Disclaimer:
I apologise in advance to everybody for the length of the following. This is a more exhaustive explanation of Percy's mistakes in reading my posts (and his own, in one case) and in constructing a case against me. Most of it is self-evident. If you disagree with me that Percy has self-evident misreadings and mistakes, then consider reading the following. If not, feel free to scroll on by.
@Gerrendus:
My opening post:
Scheherazade wrote:Who could have killed the scum player, out of curiosity? Wracking my brain, a serial killer, an insane/CPR doctor, a vigilante-type or a different faction of scum come to mind.
Percy's post defending his vote, not his vote post:
Percy wrote:Your post reads like a rolefishing post...
This is a misreading. See below.
(By the way, this is the first time he's said so and he only says it when he has to defend his vote, not when he casts it. The fact that he thinks I was role-fishing is essential to his later case, but he doesn't think to say so until this post. That's what I meant. He'd posted twice, not once, between my opening post and his accusation of role-fishing. I know what you're saying, but while you're pointing to the fact that he only posts once between my post and his vote, I'm pointing to the fact that he posts twice between my post and mentioning this, and one of those posts contained his vote, which makes it even worse in my mind. He didn't say that my post affected his vote until after the time he actually cast the vote.)
Me, in response to accusations that my opening post was role-fishing:
Scheherazade wrote:I think the biggest source of confusion over my post is the use of the word "who." By "who," I meant, "what faction/role" as clearly evidenced by the following sentence, where I list possible "who"s.
Percy, after either failing to read or simply not addressing my above explanation of my opening post:
Percy wrote:This seems like an attempt to start a conversation about who could have killed the scum player, and a happy side effect was that an insane/CPR doc scenario would be talked about.
I'll use an analogy. It's akin to me asking "Who believes in limited government? Republicans and Libertarians come to mind" and someone saying "This seems like an attempt to start a conversation about people's political beliefs."
Why is this important? Because I was discussing setup, not role-fishing (I disagree with most of the players here in that I think it does benefit town to discuss setup in a limited way, i.e. in figuring out what sort of scum we should be looking for; in addition, it tends to lead to discussion useful for actually scum-hunting; I've let it drop because most people here don't like it, not because I "know better" now). You understand the difference, right? Role-fishing wants "what players have what power roles" and setup discussion wants "what power roles are in play?" (I ask because you use the two interchangeably when addressing my point 'e')(and while I'm on the subject, I don't see how my remark "he hasn't addressed the fact that I wanted to talk about setup" could be read as a personal attack)
And why was I discussing setup? For two reasons:
Scheherazade wrote:Sorry, I thought the advantage in alerting possible insane/CPR doctors to their condition and the advantage given by trying to open up the game, so that we don't all assume something [outweighed the risks].
(Note: I've had a fever of 103F and I can't shake it. For that reason, I've been omitting words from my sentences by mistake. However, my problem is with omissions, not with writing things for no reason. So, Percy, don't use it as an excuse to disregard entire sentences and posts.)
If there's still any doubt, let me restate. My motive in my opening post was to talk about the set-up. Why talk about set-up? Because I wanted to prevent us from making any assumptions about the composition of the anti-town forces, which would impact our later ability to scum-hunt effectively and because I wanted to alert any doctors reading that if their target died N1, they might want to consider the possibility that they're insane/CPR. And my underlying reason was my conviction that discussion of the set-up leads to fruitful conversation and is a good way to trick scum into slipping by revealing they have too much information about the set-up. I did not state before the underlying reason. The rest, I've said in my posts.
Percy responded:
Percy wrote:The defence seems to be that he was pointing out that there could be an insane doc, but I feel that was not the point of his post.
Actually, the second half of the statement is correct. The primary purpose was starting discussion of the set-up. The confusion comes from this post:
Scheherazade wrote:Role fishing for scum is scum-hunting, isn't it? And identifying the serial killer, if we have one, benefits town because he's going to kill us, too.
Mostly it was to point out to any doctors who may have defended one of the deceased that they might not be entirely sane. It doesn't require that they role-claim, just that they consider the possibility that they're insane before they go about protecting town.
I was unclear here, because I thought something was obvious. I thought it was obvious that I wasn't role-fishing, so I made a half-joke about role-fishing for scum (note, I have never anywhere even hinted that I asked ONLY about anti-town players, Gerrendus). The logic was this:
If my opening post was role-fishing for doctors or vigilantes, then it must also be role-fishing for serial killers and mafia (scum), because I gave all four the same treatment. If you call what I was doing role-fishing, then you must admit that I was role-fishing for mafia as well as pro-town. If I were role-fishing for mafia, then it was equally pro-town because it was scum-hunting as well as role-fishing.
I thought the conclusion so absurd, I made a joke about it. Having dealt with the broader accusation "this is role-fishing" I focused on the part I knew strife meant, the mentioning of the insane/CPR doctors. I didn't explicitly state this thought process. I thought that anybody reading would understand why I would move to address my mentioning the pro-town roles at all.
I pointed out the advantage to even mentioning insane/CPR doctors: to alert them. Personally, I thought mentioning their existence as part of the set-up was less likely to evoke a "gee, that's me!" from someone than saying "doctors, consider that you might not be sane." Sure, if this were the primary purpose of my post, then I'd have used something like Percy's suggestion. I posted to open up discussion of setup.
In reference to the two explicit reasons why I introduced setup discussion, Percy writes:
Percy wrote:With the first option, you're saying "whoops, I didn't mean to rolefish."
No, I wasn't role-fishing. Maybe the word which implied Percy's reading was "sorry." I meant, and perhaps should have said explicitly, "sorry for introducing set-up discussion." I thought that my intention was obvious because I was responding to the preceding post, where strife says "We probably don't want to look over the fact that discussing the set-up is in now way beneficial to town at this point." Is it illogical to assume that someone reading this thread would know that I was writing "sorry" in response to the preceding post? strife attacked me for trying to discuss set up and mentioned the post where I tried to discuss set up. There was nothing else to say "sorry" to.
Scheherazade wrote:This is true: I've played before in real life. However, I think Caboose was the only person who explicitly based his non-vote on my inexperience. Anybody else who's made mention to the comment seems to think it's not role-fishing or anti-town for different reasons. If they simply lied about their reasons and indeed let me off because of my join date, then let them reconsider here.
Percy wrote:Hence, I thought your claim to experience was sound, thus the second reading of the above. Hence the vote.
First, this.
Actually, there isn't really a second, except to point out that a post whose message was "give me no quarter" was interpreted as a claim to experience. As I've "claimed experience," his entire reading of me changes. He thinks it's an ego thing and it seems to me like he's trying to punish me for being "egotistical" in saying "I've played before in real life."
Percy wrote:You just wanted to talk about crazy doctors, and I think that is rolefishing.
Nope, not at all. If he'd taken the time to look, I only mentioned doctors in response to a question or accusation. (strife, Vi, strife again, Percy, and now you) This is one example of him ignoring my stated and demonstrated motives in favour of his own ideas. Yes, I know you can't ever know 100% somebody's motives, especially in mafia, but providing motives in direct contradiction to the facts is indicative of unfamiliarity with those facts (and a fantasy, the product of the imagination...my use of the word had nothing to do with attacking anybody).
Percy wrote:At the very least, [his opening post] would be a good way for someone scummy to throw people off track, with townies trying to figure out who the Doc-That-Kills-People-And-Doesn't-Know-It-Yet is rather than who the scum are.
Scheherazade wrote:As for the red herring argument, it's obvious that such a search would be useless. Only idiotic townies would ignore scum-hunting for the sake of identifying a town power role, which can only really be done to a certainty by the power role himself. In order for a diversion effectively influence people, it has to seem more tantalising than their original object.
Percy wrote:Again, what I hear is "This plan would not give definitive proof." The fact that another townie said this:
'have I missed something or is their a reason why insane doctor has even been mentioned yet'
might indicate to you that your plan simply (or at least mostly) to "alert the people and not have it be talked about" had failed. Not only that, you say it can't be done to a certainty; well, of course that's true. This is mafia. Again, you say it would be an ineffective plan, but that doesn't mean it wasn't rolefishing.
He goes from saying "even if it's not role-fishing, at least it's a plan to divert the town from scum-hunting" to "diversion may be a stupid idea, but that doesn't mean it isn't role-fishing." I think the misreading here is of his own post... Now, the only way the interpretation "this plan would not give definitive proof" even remotely resembles what was said is if the proof is proof of my guilt. I was actually refuting his words "at the very least, [his opening post] would be a good way for someone scummy to throw people off track." It wouldn't be a good way, I was saying. It had nothing to do with proving my innocence. I was just pointing out that he'd said something wrong.
Of course, he takes a single remark made by Der Hammer as "evidence" that I'd failed to craft a statement that would not lead to discussion of the doctors in the game. This statement is a misreading for a couple reasons. I never said that talking about insane/CPR doctors in the course of discussing set-up was contrary to my purposes. Never. Furthermore, Der Hammer asked a question that could have been answered by reading the thread. It's silly to say that my post was the reason why he asked a question with an obvious answer.
(Gerrendus, I didn't mean to imply that we shouldn't evaluate semantics; I meant that evaluating semantics ought to be a means to identify scum, not something desirable in itself, a conviction the hints of which I see in Percy's posts)
In the five sentences, he has four statements, beginning with the words "Again, what," "The fact," "Not only," and "Again, you." I've addressed the fact that the first two were misreadings, it would seem. The third is an agreement with me, it seems, that the plan he accused me of pursuing is ineffective. But, he says in the fourth statement, the ineffectiveness of the diversion plan doesn't preclude role-fishing. This argument, aside from having continuity flaws between statements two and three, not only ignores what I said in my post but also what he thought I said. In his posts, he show that he thinks I said that because the diversion plan is ineffective, it wouldn't provide adequately damning evidence against me. He admits that it's ineffective but then proceeds to throw the entire discussion of the diversion plan out. I admit, it's rather inscrutable to me. The only way this really makes sense is if he's conceding that the diversion plan is a silly accusation and tries to refocus on the role-fishing thrust of his argument. It's phrased to look like he's won an argument "you say it would be an ineffective plan, but that doesn't mean it wasn't rolefishing" when in fact he's admitted that it would be an ineffective plan. It would have been more honest to write, "yes, I know that it's an ineffective plan, but that fact doesn't mean that you didn't role-fish." This entire segment of the argument is a mess.
Scheherazade wrote:...
If, however, you feel less than motivated to think about what you're reading,
you might stop at the word "who" and assume that I meant "what player or players" by saying "who"...
But it's obnoxious
that people would post without reading carefully, much less vote.
Percy wrote:Also, dismissive parts bolded. It's really not that I'm offended, it just seems like you're not willing to defend yourself with logic, you're just trying to intimidate me.
Again, if I were trying to be dismissive I'd have written "read the damned thread" as another player here has rather than say "it's obnoxious that people would post without reading carefully..." I wasn't referring only to him, so don't accuse me of trying to simply hide behind the word "people," and I said it to say in stronger terms "read more carefully, please." In writing "if...you feel less than motivated to think about what you're reading..." I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, not being dismissive. I think it's much less dismissive to say what amounts to "I think you haven't felt like thinking hard about this" than to say something like "you're incapable of thinking hard about this" or "you're deliberately not thinking about this," both of which would be dismissive and, I hope, untrue. This entire post is dedicated to what I mean when I say he's not reading as carefully as he could and not thinking as clearly as would benefit the town. Saying that I'm trying to "intimidate" him is absurd. What in that was menacing?
Percy's is a systematic misreading based on the initial misreading of my opening post. Without the single initial misreading of my opening post, his case is as sturdy as a trampoline made of matchsticks. Jump up and down on it a few times. Its flaws combined with the fact that he borrowed his reading of my initial post from strife220 and his delay in voting for me makes me think his motives are less than pure.
