Theory: TC system.

[Chardev]

That's Treason-Commendation, by the way.

I've played elsewhere and in real life, and I've done some thinking, and I took inspiration from

Paranoia

to create this system.
Here's how it works:

You take each player, and you put them on a list, like so:

Player A (

Commendation: 0

Treason: 0

)
Player B (

Commendation: 0

Treason: 0

)
Player C (

Commendation: 0

Treason: 0

)

And so on.
You quote posts that look towny or scummy and you award points for them.
Commendation point == town read
Treason point == scum read
When they have 10 more Treason points than Commendation points, they're marked as a traitor, which is another word for "scum".

Version 1.0 of the TC system

[Thestatusquo]

This sounds like a formal version of what many people already informally do.

[Chardev]

This sounds like a formal version of what many people already informally do.

Yes, that is true, but I plan to refine it when I get more experience and can think of other things to put in. (Notice the 1.0 at the bottom.)

[Ghostlin]

How would you stop confirmation bias in the system? I've played this game in such a way that I sorta have read a person as scum regardless of what they posted.

[Thestatusquo]

How would you stop confirmation bias in the system? I've played this game in such a way that I sorta have read a person as scum regardless of what they posted.

Just don't do that.

[implosion]

vollkan used a similar system backin the day.

[Regfan]

I've seen quite a few people use something like this with very minimal success, think you're much better reading a player by looking at their entire read progressions, reasoning behind it and actions taken with it instead of trying to attribute "+/-" points to certain posts. Scum can easily make a post that looks rather good in isolation but doesn't match what their reads should be like or what they've done or are doing with the read while similarly town can make posts that come across as suspicious without looking at where they're coming from with it more.

[Chardev]

I've seen quite a few people use something like this with very minimal success, think you're much better reading a player by looking at their entire read progressions, reasoning behind it and actions taken with it instead of trying to attribute "+/-" points to certain posts. Scum can easily make a post that looks rather good in isolation but doesn't match what their reads should be like or what they've done or are doing with the read while similarly town can make posts that come across as suspicious without looking at where they're coming from with it more.

Thank you for your input.

Points do not take single posts into account. They are associated with one.

[mhsmith0]

I've seen quite a few people use something like this with very minimal success, think you're much better reading a player by looking at their entire read progressions, reasoning behind it and actions taken with it instead of trying to attribute "+/-" points to certain posts. Scum can easily make a post that looks rather good in isolation but doesn't match what their reads should be like or what they've done or are doing with the read while similarly town can make posts that come across as suspicious without looking at where they're coming from with it more.

+1 wolf point

[mastina]

I've seen quite a few people use something like this with very minimal success, think you're much better reading a player by looking at their entire read progressions, reasoning behind it and actions taken with it instead of trying to attribute "+/-" points to certain posts. Scum can easily make a post that looks rather good in isolation but doesn't match what their reads should be like or what they've done or are doing with the read while similarly town can make posts that come across as suspicious without looking at where they're coming from with it more.

The systems aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, albeit requiring subjectivity to implement: by making proper notation of a player's progression (or lack thereof) in reads, for instance, said post which looks good in isolation yet doesn't match what should be there can instead of being marked as the + it would otherwise be, be properly marked as -.

Personal stance on the method: I wouldn't say 'minimal success' so much as I would 'mixed success'. As in, something which is a tool, like any other: can be used to

great

effect (Plotinus uses a similar system which while not perfect is far better than random odds for finding scum), but can also be used to great detrimental effect. It really depends on how it's used: who's using it, on whom they use it on, and when they use it, among other factors.

[Magister Ludi]

I think vollkan does this. Dunno how effective its been

[Creature]

Reads shouldn't be based out of how many towny stuff and scummy stuff a player has done.

[mhsmith0]

Actually that's a perfectly fine way to do a read and probably is waht most people do unconsciously anyway

The problem is most people are terrible at identifying stuff that is townie vs wolfy, and tend to sub in "pissed me off", "did something stupid", etc. for "wolfy" and "is doing stuff", "agrees with me", "says seemingly intelligent things", etc. for townie.

[mozamis]

so what's your secret Smith?

[mhsmith0]

Having a large ego

(then watching said large ego get punctured by occassional bad games )

[mozamis]

ah i know the problem...

[Toto]

I think the problem is identifying the truly scummy or truly townie posts from the ocean of shitposts and noise that looks townie or scummy. In my limited experience Mafia players tend to make few true mistakes in general, and specially in single isolated posts. I think a lot of the things I find scummy are usually logical mistakes, misunderstandings, or NAI stuff that has no basis whatsoever but looks different from how I expect people to think and communicate. So categorizing people like that may be more correlated to how skilled the person be at being a good townie.

I think a better mechanism would be to find the most scummy or most townie stuff a player has done and try to rank them as such. These will be very very subtle things BTW.

[UC Voyager]

I thibk this is an ineffective system. It is flawed in many ways

1-Scum don't try to be scummy, so chances are everyone will have a low score
2-scummyness is measured in there posts compare to earlier posts.....example (this person has been on 4 wagons)
3-some posts are more scummy than others
4-your system is going to make you look scummy as helll
5-What if you are playing as scum, and this system wont work in your favour, but you know if you dont do it, you will be called out on it

[Ellibereth]

It works if you don't suck at the game.

Just like every other system.

When you can't tell whats more likely to come from town or scum from a particular person nothing's going to work except for sheepbot5000.

EDIT: Actually if your reads are consistently around random level this wouldn't be a decent method to figure out what type of things you're bad at reading in particular and what traps you're falling for lol. Or for other people to tell you.

[Thestatusquo]

I thibk this is an ineffective system. It is flawed in many ways

1-Scum don't try to be scummy, so chances are everyone will have a low score
2-scummyness is measured in there posts compare to earlier posts.....example (this person has been on 4 wagons)
3-some posts are more scummy than others
4-your system is going to make you look scummy as helll
5-What if you are playing as scum, and this system wont work in your favour, but you know if you dont do it, you will be called out on it

1) this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the game of mafia works. Of course scum don't TRY to be scummy. BUT they have fundamentally different information and motivations for their actions. This causes them to behave differently in many different situations. This is the VERY FOUNDATION of how mafia works. If you are positing that scum and town act no different from each other, what even is the point of playing this game?
2) What? You're saying that scum get caught mainly because of lack of internal consistency and how many wagons they've been on? Maybe you'll catch really bad players with this method, but good scum players typically have no problem regulating their internal consistency and not being on bad wagons. In fact, I would argue that too much of a concern about your consistency is something that is more likely to come from scum. For scum, not being scum read is their primary concern, whereas it is not for town. Therefore town are much more likely to vary wildly in their reads as scum are. Flip flops that feel genuine are much more likely to come from town than scum.
3) uhhhh yeah? Thats like the whole point of the system?
4) What? If you think a specific way of reading the game is scummy than once again I must posit that you don't understand mafia on a fundamental level.
5) This system can be rigged in ways that benefit the scum player just as easily as any other system of reading people, because its inherently subjective.

[Toto]

1) i think he meant scum try to look town, and make fewer mistakes (as you yourself say in 2)
2) the op suggest looking at individual posts, I think Uv means you should look actoss multiple posts sometimes.
3) he means quality vs quantity may be an issue, how do you value individual tells?
4) not sure what he meant here but it may come across indeed as try hard townie (lamist)
5) yeah I agree with you here.

[callforjudgement]

How would you stop confirmation bias in the system? I've played this game in such a way that I sorta have read a person as scum regardless of what they posted.

The easiest way to prevent confirmation bias when reading someone is to read them with an intention bias, then read them the other way, and compare.