THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

[BROseidon]

The problem is that walls are more anti-town than spam catchups.

Fluff and games not lynching fast enough are bigger problems.

[BROseidon]

it is pretty spammy in this case because you really could just edit your posts

How does editing a bunch of sentences together into a single post help versus having it delineated across several posts? The net content that has to be read is the same, and if anything splitting up responses to posts across multiple posts makes it easier for other people to track/respond to you.

[BROseidon]

there is a way to combat stupid posting: DON'T READ IT

i know it goes against the collective anal OCD ppl have here that OMG GUYZ WE HAVE TO READ

EVERYTHING

, but that's really not true. if you skip over stupid crap, your reads can be just as good, if not better, than someone who reads the whole thread.

This.

I don't read posts that are more than 2 medium sized paragraphs. If it's longer, I basically skim it and read it later if I have to.

Walls are terrible.

[BROseidon]

But what if every post is 1-2 sentences versus someone who's posted 75 walls that amount to the same amount of content?

You're treating "a post" as a consistent unit when it's really not. Given the same amount of content across 500 posts versus 100 posts, it's easier to read in the 500 posts.

[BROseidon]

If getting back down to 15-20 page day 1s requires going back to mostly walls, then I'll take the spamposting. At least that is readable the

first

time through.

Spam is not readable, period.

Some degree of socializing is expected in a Mafia game, but having to go through pages of "chucklefuckery" (thanks, Nachomamma8) is soul-sucking. Even in the less extreme case of people posting content through bursts of many, many short posts, it's usually difficult to follow along because they're not taking that bit of time to organize their thoughts and are simply posting whatever comes to mind. Signal:noise is a thing.

That's not to say that all players who play through short posts are bad at Mafia because there are some who are very good at it. It's just that the number of people trying to emulate this play style right now is

too damn high

.

It could just be the old fogey in me talking, though.

I suspect that the core argument here is not about "wall" posts vs. "spam" posts but that the balance of players subscribing to either style in games has been off-kilter in recent years.

Organization of thoughts is kind of innately scummy, though, since it implies editing and editing implies purpose. A person posting responses to individual posts as they read through the thread is far easier to read of they're town

[BROseidon]

Also the idea should be 1 post = 1 thought except for full cases. Multiple thoughts to a post is painful to read

[BROseidon]

And can we stop calling any post over two lines and/or with a quote box a "wall"?

I never called any post more than 2 lines a wall. However, posts in the mid-range (longer than a short paragraph, shorter than 2-3 paragraphs) aren't really a thing for some reason.

[BROseidon]

Also you don't post every thought you have in thread. A good approach for transparent thought is:

1) Read thread
2) Post responses to individual posts that really stick out
3) Post general summary of thoughts based on the whole of the game.

The general summary should be less than 300 words. If you can't articulate your thoughts in under that word count, you need to learn how to fucking write.

[BROseidon]

And shit like "I think x might be crumbing y" or any allusion thereof shouldn't be posted, obviously. Town don't necessarily want to post every observation they have.

[BROseidon]

I will straight up say that any post that isn't a case that is over 2-3 medium length paragraphs I will straight up not read.

[BROseidon]

That separation is helpful. I'm too buzzed to articulate why right now, so I'll explain later.

[BROseidon]

Hoopla with the good opinions.

[BROseidon]

Organization of thoughts is kind of innately scummy, though, since it implies editing and editing implies purpose.

Yep! Sure is!

...I have absolutely no problem with that! (See also: scummy != scum; scummy = looks like scum.)

Having a purpose behind your posting is...kinda the whole point of posting. If you don't have a purpose behind your posting, know what we call that?

Fluff.
Prod-dodging.
IIoA.
Active Lurking.
Insert choice buzzword here.

(Incidentally, ideally I work to have a balance in posts: I'm not going to cram it all into one or two walls, nor do I try to have it be dozens of posts in a row. I try to have it be a few, shorter, posts. It's the same amount of content as walling/spamming, but with the order of a wall, the transparency of the spam, the readability of the spam, and yet the lack of annoyance of the wall. Best of both worlds when I can pull it off*.)

*Regrettably, CONTRARY to my reputation, I'm closer to the spam than ideal most often. Note how I said that I don't *try* to have dozens of posts in a row.

2 things:

1) scummy definitionally means "behavior that is indicative of scum." Your definition is the "I'm too lazy to change my model" definition that too many people on this site use.

2) Your entire second point is wrong because it's missing the point. Scum, by having more knowledge of the game state, are far more likely to play with specific purpose than town are (i.e., town are probably going at it by saying "i'm going to find scum", whereas scum are going to move past the level of "I'm gonna look like I'm finding scum" to lower-level objectives)

Also, mastin, you're

really

not one to talk about concise posting given that I've made it a game to read your posts and see how I could make them shorter.

[BROseidon]

Scum, by having more knowledge of the game state, are far more likely to play with specific purpose than town are

still ridiculous

Nope!

[BROseidon]

Also you don't post every thought you have in thread. A good approach for transparent thought is:

1) Read thread
2) Post responses to individual posts that really stick out
3) Post general summary of thoughts based on the whole of the game.

The general summary should be less than 300 words. If you can't articulate your thoughts in under that word count, you need to learn how to fucking write.

Man the only thing I lack in what I do is (1).

1 is probably the hardest part tbh.

[BROseidon]

Did you just read that?

Why would you read that?

At one point I start spamming Roman orations at Katsuki, and he responds with the fucking declaration of independence or some shit.

[BROseidon]

Oh my god I'd forgotten that I posted the entirety of book 1 of the Aeneid in that thread.

[BROseidon]

That game was a brutal lesson in why reads aren't everything, though :/

Granted, explaining to people why Mina/Tammy were confirmed scum shouldn't have had to happen given that they were literally mod confirmed scum. There really should be a technical ability test that we give to players before letting them play games. The test will include:

1) Can you lynch confirmed scum after an Usurper flip?
2) Are you capable of never faking an investigative guilty?
3) Do you call someone who used the same fakeclaim as flipped scum scum or town?
4) Do you make the correct choice when one decision strictly dominates all others?
5) Do you respond correctly do a day 1 claim of a confirmable role? A highly powerful but unconformable role?
6) Do you know when to have a mason claim his buddy in an x-player setup?
7) Can you correctly identify all likely scum faction numbers for any given number of players (i.e., know that 10:3, 10:2:1, 9:3:1, and 9:2:2 are all significant possibilities in a 13p closed setup)? Do you play around this correctly?

An insanely high percentage of players would fail this, even players who are otherwise decent.

[BROseidon]

I should actually make a technical exam and see how people do. Pretty sure kuribo is the person who would score the best.

[BROseidon]

3) Do you call someone who used the same fakeclaim as flipped scum scum or town? Town

LOL YOU FAILED
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=58913

I guess the test does not account for dumb players. I thought it was a jab at dumb players.

No Occam's razor says it's a scum claim

[BROseidon]

6) Do you know when to have a mason claim his buddy in an x-player setup?

With current site meta, Day 1.

Correct answer is expected round before LyLo or MyLo

[BROseidon]

The solution to that is to stop phoneposting.

Phoneposting is bad

[BROseidon]

The solution to that is to stop phoneposting.

Phoneposting is bad

wise.

like, I can expound on this, it is legitimately bad:

1) you arent able to articulate ideas as effectively
2) you get distracted from real life priorities
3) extraneous postcount that may be irritating to other players
4) spends mobile data
5) once again, distracted from real life priorities: for a period of time I was phoneposting while walking which is a very bad thing that I stopped


bro you're cool

This is what I would have posted if I hadn't made the first post on my phone.

#provingmyownpoint