No, we cannot.
You're missing the FUNDAMENTAL difference in these awards.
I will break down your post piece by piece so you can hopefully better understand where I feel you're not clear:
#1. Teamwork should be a factor in Best Mafia Catcher anyway.
And it has been, in the past. If a player is right but is incapable of getting people to rally around his cause or work with other people, no award. If a player is good at reads but causes a bunch of bullshit and terrible explosions when they enter a game due to their personality, they will not win. Teamwork is just
one
aspect of what makes a great town player. We're not going to specifically reward one aspect of town play, we're rewarding all of it.
#2. Adding/removing Scummies should not devalue teamwork in any way.
The Scummies do not have the power you're ascribing to them, though it would be great. And in fact, if people are
only
incentivized to work together
because they might win an award for it
, then I'd argue the existence of that award is toxic to the site and needs to be removed, anyway. You shouldn't work together as a team because of an award. You should work together as a team
because it's the way to win as town
. (See: removal of Best Replacement and Best IC)
#3. The Scummies are, as any awards are, a bit of an ego stroke.
That's not a negative thing. Winning a Scummie
should
be a boost to your ego. It
should
give you something to be proud of. It will cause people to look at you differently. It'll cause people to hold you to a higher standard. We're awarding very specific people for very specific accomplishments, and that will by and large affect their value/weight/opinion in games moving forward, just like an actor winning an Oscar will usually lead to higher billing in movies in the future.
#4. Town and Mafia alignments are not symmetrical, so the same qualities can't be applied to each award.
What makes a mafia "team" easier to judge is that we get access to their inner thoughts and secret plans. We get to see how they plot and scheme and calculate their moves. We
cannot
do the same thing with town. The game of mafia is not symmetrical, so there is a need to understand the differences between the two and what is award-worthy. When you're awarding scum play, it's on a much smaller scale. People may only pull scum once, and once they blow their gambit/strategy, it's out in the open and cannot be used again. However, town-hunting requires consistency and dedication. In any given game, there will be at least one person who looks more correct than the rest of the town. That's why we need to value
consistency
in town play -- and you gauge consistency by looking at several games over a longer timeline.
Nobody is pretending teamwork cannot exist. It's unfathomable to me that someone would get that from anything that has been said so far.