The Lurkpurge Rule

[kuribo]

Okay, so what do people think of this being added to mods' rulesets. (At their discretion of course):

kuribo's Lurkpurge Rule wrote:

ONCE, during the game, the players may vote to

PURGE

a player into being lynched. Purging may only occur to player slots that have less posts than the moderator. A purge lynch will not count as the day's lynch, but once you've used it, it's gone. That's it. So make it count, idiots.

obviously the wording could use some cleaning up. Probably could refrain from calling your players idiots. But the idea remains: I feel that giving the players a chance to purge a lurkslot without wasting a lynch would go a LONG way for keeping up activity in the game. It's not a "free" lynch per se, because it can only be used on people with less posts than the moderator.

[Junpei]

I wouldn't play in any games with it unless it was a unique theme game and it was a feature mechanic - that's so easily abused and changes too much of the game.

[Junpei]

Also can you just call it "Lurkpurge Rule"? Because god damn - seems like everyone is trying to get their name on some patented idea.

[kuribo]

I'm pretty sure the title of the thread implies that it'd just be called the Lurkpurge rule

[Thestatusquo]

the idea is interesting, I think the specifics of the implementation are lacking.

I like a sliding rule to determine when someone becomes eligible, but I think mod posts might not be it. A mod makes a post per page, at least, if they're doing their job. If a player is posting once every 24 hours (which is a perfectly reasonable post rate, eff all you kids who think someone (or anyone) needs to post 20 times a day), then he will probably be posting less than once a page, and thus will be eligible to be lurker purged completely unfairly.

Secondly, I worry about the swingyness of moves like this. Like, I just dont like the idea of a game being decided for someone side simply because X player happened to not have more than Y posts.

[kuribo]

Yeah, the biggest downside I see with it is that lurkers can be scum too--- Then you toss a bunch of stuff into the mix about, "Oh, why didn't player X vote to purge player Y, and look, he flipped scum."

I also tend to worry that it would lead to alot more obvious fluff and prod-dodging--- which is something that you wouldn't prevent no matter what qualifiers you add to the rule.

In the end, that's what it turns out to be--- a free lynch with qualifiers. But goddamn, site meta of letting lurkers lurk to LYLO is so annoying.

[Thestatusquo]

Is that really the site meta? I haven't encountered it. In my last game I was unable to post because real life (I ended up replacing out) and I was almost lynched at least twice and hounded mercilously when I did post because of it.

You also didn't answer my biggest concern. That is, your definition of lurking seems to be flawed to me. It is not lurking to post once every few pages.

[kuribo]

Huh, I had a response to that typed up, and must have deleted it.

Basically I said that a sliding scale seemed far more reasonable than a hard-and-fast rule

[Thestatusquo]

Yeah, I agree with that. The problem is still that your definition of lurking is off. I guess one of my biggest objections to this is sort of like an innocent conviction sort of problem. If someone who is legitimately not lurking gets lynched because of this rule, then the rule is fatally flawed. Something like this can't be glossed over.

[kuribo]

Glork suggested in scumchat force-replacing them by popular vote, rather than lynching. I could see that as affecting the game less.

[zoraster]

yeah. the problem with it is that it doesn't scale with game size. A 30 player game will ideally have a mod post a page, but it'd be impossible for all players to have a post a page until the game got smaller.

Still, it's an interesting idea. I've often played with the idea of doing something that allowed the elimination of lurkers. The problem is that simply eliminating those without posts encourages contentless spam, and players will resist using it because it's not especially pro-town.

[zoraster]

yeah. but force replacing is going to be annoying as a mod.

[IceGuy]

Replace lurkers, not purge them.

Or rather, make sure they don't join your game in the first place.

[gorckat]

1) What about an eligibility window (no Purge Day 1 or 20+ pages required for Purge)?
2) What about making it a night vote? Results posted in the morning of who voted for who (or whom- w/e).
3) Eligibility is only open to the 2 or 3players with the fewest game posts

I like the idea.

[zoraster]

if it's a vote, people will use it to try to eliminate scum. they'll still do that with the OP proposal, but at least that's a blunt tool.

[petapan]

do this and people start posting just to avoid getting purged

granted they already do this to prod-dodge but this just encourages high volume low content posting (which i love doing but you don't need everyone doing it)

[Psyche]

And then there's variability in moderator posting rates...

[Thestatusquo]

yeah, I think theres something close to consensus that the mod post is not a good bench mark. Anyone have suggestions for a better one?

[Psyche]

Lowest postcount! The spam will be amazing!

Or, instead, make it a matter of time. An arbitrary post-per-day floor. Like 1/3 per day, if you want him to post at least once every three days. Or higher if you want something more.

[Seraphim]

I think a much better variant would be giving players a choice to "purge" the player rather than replace them once during the game. I think replacements are much more damaging to games than lurkers. It's sort of a less damaging version of the BaM ruleset. If you want the emphasis to remain on lurkers and their ilk, make the purge mechanic a player who replaced out due to inactivity.

[wierdalexv]

I dunno.

Some glaring issues:
-Town lurker in LYLO gives scum an easy victory--maybe disable it then?
-So dang easy to be abused (On page one, if you haven't posted yet...)
-Lurking can be a strategy for scum--what if they all die for lurking instead of acting scummy?

I like the concept, but it needs some tweaking.
~~
Oh, and I totally read the rest of the thread. If these were mentioned, I knew that

[RXK]

Technically the mod could post on pg one and the town/scum/masons/etc. can vote to purge a player they don't like and it'd go through since the other player hasn't actually posted yet

[Bricktoes]

The mod could just not allow that player in the game.

The only thing this will do is encourage fake VLAs.

[Mr. Flay]

Lowest postcount! The spam will be amazing!

This.

-Town lurker in LYLO gives scum an easy victory--maybe disable it then?

Also this, but I don't like people KNOWING it's LYLO.

Why are replacements inadequate to the task, again? Or regular lynches?

[Benmage]

Have to disable it after first two days or something like that.

-Mith replacements ruin games.
--Lynches give free NK's, this avoids that, while still seeing who is willing to purge whom (i.e. vote analysis) As it is all too often the case that more than 1 can fit this bill.