannot be a 3-person scumteam.

[vollkan]

3. No. First off, I had no absofuckin reason to kill Andy. If I was scum, I would have buddied Andy for FAR TOO LONG in the damn game and had manipulated him into mislynching Twomz....only to kill him off NOW, at LyLo? Does not compute. Me-scum would have kept Andy, told him to vote Town in our QT and then I'd have me and my buddy hammer for the win. Cry WIFOM all you like, but the advantages of keeping Andy along for me-scum are too good for my supposed faction.

The WIFOM is bad enough, but it's worse that you are drawing a false equivalence between one relatively minor motivation you may have had not to kill Andy and the motivations of your hypothetical scumpair as a whole

VasudeVa, I don't think Hinduragi is mafia. Mainly because I cannot ignore the fact that Parama and Vollkan are alive after some serious shenanigans D1. A near lynch on Parama's slot and a seemingly pro-town Vollkan with lots of so-called goodposting in there makes me very suspicious about them both. Vollkan's later play has not been on par, this makes me think it was intentional. But based on what has happened so far, I conclude that Parama has most probably took a quick vote in LyLo, hoping that someone would follow and his buddy (probably Vollkan) hammers.

So your reasons for suspecting me are:
1. That I wasn't NKed D1 (WIFOM); and
2. That you think I've been deliberately playing subpar to frustrate the above (Conspiracy)

[vollkan]

Hm, yes. I asked myself "Why is Vollkan still alive?"

Righto then.

Could you then explain the following:
1) Why your first reason for suspecting me (that I haven't been NKed) isn't complete WIFOM?
2) How exactly it is that my play has deteriorated and why "vollkan is scum trying to play badly in order that we don't question why he hasn't been killed" is the most likely explanation for said deterioration? (It may be relevant for you to know that this game started in July which is my mid-year holiday and, from mid-August onwards, I've been back at uni/work, which basically slashes my time commitment to mafia.)

[vollkan]

1) C'mon, its not totally WIFOM.

It is.

You can't seriously think that "hey, Vollkan is a good player but he is also under suspicion; so maybe if we don't kill him he fall under heavier suspicion" isn't a strategy that would be obvious to any half-decent scum.

And I personally believe that it is valid.

*sigh* I really hope you are just trolling me

2) It shows inconsistency, and I'm pinning that as intentional.

First, you haven't pointed to a shred of evidence indicating that my play has actually declined in any meaningful sense.

Second, how on earth does it show inconsistency? My play changing in response to RL cirucmstances is completely legitimate. You're seriosuly grasping at straws if you think it amounts to inconsistency.

Would you be my friend?

No.

[vollkan]

Way to respond to the most important issues in my post

[vollkan]

The game has slowed down to the point that small talk becomes relevant again for discussion.

No it hasn't

And even if it had, that still wouldn't justify your ignoring my questions twice now.

vollkan, why are you not voting Charlie?

LYLO paranoia.

If he doesn't answer my questions, though, he can expect my vote. It's bad enough that his reasoning on me is crap, and that he won't even try to defend it, but in the context of LYLO it is just ridiculous.

[vollkan]

LYLO paranoia.

*refusal to bus

Clearly, because LYLO is exactly the time to rush a lynch when there is more than one viable candidate.

If he doesn't answer my questions, though, he can expect my vote. It's bad enough that his reasoning on me is crap, and that he won't even try to defend it, but in the context of LYLO it is just ridiculous.

*threat that's incredibly easy to back out of[/quote]

Well, no - the point of the threat was to make him respond.

I'm not interested in answering your questions because we're dealing with two very different playstyles (like comparing apples and oranges). I'm playing by gut, Vollkan's playing by logic. There will be gaps in reasoning.

That's crap.

You have been presenting reasons for suspecting me. If I turn around and prove them wrong, you can't then say "No, wait, I'm playing by gut".

Who are you to dictate these sort of things?

*sigh* You said that the game had slowed to a point that small talk was okay. I resopnded by saying "And even if it had, that still wouldn't justify your ignoring my questions twice now."

If you think it justifies not answering questions, THEN PROVE ME WRONG!

Let me summarise this:

Charlie: [something stupid]
Vollkan: [why something stupid is wrong]
Charlie: STOP DICTATING!
Vollkan: Well why is it not wrong?
Charlie: I play by gut so I don't have to explain why I am right.

Sure thing. Simply read your posts D1 and compare it in terms of volume, to D2.

Again - I've been busier. You still haven't explained why it makes me more likely to be scum, other than yoru stupid conspriacy

Content-wise, is kinda subjective.

In short, you have no reasoning

Vollkan, answer this: Do you think Charlie is scum?

Yes. I've already said that

Vollkan, you mentioned you QT'd me but you want me to die today. Why QT me if you're going to attempt to kill me anyways?

In case we lynched scum that was not you.

[vollkan]

Truthfully, Vollkan scares me. He has a way with words that is close to be considered gifted.

This is Mafia, not Scrabble (unfortunately )

[vollkan]

But why wouldn't you want to QT one of your town reads?

I think QTs are better used for interrogating people you suspect and potentially getting new info than confirming what is largely already known from thread with a town read

[vollkan]

That's the idea when I choose you last Night to start a QT with. I'm not really looking forward to our potential discussion N6. You're intimidating.

I will try to eschew prolixity so as to avoid obfuscating you.

[vollkan]

But why wouldn't you want to QT one of your town reads?

I think QTs are better used for interrogating people you suspect and potentially getting new info than confirming what is largely already known from thread with a town read

You thought Xite to be one of your top suspects at the time you QT'd him?

Yup:

I had suspicion of him given his behaviour in relation to my meta defence and his attitude toward NL.

[vollkan]

Was that a scum hammer VV?

[vollkan]

Damn. Well done scum, and good modding Llama

I am interested to know what people think of this setup being ran as an open setup, which is my plan for it. I will be rerunning this setup in the near future with a different theme to go along with it, just as an open setup.

I don't think whether this setup is open or not makes a huge difference balance-wise. The only thing it might do is is eliminate any possible use of the conversation power as a tool for finding power-roles, and also eliminate the "But what if it outs a PR" issue that came up when I tried to push the claiming of conversation targets.

As an aside, I am going to ensure I remember this game to cite in the future as evidence of the principle: "DON'T DISMISS SELF-META!"

[vollkan]

@vollkan: Quite honestly, I was very paranoid that you might swing to Charlie in the coming days, that's why I was so tunnely on Hinduragi. I also left you alive because we were planning to mislynch Hinduragi due to Taz's and his play. I think that you got too lost in your own logic and delayed too much. You did call Charlie correctly, but I don't get why you were being so paranoid.

I was concerned that, given how much suspicion I appeared to be under, any vote by me would cause people to swing their suspicion toward me. That's combined with the fact that I am generally always extremely slow to vote