Mafia Game Posting Frequency Discussion

[zoraster]

Yeah. I've considered that, Cabd. It would just make me sad from a historical perspective.

[Cabd]

Yeah. I've considered that, Cabd. It would just make me sad from a historical perspective.

It is sad. But sometimes the loss is worth it. I think this is one of those times. It at the very least stops new users getting infected with the mentality.

[TwoFace]

And someone's animated avatar looping too fast in my field of vision drawing my eyes away from the text. I turned off avatars entirely and now I can't keep track of who is talking at all and if there are seven posts it's hard to tell if they're part of a back and forth when I read in iso. The short posts don't have enough context within them so I get lost

How does an avatar distract you so much that you can't read the words of a post?

It's moving, out of the corner of my eye, and draws my eye to the movement, and then i can't read the words because I'm looking at the movement. It's distracting and I can't multitask visually that way. I know it doesn't bother some people, but it does bother me, so I'm getting used to avatars off.

I can actually understand that.

[Firebringer]

A per game (or even per gameday) limit is a really bad idea, because what happens if a person breaks it anyway? Are you just going to say "Welp, you talked too much, now you can't post for the rest of the game?" There's no way it's not gonna be a pain.

A built-in per hour or per realtime day throttle, though...that's my favorite solution, I think.

Built in as in they are forced to stop by system?

[Firebringer]

Yeah. I've considered that, Cabd. It would just make me sad from a historical perspective.

It is sad. But sometimes the loss is worth it. I think this is one of those times. It at the very least stops new users getting infected with the mentality.

I don't think many people post a shit ton just so their game gets in a record book. I think it's more of an after fact like "holy shit this must be longest game ever"

[Plotinus]

How about a total post limit per player per game? I mostly play minis, and usually most people are under 200 posts total, but there's one or two who go double that or more. If everyone was given 200 posts total to work with, maybe the high posters would take a little time and consider whether what they're about to post will really add to the game.

Mods certainly could implement a rule like this. I just know as a mod I'd find it exhausting to try to monitor. Although theoretically I could make a new game thread for each new Day and then just use the activity counter.

If I had to do it manually, I'd probably copy paste from the activity counter page into a text file each day, it would be annoying and an automated tool would be better.

Actually an easier way to do it would be: You get 100 posts for day 1, after that you're not allowed to post in the thread. Then on day 2 everyone is allowed up to 200 posts (counting their previous days posts, so 100 new posts if they hit the limit, more if they didn't). Warn for the first infraction, replace after that. So you just have to sort the activity counter by number of posts and make sure no one's over the current global limit. I guess that means replacements get more leeway because if they replaced in on day 3 they could post 300 times that day phase if the mod didn't want to do more paperwork.

This would produce a 4*(13+11+9+7+5+3) = 192 page mini so 100 is probably too much actually, but day 1 would be 52 pages max, day 2 would be another 44 pages, etc.

I think actually 50 posts per day would be better, leads to a 91 page mini. Or something like day 1 you get 60 posts, day 2 you get 50 posts day 3 you get 40 posts down to 10 posts each in 3 day lylo, leads to an 81.2 page game:

Day 1: 31.2 pages
Day 2: 22 pages
Day 3: 14.4 pages
Day 4: 8.4 pages
Day 5: 4 pages
Day 6: 1.2 pages

Players would either have to budget their posts so they could vote before the deadline or if there were less than 24 hours left they could borrow from the next day's posts but only for the purpose of voting.

[Ether]

A per game (or even per gameday) limit is a really bad idea, because what happens if a person breaks it anyway? Are you just going to say "Welp, you talked too much, now you can't post for the rest of the game?" There's no way it's not gonna be a pain.

A built-in per hour or per realtime day throttle, though...that's my favorite solution, I think.

Built in as in they are forced to stop by system?

Yeah. Tracking this for every single day/hour would be a giant pain and enforcing it as a mod would suck, it'd have to be a site-side thing.

[Ether]

Plotinus's post-limit-with-a-battery makes sense from a tracking perspective, but I think it still has the same problem that all of the per-day/per-game restrictions do. If someone does pace themselves wrong and hits the wall and can't post for a week or more, what then?

[Persivul]

How about a total post limit per player per game? I mostly play minis, and usually most people are under 200 posts total, but there's one or two who go double that or more. If everyone was given 200 posts total to work with, maybe the high posters would take a little time and consider whether what they're about to post will really add to the game.

Mods certainly could implement a rule like this. I just know as a mod I'd find it exhausting to try to monitor. Although theoretically I could make a new game thread for each new Day and then just use the activity counter.

I mean total for the game, so yes, you'd just use the activity counter.

[Cabd]

Clearly what we need here is an automated version of Vi's battery of yore. (Which probably cannot be automated whatsoever because it relies on the moderator making judgement calls~)

[Persivul]

A per game (or even per gameday) limit is a really bad idea, because what happens if a person breaks it anyway? Are you just going to say "Welp, you talked too much, now you can't post for the rest of the game?"

Yes. I'd let them vote, but put a per-phase limit on that.

[Plotinus]

Plotinus's post-limit-with-a-battery makes sense from a tracking perspective, but I think it still has the same problem that all of the per-day/per-game restrictions do. If someone does pace themselves wrong and hits the wall and can't post for a week or more, what then?

yeah that would suck, I don'T even know, have to pm the moderator to say you're still there? reminder in every vote count?

and is why i still think an automated per real life day level throttling would be best (incidentally, 4-5 posts per real life day would work out to be similar to the post-limit-battery for day 1 at least, and I think it would be okay if someone wanted to spend all 5 posts in the span of 10 minutes and then left the thread for 24 hours. It would probably be annoying to have to devote 2 minutes in 5 separate hours to post those five posts.)

If the mod was able to set what the thread's throttle level would be (maybe a box for typing a number and another box where you chose between hour and day?), then the mod could change the throttle throughout the game: maybe 4 posts per day normally but 10 posts per day near the deadline.


If you're doing it manually though you really need to pick numbers that will be nice rounded numbers. You don't want to have memorise your 17 times tables to track whether someone is over the daily limit of posts or whatnot

[Titus]

I think part of the issue is that certain players get obstinate and try to force their way through without reasons or with already disproven ones. Part of the issue is players posting to see an opinion on that page. Part are the semantic gotcha attempts. The big issue is that we've ceased communicating because we have stopped listening due to townies not fearing a policy lynch.

I have a game experimenting with mechanics in the mimi theme queue (I have 2 pre-ins) coming up to control lurkage and spam. I started finished designing it before this thread however. #shamelessplug

[Cabd]

Clearly what we need here is an automated version of Vi's battery of yore. (Which probably cannot be automated whatsoever because it relies on the moderator making judgement calls~)

But seriously, if you haven't seen it before go look at a Vi game with the rainbow battery. It's a solution to the issue.

Example game: viewtopic.php?f=54&t=34898

[Plotinus]

Hawt New Game Mechanic rules:

1.

Battery-Powered Deadlines.

Deadlines in this game are measured via a meter that starts at 100% and counts down each real-time day by a varying amount. The amount is based on true activity. If the meter reaches 0%, the Day immediately ends.

I saw that in another vi game I read at one time but I didn't really understand how it worked from just reading the mod posts; I'd probably have to wade through the players posts to get a feel for it I think.

Did it go down by a lot if there were too many pages? Or if people were lurking too much? Or both? It went down when there was shitposting? or if people were going in meaningless circles?

[Cabd]

It goes down when the mod actively feels like there's not enough GAME-RELEVANT activity. So spamposting would make deadline shorten, basically.

[chamber]

I think it went down if Vi subjectively determined that the town wasn't actually making progress towards anything.

[Lil Uzi Vert]

Too subjective.

[Cabd]

Too subjective.

Sometimes that's a feature; not a bug. Shitposting is subjective.

[vonflare]

I think it went down if Vi subjectively determined that the town wasn't actually making progress towards anything.

if that's the case than its an objectively bad system

[Papa Zito]

A per game (or even per gameday) limit is a really bad idea, because what happens if a person breaks it anyway? Are you just going to say "Welp, you talked too much, now you can't post for the rest of the game?" There's no way it's not gonna be a pain.

A built-in per hour or per realtime day throttle, though...that's my favorite solution, I think.

Built in as in they are forced to stop by system?

We can't ask game mods to keep track of this.

[Plotinus]

So, all of the above. Neat. I think it's a cool idea.

I looked at all the pages and couldn't always figure out whether the next vote count would go down by a little or a lot but I was skimming very heavily and paying more attention to timestamps than anything, but these expalantions help. It's a good system.

It can be hard judging game relevant activity but I already do it for prods that I don't count non game advancing posts for activity requirements; posts don't reset the prod timer unless they contain votes, unvotes, asking players questions about the game/their reads/etc, talking about their own reads, game mechanics, etc.

UNVOTE:

I am sorry I haven't posted for a while in this game but I am very busy because today was laundry day and also the day that I air out my sneakers and then I ran into my neighbour and we had a chat about her garden and how a very shaggy dog had got into the garden and was digging up her petunias but the dog was so shaggy that she took me a picture of it and wanted my opinion on whether such a shaggy dog should be entered into a shaggy dog competition and I said I didn't know but it sure was a shaggy dog and I was meaning to post in this mafia game but the dog was so shaggy that I started looking up shaggy dog contests and she's decided to show the shaggy dog and it's too hard to post in the mafia game when all I can think about is how shaggy that dog is so anyway I rang up mum and told her about the shaggy dog and then I took a shower and I was drafting a post in my head in the shower for this game but I the shower was so refreshing that it refreshed my brain and you know what happens when you refresh: yeah you lose the post so I was just setting down to start typing a reads lists and then I got a call from my neighbour she said the judge at the competition said the dog isn't that shaggy.

So that's why I haven't posted but I promise that in a couple days I'll post. I would post some reads now but I've run out of time, I need to go see if there are any other shaggy dog competitions in the neighbourhood.

[RadiantCowbells]

A per game (or even per gameday) limit is a really bad idea, because what happens if a person breaks it anyway? Are you just going to say "Welp, you talked too much, now you can't post for the rest of the game?" There's no way it's not gonna be a pain.

A built-in per hour or per realtime day throttle, though...that's my favorite solution, I think.

Built in as in they are forced to stop by system?

We can't ask game mods to keep track of this.

We can if we keep it on an individual game basis.

[Ether]

Ehhhh. Keeping track of 13 or more people's daily activity counts at all times would be a giant pain in the ass, and it gets even worse if you want it to be on a rolling basis, and it raises questions about enforcement that would be a lot easier to sidestep if the person just physically couldn't post anymore for a while. This is definitely not something I'd want to ask of an individual game mod.

[Ircher]

Too subjective.

Stepping in to stop abusive behavior can be considered subjective -- yet it is a thing that has to happen.

The solution is to have the moderator clearly define what they consider not enough (ie: prod dodging) and too much. The mod agrees to abide by such definition (in their ruleset). If the players feel an action made by a mod was arbritrary or malicious in nature, they can appeal to the mod (first step) and the list mod.