Dealing with Chronic Lurkers

[Infested-jerk]

How do you deal with people who jsut never stop lurking in games? They hardly ever post, seem to follow the "cool" thing that is happening and really don't help. So how do you deal with this?

[Thok]

1. Mod Prods. Lots of mod prods.
2. Replacements
3. Start lurker lynching. This becomes a metagame play to try to force chronic lurkers to stop it. Or course, this doesn't work in my experience.
4. Ignore the issue and create your own bandwagons.

[Infested-jerk]

I'm sorely tempted that whenever I mod that anybody I see lurking (like the whole game) doesn't get into another one of my games, but with the queue (how the heck do you spell queue! WAIT JUST DID!) it's impossible to do that.

[the silent speaker]

4. Ignore the issue and create your own bandwagons.

But if there are enough lurkers, the active people don't have the numbers to bandwagon. I ran into this in Simpsons Mafia and eventually had to modkill about eight people for lurking. Modkill, because I had made my tenth replacement by day 2. The next game I run, spots will go preferentially to people who were in the first one and didn't flake, but there are really no guarantees (and sometimes a person can have a perfectly lgitimate reason to abruptly leave his games).

[Fuldu]

The next game I run, spots will go preferentially to people who were in the first one and didn't flake,

Excellent...

Another interesting solution was a SK role that was allowed to daykill players who hadn't posted in several days without an excuse. I believe that was TuThreded, but I'm not certain.

[Mr. Flay]

I've got a short list of players I've had to replace, most of which have never come back but some of whom I'll require some sort of email or contact info so I can poke them with sticks should they do it again...

Have I mentioned how much I hate replacements???

[bluesoul]

Prod, prod, modkill and blacklist. Works for me.

[Coron]

Lurking is a legitimate strategy, however when someone notices it, they have a reason to bandwagon you. Also if you have nothing to say YOU DON'T ALWAYS HAVE TO FRIGGIN SAY SOMETHING. I often lurk, I usually am reading the game and thinking about it anyway, I just don't have much to say about the current discussion. This again, is legitimate. Sometimes you get sick/busy all of a sudden without warning... this is legitimate.

If a game dies because there are too many "lurkers" it means you either need to replace faster or the town isn't doing a good enough job of discouraging lurking.

[chamber]

Lurking is a legitimate strategy, however when someone notices it, they have a reason to bandwagon you. Also if you have nothing to say YOU DON'T ALWAYS HAVE TO FRIGGIN SAY SOMETHING. I often lurk, I usually am reading the game and thinking about it anyway, I just don't have much to say about the current discussion. This again, is legitimate. Sometimes you get sick/busy all of a sudden without warning... this is legitimate.

If a game dies because there are too many "lurkers" it means you either need to replace faster or the town isn't doing a good enough job of discouraging lurking.

qft

[BrianMcQueso]

Coron has a valid point, but lurking as strategy is completely different from people who just don't want to participate because they're lazy.

I suggest banning accounts. It's harsh and unreasonable, but would also make me very happy. We could take a vote as MafiaScum community, sorta like a perma-lynch.

[VisMaior]

Err. NO.

[Infested-jerk]

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing chronic lurkers banned.

[VisMaior]

Thatd be harsh and uncalled for. And, the main problem is you cannot tell who lurks for what reason.

[Mr. Flay]

I agree that banning is uncalled for; in most cases, I think your hardcore "lurkers" end up being newbies who never come back to the site, so it'd be a pointless bit of procedure. And your actual scummers who lurk/flake out on a game can be redeemed/beat with sticks until they repent of their evil ways, so there's no sense kicking them to the curb.

And if they do gain a reputation as an unhelpful lurker, then the towns they're involved in should help take care of it themselves by lynching them.

[Infested-jerk]

But it just gives a mafia a free night kill as the lurker gets lynched.

[rajrhcpfreak]

And your actual scummers who lurk/flake out on a game can be redeemed/beat with sticks until they repent of their evil ways, so there's no sense kicking them to the curb.

And if they do gain a reputation as an unhelpful lurker, then the towns they're involved in should help take care of it themselves by lynching them.

darq, inhim, roland. all flakers and/or lurkers

[mathcam]

Also if you have nothing to say YOU DON'T ALWAYS HAVE TO FRIGGIN SAY SOMETHING. I often lurk, I usually am reading the game and thinking about it anyway, I just don't have much to say about the current discussion. This again, is legitimate.

I'll concede that lurking can be a legitimate strategy, and that one should not feel obligated to post every time one reads the thread, but I disagree that it's okay to take the passive stance on playing mafia that you seem to be defending in this quote. This is like not serving the ball in tennis when it's your serve, but insisting that you're thinking about how to serve it, and then claiming that this constitutes playing the game of teenis. People's posts, much like the initial serve of a tennis ball, are the force which propels a game forward. To rely on everyone else to do the work of pushing the game forward while you sit back and observe without posting is an extremely selfish attitude...the more people that take that point of view, the more the game stagnates. I'm sure we could find several examples of this on the site. The game of mafia is not just a thought exercise -- "Read these posts and see if you can figure out who is scum" -- it's an interactive

game

which requires all of its participants to contribute. If you're just sitting back and watching, you're not playing the game, and you're doing a disservice to the mod and the rest of the players.

Cam

[Seol]

At Misetings, one of the mods has just implemented a two-day Post or Perish shot-clock. Post something every 48 hours, or be modkilled.

Not saying I approve of this, but it's an idea...

[Blackberry]

MY SOLUTION:

EAT THEM! YUMMY!

[rajrhcpfreak]

well my game has a shot clock and because of that the players take action aginst any kind of chronic lurking. with 2 weeks before a lynch every time you read you should help the town.

[Glork]

I definitely reserve the right to blacklist players from games I mod for chronic lurking (or for any reason, really... but chronic lurkerdom is the relevant reason here ), and I'm also one of the more pro-active modprod/replacement requesters I know of. I don't like lurking, and I don't like noncontribution. *Shrug*

[Infested-jerk]

I'll definitely consider a 48 post-or-perish (god MeMe has a good user title!) rule.

[Glork]

I don't like a 48 hour rule.

First, I think that 48 would be too tight even if we did institute such a rule. People who go away for the weekend, have lives, have things come up, etc. etc., should not be getting modkilled if they forget (or don't have the time or ability) to post in-thread saying they'll be gone. A 48 hour post-or-perish rule may sound like it makes sense when dealing with chronic lurkers, but it'll likely have a lot of adverse (albeit unintended) consequences impacting the games here.

Second, as Coron said, sometimes people just don't have anything to say. Forcing people to post every so often is, IMHO, just as ridiculous as using "You posted in Game X when you were on today, but failed to post here! You must be lurking scum!"

Third, moderators and players in individual games are perfectly capable of dealing with lurkers on a game-by-game basis. As several people have said, proddings, replacement, lurkerwagons as a pressure tool (as well as policy lynchings against lurkers), and blacklisting are entirely viable ways of dealing with lurkers. If you're a player in a game, and you feel that a player hasn't been contributing enough, call them on it and/or ask the game's Moderator(s) to invtevene. It's really not that hard a concept, and it doesn't take much effort. Letting people lurk in your games is almost just as bad as being the lurker yourself. There's no need to get lazy about it and enforce a blanket "post or perish" rule.

[Coron]

Also if you have nothing to say YOU DON'T ALWAYS HAVE TO FRIGGIN SAY SOMETHING. I often lurk, I usually am reading the game and thinking about it anyway, I just don't have much to say about the current discussion. This again, is legitimate.

I'll concede that lurking can be a legitimate strategy, and that one should not feel obligated to post every time one reads the thread, but I disagree that it's okay to take the passive stance on playing mafia that you seem to be defending in this quote. This is like not serving the ball in tennis when it's your serve, but insisting that you're thinking about how to serve it, and then claiming that this constitutes playing the game of teenis. People's posts, much like the initial serve of a tennis ball, are the force which propels a game forward. To rely on everyone else to do the work of pushing the game forward while you sit back and observe without posting is an extremely selfish attitude...the more people that take that point of view, the more the game stagnates. I'm sure we could find several examples of this on the site. The game of mafia is not just a thought exercise -- "Read these posts and see if you can figure out who is scum" -- it's an interactive

game

which requires all of its participants to contribute. If you're just sitting back and watching, you're not playing the game, and you're doing a disservice to the mod and the rest of the players.

Cam

At least me personally, if I see a game start to die I will try to start posting more. When a game is already plenty active is usually when I start to lurk because discussion quickly can get away, in large games, from people I have formed an opinion about and so I have to try to observe what exactly these people did to deserve attention and whether it is worthy of voting, and whether it's just a one time thing or is a recurring scumminess etc.

48 hour or modkill is just dumb for a universal thing imho. In a few games where you know going in... no problem there.
1) you have a chance of unbalancing your game, making it shorter than you liked and even if you had a proportionate # of mafia killed usually the farther in # of days the more informed you town is so the better they can lynch.
2) SOMETIMES PEOPLE ARE BUSY/SICK
3) lurking is a legitimate strategy.

[Infested-jerk]

If people are busy or sick, they can say so in a post, saying how long they will be gone. Lurking may be legimate strategy, but one post every two days isn't hard to keep up. It could be as simple as a "I'm still watching the game but I'm happy with my vote".

Most mods ask you to notify them of any abscences, and I think if you don't remember to, you open yourself up for a mod kill.