Newbie Mini Mafia XXVIII - Page 36

On September 28 2012 16:54 Alsn wrote:
Hey everyone, just woke up and was about to check when the game was supposed to start. Imagine my surprise when it's already started! Although looking closely the game started as I went to sleep, so I wouldn't have been able to participate until now either way.

So in any case, I'm Alsn, I like logic. My previous mafia games so far amount to a single one, a game where I was NKd N1 as Vanilla Townie. My filter for that game can be found here. Other than that I have only ever played SC2 Mafia in any significant amounts(a game while using the same core rules, plays extremely different due to the time constraints and limits on discussion). If you are interested, I was also active in the /obs QT discussion of NMMXXVII which can be found here.

So, with that out of the way, I read the first few posts and saw that this game continues the trend of lurker policy lynching. I agree that there needs to be pressure on scum to actually post, since without scum posts to analyse all the scumhunting in the world will almost certainly only turn up townies(due to lurkers generally being null reads).

That said, I followed Tl Mafia LVII wherein there was a lot of discussion about lynching "trolly meta" players and I would like to take that one step further. Kush, while I realize that you have a posting style which by its nature is very confrontational and inflammatory, I feel that unless you actually provide some concrete analysis without using almost purely OMGUS argumentation that it is in town's best interest to just straight up lynch you right away.

Simply put, unless your cases actually provide substance then I think you will just be a late game liability for town, mostly giving everyone a null read and potentially forcing people to make a town or scum read on you without having much of an idea what you are.

So to sum up, kush, I can definitely forgive you for your "style" of posting but I will not under any circumstance forgive you for posting shitty content, just like I will not forgive anyone else for doing so either. Understand that I'm not singling you out as a target, I'm using your history as an example for what I consider scummy play.

Now, on to actually read the thread and see if I can respond to something.

On September 28 2012 17:56 Alsn wrote:
Wow, upon reading the thread I realise that kush has been following the exact pattern I just now specified to be the way not to play if he wanted to absolve himself in my eyes. In fact, I could go back to my initial posts to him in NMMXXV saying almost the exact same thing. As such, I think I have no choice but to cast a:

FoS kushm4sta

kush, in order for me to let up, I want you to stop it with your ridiculous knee-jerk play and actually point out why you think other people are scummy as opposed to why you yourself is so obviously town. While the following idiom is quite ironic in a forum game, actions speak louder than words and you defending yourself is just that, meaningless words. Start proving to everyone that you are concerned with finding scum instead of worrying about your silly streak.

That being said, I think everyone else is jumping the gun here, kush is an extremely easy target to pick on, especially since he almost never seems to think before he posts. The scumslip that Darth and others pointed out can definitely be seen as damning. However, I am not inclined to agree with the following post from Darth:
This last part seems to overly simplify the matter to me. The only reason? I myself can see a few reasons, but I would like kush to reply himself before I comment further as I don't want to give him an easy out.

I can state for the record that unless kush shapes up considerably, I'm all in favour of lynching him. Simply because him playing like his normal self would be a liability for town later on due to his inclination to just defend himself over hunting scum. However, I definitely want to give him the benefit of the doubt and allow him to actually try and show that he has town's best interest in mind. So until then, while I definitely would like everyone to share their reads on kush so far, that is not enough for D1. We need to start exploring different possibilities because if we decide to lynch kush and he flips green, spending all of D1 talking about him will put us back at square one minus two townies.

I'll make another post within an hour or two on another topic as I think I've made myself perfectly clear on where I stand on kush, but right now I need breakfast.

On September 28 2012 22:03 Alsn wrote:
Astonishing how? I would like you to explain what's so amazingly pro-town about tunneling kush from the very beginning. I find the risks of that approach to be very high from a town perspective.

There are two scenarios:
A) He flips green, and unless he during the day completely changed his character we will have almost no way of distinguishing who among the people who pushed for his lynch were scum and who were town.

B) He flips scum, at this point I just don't find that likely enough to risk A) happening.

That fact alone is enough for me to see that post of debears as entirely reasonable, since both of you at the time were basically calling out kush for every single post he was making(for good reason, but not if that's the only thing you are doing).

On September 29 2012 00:24 Alsn wrote:
Given the evidence so far no, I don't, and frankly I don't see why that's so hard to believe. Given his history, it should be easy to see for anyone that while he has different town and scum metas(as pointed out by Hapahauli in the obs QT of NMMXVII), his comments so far this game is entirely in line with the way he usually posts during D1. Basically just writing up whatever is on his mind. That to me doesn't really increase or decrease the chances of him flipping either way(but the setup of the game says all else being equal, 75% of the players are green, 25% are scum)

Yes, you called him out for good reason because his arguments(like so many times before this game) make little to no sense. But right now the only thing I really agree actually points to him being scum is what you call his scum slip. I just do not agree with you of just how damning that statement is. The first thing that sprang to mind when I saw you quoting that was simply that townie was an odd word to use, why not use player? But a confirmed scum slip? Come on, it's not like he said something that is entirely outside the realm of possibility for a town player to say. "Townie" wouldn't be the word I'd use, but I just can't see it as that obvious a scum slip. I'll accept that you are not necessarily wrong for thinking so however.

Given that there are no other developments then sure, I'll admit that there's at least a higher chance of kush being scum than a random lurker being scum. But I would really like it if we could at least try to get better odds than that. Best case scenario for me would be actually having everyone talk, present cases and opinions and if no one else presents themselves as scummy, then and only then will I roll the dice on kush. Remember, there are 3 scum, not only one. Who knows, if he's scum as you say, he might look even scummier by lynch time.

The case being what it is with kush, I can see now that what you were doing wasn't tunneling per se. However, I think you are doing the very thing you are accusing me of doing where you say debears was trying to "shut down" the case against kush. Like I've said several times now, that's not at all how I interpreted it, only that we shouldn't limit ourselves to a single discussion topic which at the time I felt debears was trying to suggest. Something that I happen to agree with.

This statement makes little sense to me. You say you were not tunneling, which I can now appreciate as probably true, but up until recently was not clear at all to me(and probably not to anyone else either). You had made quite a lot of posts in a row with kush as the only topic, as well as trying to convince others in the thread that he absolutely, 100%, no doubt whatsoever must be scum. I didn't find it unreasonable that someone would point that fact out to you. My "premise" was simply that if I find an argument reasonable, someone else trying to poke holes in that argument might not have the same motivations as myself, thus they are suspicious.

The bolded line is ridiculous however, especially in context with the sentence before it. What makes you so sure that we would have "a lot of info to go off" in the case of everyone tunneling kush and us lynching him?

My A) vs. B) scenario that you are referring to was dependent on the hypothetical scenario of everyone tunneling kush(which I already explained seemed to be where things were going at the time). I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you misunderstood what I was trying to say instead of deliberately using a red herring to try and discredit me. With that in mind, based on your willingness to put yourself out there, I have a slight town read on you.

On September 29 2012 18:17 Alsn wrote:
First, I'd like to start things with stating so far D1 has pretty much lived up to my exact nightmare scenario that I speculated about when arguing with DP yesterday. Everyone is voting kush with only very little discussion about any other topic(mainly, the debears-boson exchange).

Looking at the vote count, the last official count says 7, and now corrosion added his vote for a total of 8. With myself that would be 9, the exact number of town in this game. From my point of view, unless kushm4sta, Djodref and Lesrah are the 3 scum, there are scum pushing this lynch.

Given that, I'm really starting to dislike this lynch. I agree however that kush has been mostly concerned with defending himself against perceived injustice rather than actually trying to hunt scum, this still does not convince me that he is scum. Lynching scum with an overwhelming majority D1 just seems like way too improbably. Sure, if we had to fight tooth and nail to get 7 votes, I might buy it, but that's not the case. It seems to me there must be scum sheeping onto this lynch.

Like I've stated before I can go along with the kush lynch, but I'd rather try and lynch my top scum read at this point and with the current developments, I see a kush lynch more as a last resort than my main scum read. Unfortunately, this argument is only available to people who have yet to vote and are town, as well as to scum since other than myself only scum are aware of my alignment. For everyone else, the "unless a, b and c are scum" argument will include me.

My argument is at least enough to convince myself, so I'll be scouring the thread for the next couple of hours to see if my "gut scum reads" so far have any merit and if so push that/those case(s) instead. If it turns out that they are going nowhere, I will vote kush. But I still feel we have enough time to at least have a discussion on the topic of "just wtf is going on here?!".

On September 29 2012 18:28 Alsn wrote:
A quick addendum, I'm aware that scum pushing the lynch does not exonerate kush since they could be bussing him. However, given the assumption that kush is scum and there are active scum among the voters, I just find it more likely that they would try and find another solution than bussing, especially since it's D1. That's my main reason for not being convinced that kush is scum.

On September 29 2012 21:15 Alsn wrote:
I've been doing some soul searching and I'm starting to agree that it's not worth it to try and push any other cases right now.

Mostly because my entire premise was that I was thinking it to be unlikely for kush to be scum. I realise that after trying to put into words why I think that is so, I have nothing other than the fact that I "feel" him to be town, which is a really stupid reason for absolving him. I thought I could back it up by saying he's been pressured to hard, there's no way he's responsible for not scum hunting. But in the end, I can't find a logical reason to forgive him if I exclude my own gut feeling from the equation.

I think now that my best option is to hold on to whatever small reads I have(because while I have some suspicions, I don't think they are rock solid) until after the lynch is over. Because at least then, we will have more information.

So for now, although my gut is screaming at me, I'll commit to voting for kush, mostly because most of what I said about BosoN has returned somewhat satisfactory answers, I really don't like the way a lot of people got away with not basically posting anything at all(I'm looking at you, Djodref, corrosion, Omniscient, RemedySC). I think that's probably what irks me the most, the thing I was most hoping would not happen, did happen.

##Vote: kushm4sta