Lying about external circumstances

[Mr Stoofer]

lying about personal circumstances makes you a jerk

QFT

I'd like to discuss this further with you, Stoof, but my grandma just died.

MeMe is on her way. She'll want to see the body.

[Seol]

Not true - Gramps was a polygamist.

[Seol]

lying about personal circumstances makes you a jerk

QFT

I'd like to discuss this further with you, Stoof, but my grandma just died.

MeMe is on her way. She'll want to see the body.

Too late! Cremated!

[Mr Stoofer]

Crack open the DNA tests!

[LyingBrian]

i actually had 4 grandmas...

both sets of my "real" grandparents got divorced & remarried before i was born, and all 4 sent me money/sent me Christmas presents/pinched my cheeks/etc. most of the time i have to think about it to figure out which ones are actually my parents' parents

[Yosarian2]

If someone says, "hey, i gotta stop posting my computer exploded, ill

vote: Alexander

and hope we win. gl town," shouldn't the town be able to request a replacement? Then the mod would have to either confirm that the person is a liar, or the person would have to bow out of the game and hopethat the replacement could argue his way out of it?

Well, then, you would have to come back before that happens and say "Ok, cool, got a new computer guys. So, what did I miss?"

I don't think there's anything wrong with using any kind of lie as a tactic inside the game thread. Heck, if you think you can get player X to like and trust you more (and thus be less likely to vote for you) by saying you're a major Cowboys fan, then go for it. (just keep in mind that players A, B, C, and D will probably want to lynch you just for liking the Cowboys. )

The one thing I find unacceptable, and am rather horrified whenever anyone even suggestes that it has happened, is the idea of getting yourself replaced as a tactic to not get yourself lynched, because that just makes more work for the mod and is downright unsportsmanlike. However, so long as all lies are actually confined to the game thread itself, there's nothing wrong with it.

[Norinel]

Ethically, sure. It's a game, etc, etc. The final day in Mini 111 was a good example of something harder to verify. (That I'd made comments on one of the lying scum's setups that led him to certain conclusions about this one)

Practicality is where I think the problem lies. If you're in multiple games, lies to justify lurking are next to impossible to keep in the thread. And I don't know how mods will interpret the "Don't post in the game outside the thread rule", but if the intent is to keep gaming inside the game thread, modifying your posting habits out of the thread for an advantage in one game is probably a problem. There's an old thread in MD about Fishbulb, but I can't find it offhand.

[halo freak]

Just changed the rules in my games to ban this. Sorry but i feel angry at people who do this. It gets me as a mod and other mods stressed out because we have to run around looking for replacement just because someone deicided it would be advantagous to sod off mid game. I don't like it at all.

[Phoebus]

You misunderstand?
You seem a little bent about the people disappearing (and I sympathise).
I think this discussion is still more about people who lurk and pretend to be away. They may not be and as most have said, if they're active elsewhere, these people are more easily caught. In this case, you don't have to stress, eh?
Recently I've just been following another one of MeMe's diktats - don't prod/replace unless the players in-game ask for it. This works most times.

[Einsteinmonkey]

What if your grandparents got divorced and remarried...multiple times?

[Phoebus]

You've got some very convenient excuses then.

[Thesp]

Don't people whine when posting habits in other games are checked? (Not that they oughtn't be checked...)

[Puzzle]

My problem with lies to justify being away and dodging lynches is just that it basically kills games, which end up with multiple replacements, compromising analytic work and making the whole game boring.

I don't suscribe to games to get bored, personally, so such lies do bother me.

[Fiasco]

Wow! I had assumed lying about external circumstances was generally agreed to be cheating.

Two points I don't think I've seen mentioned here:

1. If lying about external circumstances is okay, that gives people more incentive to lurk. Lurking makes the game less fun.

2. If lying about external circumstances is okay, that hurts people with legitimate reasons not to post, because they will be assumed to be lying, too.

[Yosarian2]

Wow! I had assumed lying about external circumstances was generally agreed to be cheating.

Two points I don't think I've seen mentioned here:

1. If lying about external circumstances is okay, that gives people more incentive to lurk. Lurking makes the game less fun.

2. If lying about external circumstances is okay, that hurts people with legitimate reasons not to post, because they will be assumed to be lying, too.

(shrug) If you don't want people to lurk, then do what I do, and just kill anyone who lurks for too long.

If someone says "Sorry, I didn't post for the last week because X happened to me", that's fine. I don't know if they're telling the truth or not, and I really don't care. If they start posting content after that, then they get a reprieve. If they go back to lurking afterwards, then they get lynched. If they REALLY won't be able to play anymore at all, they should message the mod and ask to be replaced; otherwise, lynch'em all.

[Fiasco]

(shrug) If you don't want people to lurk, then do what I do, and just kill anyone who lurks for too long.

But for that to work, you have to kill them no matter what excuse they come up with; otherwise, the game becomes (partly) a contest of who can come up with the most plausible-sounding excuse for not posting. And if you

do

kill them no matter what excuse they come up with, then you have to kill all the people with legitimate excuses too.

In practice, different people will have different lurking tolerance; if lying is allowed, this will reward those who invent excuses that will make enough people tolerate the lurking.

[Yosarian2]

(shrug) If you don't want people to lurk, then do what I do, and just kill anyone who lurks for too long.

But for that to work, you have to kill them no matter what excuse they come up with; otherwise, the game becomes (partly) a contest of who can come up with the most plausible-sounding excuse for not posting. And if you

do

kill them no matter what excuse they come up with, then you have to kill all the people with legitimate excuses too.

In practice, different people will have different lurking tolerance; if lying is allowed, this will reward those who invent excuses that will make enough people tolerate the lurking.

Well, yes, better liars who can come up with better, more plausible sounding lies do tend to do better at mafia.

[Fiasco]

I suppose you can see it that way, but playing it like that mixes up real life and the game in a way that I don't think is fun. And my points still stand, I think: if one can sometimes get away with more lurking by inventing good lies about one's personal life, then more people will lurk, and all communication with other players will be distrusted even when it's not directly about the game itself.

[Seol]

There seems to be some sort of fallacy here that lurking is wise for scum. If personal circumstances force people out of the game for long enough to undermine the game, they should be replaced, whether they're lying or not. If they later turn out to be lying, then they deserve to be put on the Quitters list in the Queue forum. If they're just doing it for a week or something, then they ought to have to make up for that later.

What's the problem here - the lying, or the non-participation?

[Cadmium]

What's the problem here - the lying, or the non-participation?

Exactly!

[Fiasco]

The problem is that lying makes extra non-participation possible. In practice there is no perfectly enforced limit on lurking. "Undermining the game" is not something binary with clearly defined limits, and if you have a good fake excuse, you will get away with it much more often. What matters here is what anti-lurking policy people really use, rather than what anti-lurking policy they should be using ideally.

[Puzzle]

What's the problem here - the lying, or the non-participation?

Exactly!

What's the problem here - the shooting, or the killing?

[Cadmium]

It's the hitting or the missing that makes the difference .

[Yosarian2]

The problem is that lying makes extra non-participation possible. In practice there is no perfectly enforced limit on lurking. "Undermining the game" is not something binary with clearly defined limits, and if you have a good fake excuse, you will get away with it much more often. What matters here is what anti-lurking policy people really use, rather than what anti-lurking policy they should be using ideally.

(shrug) I don't think people really create a plan to say "Ok, I'm going to lurk for exactally 8 days, and then post excuse X...". I would guess that it's usually more like this. "Oh, crap. I forgot about this game/ got confused and didn't say anything for a while/ ect, and now I'm about to be lynched for lurking. What can I possibly say to convince people to not lynch me now?" (shrug) At which point, I would expect people, especally scum, to say whatever they think will get them not lynched so long as it does not hurt their side.

Anyway, i don't think people really do treat people that differenlty based on their "excuse" for lurking. Person A says "Sorry, my house burned down, I got food poisoning, my goldfish beat up my grandmother, and my neighbor's wolverines chewed through my phone lines, so I haven't been able to get online for the pst week week. I'll post more in the future." Person B says "Sorry, I've been lurking because I haven't been able to think of anything to say. I'll post more in the future." In either case, the person should be (and generally is) given a second chance, and then they should be either replaced or lurker-lynched or whatever if they don't really post more in the future. I don't really think there's a difference, except possibly a psychological difference in how other players respond to it, and that's really what the game is about.

[Mr. Flay]

Ehhh. I think people

do

give people whose wolverine/grandmother has just died more credit than the "I forgot the game/don't have anything to say" crowd, and rightfully so. Even if it's a lie, it's participation that can be verified/disabused/picked apart/followed up on.

Participation is King, even when it's bad/misleading.