Mafia Game Posting Frequency Discussion

[zoraster]

Introduction

Forum mafia has a meta for players that changes over time. Once upon a time, long posts with many, many quotes were the norm. Then a meta that involved shouting at people until they made a mistake became more pronounced. Around 2014, we moved into a new meta that seems to involve at least a portion of our population posting a lot. Often in a row.

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It's important to acknowledge that changes in style aren't necessarily bad things.

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So the attempt should always be to think about what are actual problems vs. what any individual person finds upsetting. That said, it's a fact of life that whether it's long quote walls, shouting at people, or posting ad naseum that if it finds a large enough toe-hold, a small minority can force everyone else to play the game their style without any consideration to whether that's (1) an effective way to play mafia and (2) whether it makes the game unfun for the vast majority of the player population.

The purpose of this thread is to start a frank discussion with everyone about the meta we find ourselves in. It'll start with 3 questions I pose generally with a section devoted to each. . After a while, I may run a survey and try to get the opinion of mafia players generally.

Questions (each getting a section before discussion)

1. Is this really different from past eras? (Data)
2. To what extent is this actually a problem?
3. If it's a problem, what are some solutions?



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1. Just as a note, the Civilization V game that had thousands of posts by individual players resulted in a perfect mafia win.
2. Since I joined the site in 2008, there have been older members who have decried new players who have changed the style of the game. In reality, much of this is probably driven by the fact older people tend to get burned out on the game after a while and mistake the fact that they used to love mafia and now they find it hard to keep up with the demands of a game. In real life, we talk about old men and women talking about the “good ol’ days.” The same happens here, but accelerated. In any event, the point is to focus on what are actually problems for the site as a whole and not just what are problems to the vocal but aging minority who may not end up playing more games anyway.

[zoraster]

Is This Different?

Multiposting

Multiposting is when a poster makes more than one post in a row. This post, for example, is part of a multipost. Multiposts are used for a variety of reasons, some more carefully considered than others. But are multiposts more common now?

Credit to Kison for Data. 2017 data is up through March of 2017, so is incomplete

An explanation of this chart. The above is the percent of flattened

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posts in a game that are multiposts. Count 2 is a double post, Count 3 a triple, and Count 4+ are posts that are 4 or more posts in a row.

So multiposts have increased dramatically. We’re seeing a 50%+ growth in double posting since 2010 and a 150% increase in 4+ posting since 2010. There are some theories on why that’s the case we can get into in the next section, but I think it’s safe to say at least from a multipost standpoint, that it’s clear we have a much higher rate of multiposts in games.

Size of Games

Even though Large Theme games tend to be smaller than they were in the past, the number of pages in any individual game has grown. If you take the largest 5 games -- those with the most pages -- all have been since 2011.

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It might be worth doing a deeper dive to see the average pages per game have increased instead of just the outliers, but I think it’s fairly safe to say that games have generally gotten “larger” even though it doesn’t appear that the player counts have risen particularly. It’s worth pointing out that these large games tend to happen pretty quickly too. SAGA Frontier Mafia, just as an example, got its 10303 posts in just over 2 months.

Conclusion

I think it's safe to say that we have a much higher frequency of posting than we used to.


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1. “Flattened” posts are basically taking all multiposts and making them into one post. So if there are 10 posts in a game, and three of them make a triple post, you’d say that there are 7 “flattened” posts and the multipost makes up 1/7th (~14%) of the flattened posts.
2. This is true of the largest Mini Games as well.

[zoraster]

To What Extent Is This a Problem?

Now we’re entering into territory that is on much shakier ground, and one that I imagine everyone has thoughts on. This section is largely about me listening to your thoughts, but let me try to guide that discussion a little bit. In analyzing this I think we need to start with two questions:

Is posting more frequently effective?
Is posting more frequently less fun for potential participants?

Effectiveness

The following are my takes, and I’m interested in hearing what others have to say about it. But my initial inclination is that this high increase in posting frequency does not help win games. Anecdotally, it seems people are more interested in posting than they are in playing the game to win. That’s as cynical as I’ll try to be, but it’s hard to imagine people are posting this much because they really believe they are helping their team win.

It also tends to allow mafia to lurk to victory. When you monopolize a game between you and a few other people, everyone else seems inactive despite trying to engage with the game. So if everyone but a few seem inactive, it’s easier to be actually inactive and escape notice.

Effectiveness is important because it informs what our solutions can be. If we’re talking about something that isn’t fun but is effective, it’s a bit harder to fight because ultimately most people want to win and our game design, moderation and rules should work to align effective tactics with fun ones.

Enjoyment of Potential Participants

There are two types of people that we’re concerned about for enjoyment: those who play the games and those who would like to play but feel unable to do so because of the rate of posting.

I have talked to a number of people who would like to play games but simply can’t devote the energy and time to dealing with the amount of posting that’s going on. Early game has always seen the bulk of replacements, but in a game that has many early posts, the chance of replacement tends to go up as players realize they can’t handle the rate of play.

But if even those who remain don’t generally see the rate of posting as “fun” then we’re definitely in territory of “this is a problem.”

I suspect some people who post as much as they do do so because they feel a sense of accomplishment at both having a lot of posts and having a game be large. This is part of the enjoyment aspect, but it’s fairly narrowly accessible by players of a game where most will not be able to post that much.

Technology

One final small note about technology. I think that short, numerous posts are somewhat the result of more people playing from their phones. To an extent, this is fine. But I think we can still talk about whether treating the game like a text conversation or something is really a good idea.

[zoraster]

Potential Solutions

I hesitated to add this section at this point because even going here seems to answer the “is it a problem” part. But I think both play off of each other. Our solutions will be guided by the extent to which this is a problem and why it’s a problem.

Solutions in my mind can be three things: (1) player directed solutions, (2) game moderator directed solutions, (3) site directed solutions. I mention some theoretical solutions below, but this is a good place and time to brainstorm if you think you have some.

Player Directed Solutions

These are solutions that rely on our player base to educate others and try to change our meta that way. This can be done hand-in-hand with the listmod/admin team as we can help organize things and post educational posts, but ultimately these solutions don’t rely on any true top-down imposed things.

It can be as simple as each individual player realizing that they need to chill out and not post so much, consolidate their posts, etc. to linking over-posters to threads like this one and try to discuss with them why they’re hurting mafiascum as a whole.

Or it can involve simply refusing to play with over-posters until they agree to moderate their ways.

Game Moderator Solutions

These are solutions that individual game mods can implement. They range from simply giving people polite admonishments to let other players post to instituting rules about multiposts, posting frequency, and so forth.

Game mods are understandably wary of inserting themselves into games. Generally, we want to allow games to develop naturally and let players drive the boat. Furthermore, any action we take can be subtly analyzed for whether we’d do the same thing if person X was Town/Mafia. But we also expect our moderators to step in and stop abuse before it goes too far.

Site Solutions (i.e. Listmod directed)

These would be universal rules and policies that the listmods would enforce. It could also be things like increasing the amount of time required between posts (the spam thing). Keep in mind that these are the LEAST likely solutions we’re likely to see as they’re blunt instruments and/or require site development time that we don’t necessarily have.

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Anyway, I don’t want to write too much more as this is a time for the mod team and I to listen. Do you think this has become a problem? Do you think it needs a solution? If so, why? If not, why do you think other people see it as a problem?

[zoraster]

Saved for later use.

I'm globaling this for a a day or two and then moving it to MD.

[Sesq]

interesting

i try not to doublepost, i think

[Frozen Angel]

I have a soultion

what if we merge the multiposts to one post with a suited format code wise?

[Sesq]

yes

[Frozen Angel]

I mean I post on MS from my phone and multi posts like this is just the only way how I can do this!

[chamber]

Have you heard the theory that it might have been brought about by more mobile browsing? Do you have numbers to compare that with potentially?

[Frozen Angel]

I can tell that multiposts is not the issue with large games though. That is provable if you start looking at the civilizations mafia that was modded by nahdia

I think people just more active these days (in a way that even I can't keep up with it - believe me!) and that is unsettleing.

You can;t ban active players or enforce anything on activity though - it just makes no sense?

maybe a 30 min restriction after each 10 posts in a mafia game thread will reduce the activity if people are insisted to fight with it

those are the stuff I've been thinking about

[Raskolnikov]

Are people who post a lot discriminating against people who post less? Personally I don't think so, as long as people still put in content. Someone who posts once a day but makes a big wall and dedicates reasonable TIME is just as fine as people who flood the game IMO. Maybe it rubs off on them though.

This was already mentioned, but I'd reiterate anyways that imo the distinction between frequency and effort is very useful to keep in mind for the purposes of this discussion.

I'm not sure high posting frequency is an issue in-of-itself but I can see how it being more common can lead to lower quality/spammy posts being more of an issue (the occassional 1 spammy post is whatever, but repeated instances of double/tripleposting spam can hurt a game).

[Frozen Angel]

Have you heard the theory that it might have been brought about by more mobile browsing? Do you have numbers to compare that with potentially?

this data is actually really important as MS mobile browsing sucks this might actually be the reason for multipost issues most of the times. (it is for me at least)

I'm not sure what happened to people who were trying to make this more mobile friendly 4 months ago -.-

[chamber]

In terms of whether its a problem, if its a format some people want, ideally there is a space for it. Is it more prevalent in some queues (large themes?) than others?

It seems like the obvious solution to me is channeling these people into blitz style games, but I know we had mod supply issues the last time that was tried.

[zoraster]

Have you heard the theory that it might have been brought about by more mobile browsing? Do you have numbers to compare that with potentially?

I mention it above. I think there's probably some truth to it. Both from the idea that short posts are easier for people on their phones to both make and read and because posting on phones generally creates a culture of quick interactions.

I don't really have data other than data which shows our percent accessing from mobile devices has gone up.

[Frozen Angel]

@chamber thing is a large game that goes for 800 pages includes players who want to talk for 800 pages not to play a blitz

[Ircher]

I have a soultion

what if we merge the multiposts to one post with a suited format code wise?

This, but only in games. Furthermore, the moderator's posts probably shouldn't be merged.

[Raskolnikov]

As for causes, presumably what chamber said but also maybe more users coming from the other mafia environments where people chat realtime.

[Bins]

our population posting a lot. Often in a row.

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I find these examples so insane. This is how you ruin a game that a moderator put hard work into just because you wanted to "reach 700 pages in a game lol". How do you manage to post an entire page to yourself?

[chamber]

@chamber thing is a large game that goes for 800 pages includes players who want to talk for 800 pages not to play a blitz

Just wanting to play a game for 800 pages seems more transparently objectionable I guess. If they just have a lot of energy its hard for me to condone that, but a blitz style game gives them a more suitable outlet for it.

[chamber]

Have you heard the theory that it might have been brought about by more mobile browsing? Do you have numbers to compare that with potentially?

I mention it above. I think there's probably some truth to it. Both from the idea that short posts are easier for people on their phones to both make and read and because posting on phones generally creates a culture of quick interactions.

I don't really have data other than data which shows our percent accessing from mobile devices has gone up.

Did you compile the data you have here? I'm sure kison has mobile browsing statistics. You could at least look for a correlation in mobile users and multi post frequency.

[Ircher]

For instance, multiquoting is fairly difficult / work-heavy thing to do on mobile devices so some people on mobile devices quote one thing at a time rather than making one huge post.

There are also those instances where you say something and then realize you need to say more. There are also EBWOPs.

In my opinion, having a merge timer (maybe within the span of 3 hours? It has to be somewhat high but should probably be less than 24 hours) would solve some of the multiposting issues. If the problem still exists, we can look at the data again.

[chamber]

what about multiquoting is harder?

[RadiantCowbells]

Meh I couldn't even keep up with civ mafia

[zoraster]

Have you heard the theory that it might have been brought about by more mobile browsing? Do you have numbers to compare that with potentially?

I mention it above. I think there's probably some truth to it. Both from the idea that short posts are easier for people on their phones to both make and read and because posting on phones generally creates a culture of quick interactions.

I don't really have data other than data which shows our percent accessing from mobile devices has gone up.

Did you compile the data you have here? I'm sure kison has mobile browsing statistics. You could at least look for a correlation in mobile users and multi post frequency.

I have mobile browsing statistics overall. I'd need to bring in Kison to figure out how to see which individual posts are made via mobile device (not that many people solely access the site through one means, so it can't just be by user).