activity level is not a reliable scumtell

[Psyche]

but on average it evens out? so if town are more active around claims, they are exactly proportionately inactive, say, in the middle of a day? i just doubt it to much to go through the trouble of finding out

[Lycanfire]

Timing and tone are two tells people frequently get wrong which is why I seldom use them. I've pondered it and tested my ability to read based on it with completed games but I haven't been satisfied with my results.


I think people are too whimsical for it to be a tell in every game. There may be situations in specific games where a player's absence or effort is indicative.

[chamber]

but on average it evens out? so if town are more active around claims, they are exactly proportionately inactive, say, in the middle of a day? i just doubt it to much to go through the trouble of finding out

Those time frames are way smaller, they could just dwarfed by the different sample size.

[Firebringer]

I think psyches problem with his statistical analysis is that he is looking at game as a whole, where there's more Town than scum.
Like, yes there are going to be a lot of unengaged town. Which throws off the curve.
town having more players equals more variation, where as scum have less.


If you account for only the top posters for town.
Take out the people throwing off the curve. (In statistical analysis we call this cherry picking but w/e)
And then compare it to scum.

Then scum are lurk shits.

But I think this is pretty obvious too.
Scums objective is to just not get lynched.
You need to perform well enough so that Town doesn't put you in possible lynch pile, so you need to perform at least as good as average town player.

When average town player is lurking scum have more freedom.

Scum literally just don't have to be the most townread player in game. They just need to be as good as average and get Town to lynch all the below average lurk shits.

[Creature]

Hopefully no one is thinking about using this to shut down any wagon on someone for lurking.

[Firebringer]

So yeah, activity is actually a reliable tell, but not in the "scum are lurking" because while that's true so is town so like you can't really find them easier that way.

Activity tells you who is more likely Town.
Scum are not going to be in the top 10% of posters in game (a few select players will be but it's a risky position to be in)
I'd say you can rule out the top 10% of posters as being scum in 90% of games and you'd show very high accuracy.

I am just making up some numbers out of my ass though.

[kuribo]

So you're discrediting people who have done the research with numbers you pulled out of your ass?

Top 10% is like... One player in a 10 man or two players in a 20. So you're still saying the top poster won't be scum.

Then you clarify by pointing out that there are outliers


But uhhhhh the outliers are exactly why it's not a reliable tell.

[Firebringer]

So you're discrediting people who have done the research with numbers you pulled out of your ass?

Top 10% is like... One player in a 10 man or two players in a 20. So you're still saying the top poster won't be scum.

Then you clarify by pointing out that there are outliers


But uhhhhh the outliers are exactly why it's not a reliable tell.

No, I was just giving my opinion.
As shitty as that's worth.

Maybe I am wrong, idk. I think it's hard to quantify this stuff.

Like if you want me to get game specific I'd say in like 13 player game, the top three posters are almost always Town. Like I am sure if psyche analyzed that he would find similar results.

It's just your sample of town is bigger than your sample of scum so it's going to be distorted.
Scum try to mimick average town.
Average town is shit.

Therefore scum are shit.

[kuribo]

You really overestimate how much scum try to mimic the activity levels of town
Scum try to mimic their own town play

Nothing more, nothing less

[Firebringer]

And yeah it's still a reliable tell if it has outliers...
I mean it's not a universal tell where it is always right.

If 90+% of the time the tell is right, I'd say that is a good tell.
And I'd say it's more than 90% of the time tbh.

The only tells that have even close to 100% success rate are individual meta tells.
And even those aren't static. They will change over time.

[Psyche]

why are we throwing out town outliers but not scum outliers

[Firebringer]

why are we throwing out town outliers but not scum outliers

If you throw out scum outliers than the data would show 100% it being reliable, would it not?

[Firebringer]

I mean if your throwing out data left and right ur just going to reach whatever conclusion you want, so probably shouldn't?
I just think this would be easier to analyze if you had same proportion of scum and Town to look at it in games.

[TheRealGin-N-Tonic]

It's not a reliable tell.

As town I get apathetic and i do sporadic posting. Sometimes going a few days going bloop, or just a post here and there.

As scum, well same thing.

[Lycanfire]

Just as there are lurkshits there are also spamshits, which they do regardless of alignment. Most posts=town is simply wrong, unless that person is literally a god spewing good posts non stop. Most top-posters vomit unreadable posts that do nothing for the game state.

I was called a lurksack for

Darkest Dungeon

but pound for pound my posts were worth 3-5 times my count. People expressed an opinion I was obvscum after the game though I was never pushed. In a game on an alt of mine I cased every single player over 3(?) posts which was a novella in its own right. I was one of the least-contributors to that thread, but obvtowned hard off my effort and hanging an alt of someone in this thread day 1.

People will gravitate to extremes and it doesn't necessarily make it indicative. If there's content, you can read it, and that's what you should be basing votes on.

(This brings up another issue of players randomly null-reading others with a respectable number of posts.)

[Ranmaru]

being town is the worst

I love being town so much that when I'm not town I use that as town practice so that I can forget I'm scum and think I'm town... therefore I become town... I am the town... I have become one with the town... even when I am town...

[Kmd4390]

I'd be shocked if any stats anywhere backed up what firebringer is saying

You're assuming:
-everyone is scared of being scum
-nobody has a life outside of mafiascum
-everybody plays scum the same way

Like can you really tell me you haven't played games where the most active player gets shrugged off as obvtown by everyone and then turns out to be scum? I've seen it a ton of times. You need to look at the content of the posts. Not just the frequency or length

[TheRealGin-N-Tonic]

Okay but can we talk about how I get easily swayed by wall posts? >_>

I am such a sucker for elegance in a post

[Kmd4390]

Look more for what the person is trying to get you to do and why than how well they presented their arguement.

[callforjudgement]

In general, activity is much more correlated with the player than with the alignment. There used to be a few players who had noticeably different activity levels as scum and as town, but a) that's the sort of thing that tends to get fixed when someone points it out, and b) it never worked for the site in general, just those players in particular. (It

is

true that scum normally benefit from lurking if they can get away with it. However, players don't normally get away with lurking; it's normally called out, and when it isn't, it's because everyone else is lurking too (and thus it's impossible to tell who's doing it intentionally). As such, lurking isn't something that scum typically adopt as a tactic.)

That said, you can often tell a lot about players in general by looking at what sort of thing they post after a period of inactivity. In particular, if it's a daytalk game, it's often fairly obvious that an inactive player was prompted to post by a scumbuddy. I've been in games where town won by noticing this. In other words, you don't really want to look at the volume, so much as the content.

[Firebringer]

I'd be shocked if any stats anywhere backed up what firebringer is saying

You're assuming:
-everyone is scared of being scum
-nobody has a life outside of mafiascum
-everybody plays scum the same way

Like can you really tell me you haven't played games where the most active player gets shrugged off as obvtown by everyone and then turns out to be scum? I've seen it a ton of times. You need to look at the content of the posts. Not just the frequency or length

Ummmm most of this isn't what I am saying.....


And most people do play scum in same way, there isn't much variety for it on MS.

[rb]

Shit tells and shitty site meta and shit PoE "confirms and clears" are why being town on this site is as much fun as trying to find a parking spot at the beach on Memorial Day.

ye

[kuribo]

I'd be shocked if any stats anywhere backed up what firebringer is saying

You're assuming:
-everyone is scared of being scum
-nobody has a life outside of mafiascum
-everybody plays scum the same way

Like can you really tell me you haven't played games where the most active player gets shrugged off as obvtown by everyone and then turns out to be scum? I've seen it a ton of times. You need to look at the content of the posts. Not just the frequency or length

Ummmm most of this isn't what I am saying.....


And most people do play scum in same way, there isn't much variety for it on MS.

Which is why town overwhelmingly stomps scum on a reliable basis on this site


Oh


Shit no they don't



My bad

[Firebringer]

Which is why town overwhelmingly stomps scum on a reliable basis on this site


Oh


Shit no they don't



My bad

ummmmmm you alright man?

[Kmd4390]

I'd be shocked if any stats anywhere backed up what firebringer is saying

You're assuming:
-everyone is scared of being scum
-nobody has a life outside of mafiascum
-everybody plays scum the same way

Like can you really tell me you haven't played games where the most active player gets shrugged off as obvtown by everyone and then turns out to be scum? I've seen it a ton of times. You need to look at the content of the posts. Not just the frequency or length

Ummmm most of this isn't what I am saying.....


And most people do play scum in same way, there isn't much variety for it on MS.

It's the logic behind what you are saying.