Newbie Mini Mafia VIII - Page 8

On April 12 2012 09:16 willz22912 wrote:
If the rest of you are going to let that comment by Dittert slide, I'm going to be unhappy. That comment was 100% useless and even if he is town I'm willing to sacrifice him to weed out the real scum.

On April 14 2012 04:07 willz22912 wrote:
It's better to have me martyr myself for town than to try and save me at this point.

On April 16 2012 02:52 willz22912 wrote:
Would you not agree that lynching someone who clammed up isn't as helpful as someone who tried to push cases on a lot of people without weight?

Here, just so my opinion is clear: ##Vote: Xatalos

On April 17 2012 23:18 willz22912 wrote:
If Acro doesn't get shot tonight, there is no other explanation other than that he is Mafia, he has been too visible for a town to be left alive this long. If Acro gets shot tonight, then Xatalos is probably Mafia for trying to buddy/defend Acro so hard (I will add more on to this as night rolls over, have to head to class soon.)

On April 17 2012 04:30 Xatalos wrote:
Why Am I Town?

I'm the first to admit I have had many faults, the greatest of which are these:

- Tunnel Vision: ignoring a lot of stuff, especially alternative explanations for events (such as yomi voting for Willz to save himself not being a Mafia-specific action)
- Confirmation Bias: focusing on proving myself right more than on finding the truth (I had a pretty hard time letting go off my ArcticFox suspicions, although my reasons for suspecting him weren't very good to begin with)
- Paranoia: mentioning every little suspicious detail from pretty much every player so far (I even mentioned specifically Acrofales for lurking the Day 1 lynch, although he was far from the only lurker in that situation and wasn't even otherwise suspicious at all)
- Stupidity: misunderstanding rules, posts and even pronouns (my greatest moment of stupidity was thinking yomi claimed doctor while he was just talking in general)

Through these faults I have caused anti-town atmosphere, which is an understandable reason to believe I would be Mafia. But I want you to take a moment and consider: is that the only explanation?

- Tunnel Vision is not really a Mafia trait, since Mafia would be happy to lynch any townie, not a specific townie
- Confirmation Bias is plausibly a Mafia trait, since Mafia know the roles of everyone and thus want to prove themselves right instead of finding the truth
- Paranoia is not really a Mafia trait, since Mafia don't have any need to be suspicious of their fellow players or to gather too much attention
- Stupidity is neither a town or Mafia trait

In conclusion, only one of the reasons for my sometimes anti-town play is a Mafia trait. Even so, it's not exclusively a Mafia trait, but rather a trait of a person emotional about something (in this case, lynching Mafia).

Now, what pro-town have I done to redeem these faults?

- Activity: I have posted a lot, more than anyone else - perhaps not as much useful content as Acrofales or KharadBanar, but definitely among the most even in that category
- Transparency: I have been like an open book, giving my opinion on everything without hesitation, never being afraid of suspicious slips or being proved wrong in the end
- Focus on Mafia Hunting: most of my posts consist of accusing a player, noticing suspicious behaviour, giving my Mafia reads, demanding explanations, demanding activity or analyzing possible Mafia&Mafia / town & Mafia / town & town interactions between two players

All of my anti-town plays are (at least somewhat) explainable from a town perspective, but are these pro-town plays explainable from a Mafia perspective?

- Activity is definitely not a Mafia trait: Mafia would prefer to fly under the radar and plan inside their own chat, not to be on the spotlight of the discussion all the time
- Transparency is the opposite of a Mafia trait: Mafia would never want to give more information and thoughts to the discussion than necessary
- Focus on Mafia Hunting is again the opposite of a Mafia trait: Mafia want to delay and distract Mafia hunting, not to focus on it in their own posting

So none of these pro-town plays are really explainable from a Mafia perspective. Of course Mafia would love to look as pro-town as possible, but not at the cost of losing the game because of it. Willingness to establish your innocence at the cost of advancing town agenda and probably having to bus your teammates along the way is not strong Mafia play - it's ineffective Mafia play.

On April 18 2012 02:13 Xatalos wrote:


This post looks somewhat suspicious. Partly because it reminds me of a post I made in GoT as Mafia, but mostly because it's a really contentless post with WIFOM or non-existent reasoning (and random notes of confidence/doubt to various players).

You say your top Mafia read is me, yet your reason for that is "posts way too much". Really? If anything, I'd say "posts too little" would be a Mafia tell. And even if "posts too much" was a good Mafia tell, you say nothing else that would make me your top Mafia read. Really hard bandwagoning and casting suspicion without evidence.

Your reason for Acrofales as the second Mafia is pure WIFOM. Your only reason for him being Mafia is that he's been defending me, although nothing else truly points at him being Mafia (or me being a highly likely Mafia for that matter, although I sadly can't say I would have played purely pro-town).

Your reason for vonKlaust as the third Mafia is basically... non-existent. He's far from the only player who has during this game been flying under the radar (I'd say you're more guilty of that than vonKlaust).

Your reasoning in this post is exceptionally weak, almost malicious. Acrofales and vonKlaust have been generally among the highest town reads for the whole game, yet you're ready to discredit and/or kill them both for very weak reasons. Your point about killing me first to confirm them is yet again weak reasoning, since when I flip town with the lynch, Mafia has already won.

On April 18 2012 04:04 Xatalos wrote:
Why To Lynch Willz



First Mafia slip: why would you want to kill a townie just for posting a stupid suggestion? You even say specifically that his town flip would help "weeding out the real scum"... How exactly? It's not like a bandwagon on Dittert for his stupid play and a town flip would reveal anything useful for us, especially if there would be just a bandwagon on him and nothing else during Day 1. It would be a dream come true for Mafia, not for town.



In hindsight, this looks like potentially suiciding and denying additional information about Mafia connections for town. It's always better to say everything you have and prove your innocence: at the very least others will have something to discuss about next when you flip town. If you suicide as town, you just deny information and give a free kill for Mafia. If you suicide as Mafia, you protect your teammates and confuse town.



So it's better to lynch an active poster than a lurker, regardless of what you think of our Mafia probabilities? Lurkers benefit Mafia, active posters benefit town.



Malicious WIFOM making Acrofales look "bad" once KharadBanar or someone else with high credibility gets killed instead. Possibly a Mafia strategy to plant suspicion on Acrofales beforehand with this really weak WIFOM.

I'm in a hurry so this'll have to do, I'll be back later!

On April 18 2012 07:47 Dittert wrote:
Since I'm home, I might as well post something, especially considering that it seems likely that I'm shot tonight. I could see a vig shooting me for being suspicious/bad/a smartass, but I could also see a Xat/Acro/3rd mafia team shooting me to reinforce their case against Willz. I've been tunneling Willz hard, and me flipping town (which I know I will) could lend some credence to my case.

I'm still suspicious of Willz, but I haven't had time to reevaluate my case in light of everyone's postings today. Just skimming it though, I am way more suspicious of this Xat/Acro tag team we have going on. If I die, my advice is to follow the doctor's orders and just lynch Xat tomorrow. If I don't die, I'll waste my time reading through all these posts so that I can make a longer case for you to ignore tomorrow.

On April 18 2012 08:03 vonKlaust wrote:
Alright. One positivt thing actually comes from this. Now we know for sure that all of Acros' reads were genuine. I'm going to bed, see you tomorrow.

On April 18 2012 12:34 yomi wrote:

So you were afraid to post because it would make you look guilty. But when you were up on the chopping block you were willing to sacrifice yourself to give us the "connection" info that your flip would give us. At one point you are willing to engage in fearless town play, and at another trying to avoid suspicion at all costs.
How can you reconcile these two positions?



@ Xatalos:
You are not helpful when under scrutiny. You get very defensive. Look at page 6 of your filter. You go into "survival mode". Even pleading to my self interest to vote switch to save you. When others were about to be lynched, or were about to die they posted as much useful information as possible to help town before their death. Please respond to this allegation.


Dittert I am waiting for his "big D3 post that we will all ignore".

On April 18 2012 16:49 KharadBanar wrote:

Sorry about no nightly post. Spring break is over for me and I'm getting up at 8:15 AM again. I value my sleep schedule, so I went to bed before the Day post (I did address this in an earlier post).

SO, without further ado because I didn't die that night, here's my thoughts on the situation:

Acrofales being dead, we have to worry about who takes the initiative in leading the discussion and I'm currently not very comfortable with a potential scum member doing so in Xatalos (I don't think Xatalos should be our lynch since he's not the most likely of Mafia members, but enough so that I don't necessarily think him taking over is a good thing for town. I will be as active as I can while I can, during the [EU] day I will likely not be as active (read: probably not at all) because I'm at the university. vonKlaust, if you're reading this: make an effort and get active again, the town needs contributors now and you are probably the most towny player around besides me. If you make a thought out case, people are going to trust you, use that trust! About Xatalos, one last thing to note is that after willz' defense, Xatalos just attacked him further without addressing his defense. On this alone, I would argue that he's an even likelier mafia member than willz, but his activeness and general behaviour suggests otherwise.

willz22912: He defended himself (again!) and while his reasoning is okay in that, I'm still very unsure because of how often willz managed to get himself in such a situation in this game: No matter how good your defense is, if you have to defend yourself too often, then in general it's because you scumslip often and I'm going to get suspicious. In willz' case, I'm very suspicious. His reads are okay though, making a good point about imallinson.

About that: imallinson, where are you? You didn't do too much scummy, but you only ever contributed to discussion in easy ways, and it's not looking like you are making any attempt to get more active either. As a non-Dittert player, I expect better from you, and I'm slightly suspicious because of that since you look like you at least know what you are talking about, when you're talking.

That concludes my morning reads; if you're one of my suspected players get out there and say why I'm wrong, if you're not get out there and scumhunt! This may be our final day, let's not waste it!

On April 18 2012 19:51 KharadBanar wrote:

This argument about willz actually makes sense. You would think a player who can give such good arguments defensively would make better cases while he's not preoccupied with defending himself, or would actually make any good cases for that matter.
As for you, your defensive arguments sometimes make little sense but then so do your cases. I'm not arguing that this is necessarily good play but at least it's consistent. Note that consistency doesn't necessarily make a player town, but inconsistency is a scum tell, and willz is guilty of it.

On April 13 2012 10:36 willz22912 wrote:
You are trying to dissuade town from being transparent and posting their thoughts for fear of being a target by Mafia. I had this opinion too, why share your information so openly so early, but I learned from Gonzaw in Aperture Mafia that it's better to give 100% effort as town no matter if you die, in order to help the rest of the town figure out who's scum. Transparency and an active town is key to winning, you seem to be against this for fear of your own mortality, this is bad for town.

On April 16 2012 02:24 willz22912 wrote:
I know for myself that I am town, but I cannot prove it, so we should use this lynch to see what the real relationship is (if one of is us [Xatalos/Willz] scum)

On April 18 2012 22:39 willz22912 wrote:
Do you really think it's easy to build cases against Mafia when you have low credibility and you are incurring claims of OMGUS every time you try to point something out? I had upwards of 6+ votes at one point, it's obviously mathematically impossible to say that only Mafia voted me, fellow town also did. I'm trying to read through the logic and see where the real Mafia are, but I am stuck with defending Dittert and myself, giving me no time to push my reads.

On April 18 2012 05:45 funcmode wrote:
-This whole post comes across as very pro-town, largely in part because it agrees with many of the things I'm currently thinking.
-(/facepalm) suggests some genuine townie disappointment.
-Comments on defense of Acro by Xatalos.
-Brings something new to the table (both winners in a previous mafia as scum which gives them an extra out with meta arguments, admits it's flimsy but still worthy of noting.

On April 19 2012 03:34 KharadBanar wrote:
This is that post.

I will take a different approach from willz here, because I had a very good defense post from willz to go from.
With Xatalos, I am going to try to make some comments based on his general posting style which have been made before but need to be reminded of, and again they are meant to be good advice if he is town, but something for the others to consider as to if you're actually scum. My official opinion: I haven't decided yet whether to go with Xatalos or willz here.

First off, some general remarks:
One of the biggest problems I have with your posts is that some of them come about as giant walls of text.
If you want people to trust you, they have to understand you first.
If you want people to understand you, you have to make it easy for them.
To make it easy for people to understand your posts, it would be advisable to post in a style people actually want to read.
People want to read something with colour.
People want to read something with weight.
People want to read something with a pattern.
People do not want a post which starts out decently only to devolve into a giant messy wall of text which their eyes can't follow and which is probably not all too well thought out in advance and has little to no interpunction and no paragraphs and just repeats itself over and over again and repeats itself over and over again and makes them want to stop reading at every corner because they are tired of making sense of your big sentence which grows ever longer and in the end has no real conclusion. You don't want to bury your important points inside a paragraph where no one will look twice because it's buried in between lines and lines of rambling which no one will ever get the gist of because you have preoccupied their concentration with making sure your sentence is actually grammatically correct and has all the right words in the right places to be actually still listening to what you are saying.
Not all of your posts are like that. But if you really want to make something count, it will have to look more readable than for instance your defense against HiroPro.
This has been alleviated somewhat in your recent postings, but I'm still writing about it here because I still think it is pretty damn important.

Now about the implications of this: As I have said before but not elaborated too much upon in my post about willz, scum actually wants us to not remember what they said in their posts.
This gives them the opportunity to say what they want first without you noticing it, then either cite it to hold it against you later or completely forget about it themselves and not have to worry about it.
It also makes the town think "Yes, yes, this player is actually contributing" when in actuality all of it had no real meaning*. What this says about Xatalos I'll leave as an exercise to the reader. (Hint: It doesn't automatically make him scum, which is why I still haven't decided yet.)

*INB4: If you're suddenly thinking "This man is a hypocrite! He said every post should carry meaning inside the game yet this has nothing to do with the game at all, it's just a posting style rant!", consider the following:
Making yourself heard is an important subject in a Mafia game. If this advice helps you write more understandably in the future, more people will actually read what you have to say, and more people will actually understand it. Therefore if you take the time to have read and understood this, other people will take less time to read and understand your posts, and they can respond better to what you have to say. Reading this is not a waste of your time.

Thank you for your attention. Everyone, get out there and post, and do so in a readable fashion!

On April 19 2012 03:57 KharadBanar wrote:
Oh sorry. I was so occupied with putting my word out there that I didn't catch your post

It's pretty good, both contentwise and stylewise, but the last argument didn't really convince me. funcmode was probably in crunch mode and didn't think much about the posts he commented about when he wrote that. To draw a possible mafia connection there seems really arbitrary to me.