New Rule: Replace the Word "Lynch" in Games

[Menalque]

“Guillotine” is the superior replacement word because:

(1) fits with the theme of an oppressed group taking action to remove said oppressors — there’s a thematic continuity but without the problematic notions conjured by lynching specifically.
(2) the “uill” noise in guillotine means that GyLo and Mylo will fit the new terminology well. “Guillo” and “tined” will be good replacement abbreviations for lynching someone. Also allows weirdly specific language still i.e. “so help me god, if you are scum I will put your head under a sharp droppy blade boi and forcibly detach it from your body!”
(3) adequately violent in terms of imagery.
(4) Has revolutionary connotations (this is mostly a bonus).

I disagree with Isis about the mob justice stuff, insofar as I don’t think mafia is really about justice at all and nor does it necessarily pretend to be. While, yes, you have as standard flavour the mafia as the bad guys, I’ve seen themed games where mafia are definitely the good guys and the town are essentially evil. In which case “mob justice” fits perfectly well as a tool that the villains would use against the protagonists.

I don’t think mafia is more than a game simulating a bloody power struggle between two factions, and so I don’t think the question of which form of justice it endorses is relevant to whether we should stop using lynch and replace it with another.

[Cabd]

Good change.

I still remember the time we were riding the trains in Chicago on our way to a mini meetup at TSQ's house, and we were talking game theory and I was REALLY afraid the word would come up in public.

Also looking forward to a tshirt I can wear safely, instead of using it as an around-the-house-chores only item.

Also also VOTE: Guillotine

[Davsto]

how about launch

[T-Bone]

So, we're going to use eliminate for now. But if there is an honest move to something like Exile...that would be okay! The point of this exercise is to change site culture, and if site culture switches to eliminate/exile/whatever over time (as long as it doesn't end up as another problematic term) then we as a site have the ability to be responsive to that change. There are some terms that we will probably be more responsive to than others. The guillotine suggestion sounds dumb, doesn't roll off the tongue, and I can't imagine wanting to use that as a mod or a player unless you have a specific themed game. We're probably not going to use a term like 'run out of town' because that's too many words. We like shorthand, and that's why we came up with terms like L-X, MyLo, etc. as shorthand in the first place.

But, if you want to be #teamexile for example...be the change you want to be.

[Dunnstral]

'Eliminate' doesn't roll off the tongue any better

[Dunnstral]

In fact, it has more syllables than guillotine does, and is in fact worse

[T-Bone]

Again, be the change you want to be, we have the ability to make changes in the future. We chose eliminate because it is neutral, and other sites who play mafia/werewolf have made this same change.

[Dunnstral]

Syllable Count:

Lynch - 1
Lynched - 1
Mob - 1
Mobbed - 1
Exile - 2
Exiled - 2
Guillotine - 3
Guillotined - 3
Eliminate - 4
Eliminated - 5

[T-Bone]

Lim - 1
Limmed - 1
Pwnd - 1

[Dunnstral]

I like lim and limmed.

[T-Bone]

Me too. TemporalLich(I think?) suggested that as shorthand because they play on another site that uses eliminate

[gobbledygook]

This is a wonderful change! I have been trying to do tbis in the games I mod because I was personally uncomfortable with the term. I’ve been trying to manage my use of the term since I started playing
Good on you, site mods!

[gobbledygook]

I just use died. At night killed.
Forced out of the town also seems like a good term

I don’t know why we are talking about syllables and this should just be a moratorium on the word lynch/hanged. Use whatever other term you want that doesn’t have racist connotations?

[T-Bone]

Thinking about how we're going to shift site culture is a worthwhile discussion because changing culture on purpose is hard.

[AniX]

Yeah, I really suggest people do their reactions to this in waves. The first step is removing lynched from the lexicon. The second step is figuring out what the new standard will be. Mixing those two steps into one step is going to muddy the waters and make people seem like they are disagreeing or downplaying the first step when all they want to do is participate in the second step.

[gobbledygook]

Thinking about how we're going to shift site culture is a worthwhile discussion because changing culture on purpose is hard.

This is me being surprised that there’s actually a sizable resistance to this change :O but I really shouldn’t be surprised I guess. I live in America ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The way I think about it is, how would I defend the use of lynch to an employer who found out about ms.net? Or the media? Even if you’re technically correct about the connotations, do you want to seem like that person defending the use of the term? I don’t.

I didn’t think about the LyLo/MyLo issue which I guess for newbies is worth discussing to be uniform.
I think I’m going to use “votes to death” and have the short cite be. “X to ”

[Fredrick A Campbell]

Yeah, I really suggest people do their reactions to this in waves. The first step is removing lynched from the lexicon. The second step is figuring out what the new standard will be. Mixing those two steps into one step is going to muddy the waters and make people seem like they are disagreeing or downplaying the first step when all they want to do is participate in the second step.

Why not start the second step now?

[AniX]

Yeah, I really suggest people do their reactions to this in waves. The first step is removing lynched from the lexicon. The second step is figuring out what the new standard will be. Mixing those two steps into one step is going to muddy the waters and make people seem like they are disagreeing or downplaying the first step when all they want to do is participate in the second step.

Why not start the second step now?

As I said, because it is going to mix "I don't like this because I think lynched is fine" and "I don't like this because I think we need a better new standard word than eliminate" into a second "I don't like this" camp and those are incredibly different positions with incredibly different motivations and incredibly different discussions.

Now, if the mods wanted to make a separate post for discussing the new standard, that would be fine, but as it is people jumping to step 2 while step 1 is still being discussed does nobody any favors.

[Cabd]

I mean long-long term, I feel like whatever the newbie queue adopts as the standard will likely take over site jargon, jsut from the stream of new recruits that will internalize it as "what it should be"

I am also perfectly fine with "Lim" as short for Eliminate.

[Nahdia]

still kind of agree that "eliminate" is too clinical and kind of runs contrary to the base theme of mafia games: town trying to find and rid themselves of the mafia via mob justice. both exile and execute are just better.

[PJ.]

Why not just let mods decide?

[Untrod Tripod]

if only mods were allowed to use pretty much any death flavor they want

oh well

[Kerset]

Why not just let mods decide?

From setup design, it would be very useful to have defined standard. If someone receives in PM "Once you are eliminated, you may pick a person to roleblock them" they might be confused what elimination is. Thanks to standardization we can avoid misinterpretations, which have negative impact on games.

Like person could think that being killed by vig or moddkilled will count as elimination. This is really generic word.

[Radical Rat]

snip

So, I was the one (or at least one of the ones) who proposed "burn" as an alternative, and yeah I thought about the woman hate thing but figured the difference is, to my knowledge, witch trials don't really happen anymore, whereas real world lynching is still unfortunately a thing that does happen, with an uptick recently.

Trouble is, as you've said, mob justice and extrajudicial killings are naturally going to lend themselves to prejudice, but that's what Mafia is based around. I can't think of any way to remove Mafia from that context, and in many ways I think the game serves as a satirical condemnation of the whole thing.

Banning lynch, at least to me, is less about trying to remove the game from its violent origins, and more about removing a particular word that has particular connotations with the wound still open, so to speak. That's going to make folks uncomfortable, and the staff have decided that the trade-off of not quite having a thematically appropriate universal term was worth not pouring salt over said wound.

[Nahdia]

if only mods were allowed to use pretty much any death flavor they want

oh well

im talkin about newbies/normals mostly here bc that flavor is gonna become the standard

just giving my opinion, sorry