Problems with the Scummies

[Espeonage]

As someone that flaked from judging. Judging requires a hell of a lot of reading and to do it effectively requires a heap more time than a few games. For me to judge properly, I would have had to stop playing for two weeks.

[Espeonage]

i think you're assuming that there were always more volunteers than people selected, that was definitely not the case.

No, I'm stating that you'd get more volunteers if
-More people knew HOW to volunteer, and
-More people knew they COULD volunteer.

Neither of which, people are well aware of. The process for volunteering is not widely known/very public.

Making a year-round easily accessible place for this information to be found (for instance, having a blurb about volunteering to judge in the Scummies thread itself as a possibility) would be a start--
...And so too would, when judges are needed the most, a global announcement asking for them.

No fucking shit you're not going to get a large number of volunteers if people don't know how to volunteer or if they are legally even able to volunteer. (I knew that when I volunteered, I wasn't even sure I legally could do the job thanks to a combination of me having nominated someone in almost every category and/or having been nominated in categories leaving no Scummie where I was neither. The answer was, obviously, that I could in fact volunteer, but I didn't KNOW I could and the first indication I could was when I was accepted into the judging group.)

This is objectively wrong. The amount of people that will wander in to the judging subforum then immediately walk out will be immense.

There is an issue where not enough games are being nommed and those that are nommed are not games worth being nommed.

Really, if you want the scummies to be better than you need to fix that games have been going downhill in quality, and that no one cares enough to nom, or even really knows that scummies are a thing.

MS used to be more crude, but also much less toxic.

[Espeonage]

2010 and 2011 were in a completely different realm to anything that happens today.

[Espeonage]

tbh, I think an analysis of third voter is scum would turn up a supermajority of hits. As would Amished.

[Espeonage]

I think it comes down to an unwillingness to have your reads ever locked in. And to scrutinise new evidence as harshly as old. I see many people throwing around lock town reads on people who they have meta on and should read, and then they just leave that person in the sorted basket without ever relooking at stuff or messing around with their reads.

There so few clutch 180 reads in my experience as there used to be.

But as for an enjoyment standpoint. People take losing a lot more seriously now. They see it is a personal affront if they lost, especially if they died early or had accurate reads when really they likely died because they had good reads or were left alive with accurate reads because they had the charisma and sway of a wind-vane made of concrete.

People just seemed nicer, they played hard to win, and if they didn't they debriefed on why, had a discussion on some what ifs that were geared toward social aspects like convincing people at the right times rather than saying people should have been convinced.

mafia was treated as a team game, which funnily enough is what it is.