Charisma and Mafia

[Firebringer]

So I just wanted to talk about how charisma affects games and how anyone can attempt to be more charismatic in the way they approach the game. The links below offer more specific topics, while this OP I wish to brush on very broad topics that you can do in general ways to improve your charisma.

Spoiler: Specific Topics

Wall vs Small Post Style
Confidence vs Arrogance

General Topics

1)

Knowing what people want:

This is a quality any good leader needs to understand, if you examine any person who has moved you to act in a certain way they had to understand what you specifically want and tailor their message to your demographic in order to effectively sway you to their side.

In mafia, its not different.
Everyone has a win condition, and its easy to say "Both our goals are to eliminate scum, join me on this wagon because it will lead to you furthering your win condition" in practice, that is rarely enough to actually push people to act with you.

2)

Understand what people value:

This means you need to understand not just what a person wants in terms of who they want to lynch, but WHY they want that. What does the person your trying to convince think is the determining factors whether a person isn't aligned with you? Tailor your message to hit those points. Maybe someone reads players by VCA, somehow try to frame your reasoning using that to express why they should be joining you to lynch who you believe is not aligned with you.

3)

Mimicry:

People tend to agree with people who behave as they would. This could mean posting style, word choice or just voting pattern. The key here is you can use those to try to target a person and talk as they would talk, and behave as they would, they will be far more receptive to your attempts at persuasion.

4)

Confidence:

This is an obvious one, but people will gravitate to players who exude confidence, the key here I believe is that you should never FAKE confidence. That will cause you more problems because people will pick up on you faking it when you start showing cracks in your facade. You should be honest about what you are confident on and what you aren't, and yes that sometimes means people will not be swayed by your arguments, but people will believe you more when you say you are confident on something if you have a history of being upfront with people on what you are and aren't sure of. Lying about your confidence will only hurt you in the long term, it will lead to blind arrogance and people thinking you are full of it (which honestly you will be if you have been faking it).

5)

Affirm Others:

Do not outright dismiss anyones argument even if you 100% disagree with them on every level. Talk to them, say why you think they are right but also affirm them of something that you do agree with. Perhaps you like the way they came to conclusion but you don't agree at all with that conclusion. Or you think they are right but they missed some steps logically, a charismatic individual will give credit to a person when they do something right and point out in a nice way where they may have messed up.

6)

Don't try to win them all:

You will not win everyone to your side. Don't attempt it. If one player hates VCA and you push an argument using VCA you may alienate another player while you tried to persuade another. You should try to keep your message in a way that convinces the most people you think you will need without trying to convince everyone. This can be hard, but some people will just disagree with you no matter what. Even if you frame it in the way that is convincing to them if you made another argument they don't value they may see both arguments as invalid.

7)

Repeat Yourself:

You think you made an excellent case why X is scum? Great! But it will get lost in the noise. You have to repeat the message constantly, so it sticks in peoples minds. I would recommend never Copy and Pasting the same post because people will think you are just spamming and being a nuisance, always try to find a way to rephrase your message but keeping the heart of it intact. Maybe the way you said your case the first time just didn't have the right wording and the second time will broaden your reach to players who didn't agree with the way you said it the first time.

[Firebringer]

Obviously, I tend to agree with Firebringer here, and echo his sentiments with a nod of approval in saying: "Yes. This is pretty accurate and true". Because. Well...it is!

I think you would be more charismatic if you condensed your message to the essentials and cut out the fluff.

[Firebringer]

Also tailoring your message.
Mimicry and even confidence needs work.

[Firebringer]

aren't we all

[Firebringer]

aren't we all

Not if you're trying to be charismatic.

Charisma is about telling someone that they are a moron and they need your help in the nicest way possible that they thank you for it.

=)

[Firebringer]

See like that,
I read about three paragraphs and stopped.

People have small attention spans you need to quickly and effectively grab attention then deliver your message and make sure the message sticks.

Otherwise the message is lost and people don't know what your overal point was.

You may think you are effective at delivering long messages, but it's only to a VERY small crowd and even those people are going to miss many parts of what you say and focus on only a few parts they think are crucial.

[Firebringer]

There's also the fact that I am a writer by nature, and as a storyteller,

People are not reading your posts to hear a story, they are reading it to play a game.
You have wrong avenue if you want to be telling stories to people.

[Firebringer]

People are not reading your posts to hear a story, they are reading it to play a game. You have wrong avenue if you want to be telling stories to people.

And that's where you're wrong.

Convincing people is just selling them a

narrative

. (Narrative quite literally being a synonym of story!) It is telling a story of "This player is town", or "this player is scum".
Storytelling is at the heart of mafia games, because people

want

to be told a story. They want to hear how something works. They want to listen to why something makes sense. They also want to be entertained.

When I say storytelling, I am not referring to a story in the literal sense, so much as I am the idea of saying words with the intention of delivering a message in a beautiful method. That's what a story boils down to. An account of events, as seen by someone. Everyone listens to stories because they take feedback from others; everyone tells stories because they give feedback to others. And every story has an intended purpose.

This was actually a really good job in condensing the message.
Still a bit of fluff you could take out though.

3-5 sentences per paragraph would be perfect.
Tops 3 paragraphs.

[Firebringer]

I wanted to make a post discussing the difference between arrogance and confidence, but I thought the topic was very common sense.
I may just post a video that explains the difference in a much better way than I can describe.

[Firebringer]

I believe that almost everyone struggles with confidence issues in a game. A person who doesn't have confidence issues at one point in a game is pretty much delusional or a liar. You don't know everything. It might be best to talk about how to work through your lack of confidence than to just "fake it to convince others", and I am not saying you shouldn't tell yourself you are confident behind the screen. I am saying, you shouldn't be lying to other people until you can believably say "I am confident on what I am saying", if that means you told yourself 100 times "I know what I am saying, I know what I am doing" behind the scenes. Then thats fine. Its when you bring it into game and it reeks of something that it doesn't sound believable.

Confident people, know why they are confident. They can explain in great detail why they are right. They can take on any argument and any question thrown at them without needing to ignore it or shift the topic.

[Firebringer]

How exactly do you convince anyone of anything if nobody reads your posts?

[Firebringer]

How exactly do you convince anyone of anything if nobody reads your posts?

Think about it for a sec and you'll get it.

Mastina you gave me a response to this before:

Edit:

When I asked mastina in a game before why she makes long posts when she knows people don't read them.

That implies I expect people to read my walls!

The secret is I expect people to ignore me.

That way, when I'm proven right I can be all smug about it and point out how they should have followed me!

[Firebringer]

the best way to be charismatic is to have a cool avatar i think.

I don't think so

[Firebringer]

Why are you so angry Alisae?

[Firebringer]

Shouting doesn't equal angry

Depends on culture.
Most American cultures think yelling is angry

[Firebringer]

Confidence versus Arrogance

I talked about previously how being confident is a key to winning people over, people naturally gravitate towards confident people, their is exceptions to this and its when people are perceived as arrogant rather than confident.

So how do you distinguish between someone who is being confident or arrogant?
Well the key is really a mindset.

Confident people can say what they say with CONVICTION. That means they know what they are saying is truth. They are aware of all the information, they can say with utmost certainty what they tell you is hard fact as much as they know they can say how many fingers on their hand is without looking. They know it, they believe in it, and they can explain it with such passion that you can't believe not to at least believe they really think what they say is true.

To contrast that with arrogance. Arrogance is the twin sister of confidence. While a confident person says things with conviction, a arrogant person might lack it. They will say they believe in something, but you can tell theirs cracks in the wall. They put up a facade, and that can make them harder to trust and harder to work with. People who are arrogant are perceived as such for two reasons.

If you are arrogant you are either ignorant or a liar. Neither of these are something you want to be. The liar is someone trying to be something they aren't in order to convince others to believe in them. The ignorant one is someone who is completely unaware of the pertaining information which disproves them and are usually unwilling to take that information in and accept it as truth.

So what can you do to not be seen as arrogant, and how do you become confident? Humility and Research. If you do the work for the game you are in, or anything really, you can find the knowledge necessary to not be seen as a idiot or in over your head. That means reading, possibly re-reading, and making sure you are reading very closely. The humility comes in when you admit what you don't know and are willing to work with those who do have more information. Don't disregard someone's experience with another person. Listen to them, and communicate with them. Ignoring others experiences/input can make you seem arrogant to others.

[Firebringer]

I mean in-game examples, which would be easier to emulate/copy. What would be hard for me is affirmation. I want to improve on that.

I'd love to do some good examples for everything for this, right now laziness is only thing stopping me.

The best way to affirm others is just to look for things that you like about the persons posts. Don't agree with them on any given point? Maybe you like their effort and spirit, tell them that! Say "I really like the effort your giving here, but I think your missing/overlooking X"

You want to build up a dialogue with person first not based on what you disagree on, but what you do agree on and then go from there to show them your point of view. If you start of with agreeing with someone even if it isn't on the meat of what is talked about, they are far more likely to be convinced by any arguments you make. This is because people get in pattern of saying "well we seem to really understand each other" and then even for things they may not agree with, they will at least think they understand on some level your viewpoint.

If you look at only what you disagree with someone, it's easy to come to conclusions, wow we just can't see eye to eye or are too different to see things same way. That kills ability for you to work with others.

[Firebringer]

There's probably more on charisma that I can go on about:
>keys to be likeable
>word choice and how it affects people
>building a rapport with someone
>walls vs short posts

[Firebringer]

Hey camn, how's it going camn? What you been up to camn?

[Firebringer]

Wall Posts vs Short Posts

Spoiler: Wall

Anyone who has played with me, or knows my style, knows that I dislike people who only post walls. Truth be told I also don't like when people ONLY post short posts too. Their is a time and place though for both of these post types in a mafia game and theirs a reason why I prefer to do shorter posts versus longer posts. I will go into basics of why you would make each post and how they should be formatted, then I will try laying out the advantages and disadvantages of each and when and where you should do them.

Lets start with Walls. Wall posts are great! That is, if

you are trying to make a specific point

and want people to agree with that point. A wall you can think of as a speech. When you write out or make a speech to someone you want to ensure first of all that

YOU KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

. That means first and foremost, this is a game that people play for entertainment, there are people who enjoy reading games but most people are playing for amusement,

KEEP YOUR WALLS TO A REASONABLE LENGTH

, for mafia game Id say 3-5 paragraphs of about 5 sentences each. The longer a wall is, the more likely it will be skipped. Especially if you don't follow the second rule of speech making: capturing and maintaining your audience. So many people will make out a beautiful wall with so much information, but they fail at the first thing that you need to captivate the audience and hold their attention. You can do this a number of ways, but i will save that for another topic. The third thing you need to do is make sure your wall has a flow to it and isn't disorganized. One of the saddest things to see is someone who makes a wall that could have been great if they just properly put everything in the right place and it didn't go into twenty different directions, if you have a lot to say try to connect everything together in a condensed fashion and if you think something doesn't serve a greater purpose, cut it out of the wall! Fourth and final big thing for a wall is you should address any counter arguments preemptively, you will make yourself more persuasive if you engage this conversation now before someone has a chance to dismiss your argument. With that said, sometimes making points can be done in a shorter style so lets move to short posts.

Short posts are the best. Say what you want in

a short precise manner

without over-explaining and boring your audience to death. A short post is usually a paragraph at most, maybe two if you want to stretch definition. That was complicated!

Since I am bad at flow, lets jump into advantages/disadvantages of walling/short.

Walls Pro:

1) They are generally more persuasive than short posts.
2) Contain lots of thoughts/ideas and information.
3) Posts are often seen as professional and authoritative

Walls Con:

1) They are less engaging than short posts.
2) If done improperly can lead to information overload.
3) Impersonal and robotic if you don't add a proper voice.
4) Short attention spans means you have to really grab your audience attention to ensure the post is read.

Short Pro:

1) They are generally more personal than wall posts.
2) Feels more like a proper conversation between two or more people.
3) Can be used to build a good rapport with a person.

Short Con:

1) Can lead to miscommunication when you keep the message too short.
2) If done too much can be viewed as a person being unprofessional/lazy/etc.
3) Spam can create too much noise that drowns out the game that can also make it so your posts AND others get ignored.

So when would you use either? As said earlier, a wall you want to use for when you are making a specific point. This should be done when their is really stuff you have to say, and you are trying to convince people you are right. You shouldn't write this post out with the expectation that someone gives a rebuttal, thats not the purpose. You write out a wall to make your points to convince others. A short post is what you should use for 90% of the time you are playing mafia. This is what you do to interact with others in a group setting or even when you try to talk to someone on a one on one setting. You just talk to them and ask them questions, building a rapport and having a dialogue that builds off one another. This is where you are trying to understand each other on a basic level when you don't already have that. If you are wall posting, you already should know who you can trust or not trust and are trying to convince whoever your audience is to vote for the people you aren't trusting. With a short post, you just want to see if you can trust them.

In the most basic way possible to sum it up this point.
When you are wall posting, you are talking AT SOMEONE.
When you are short posting, you are talking WITH SOMEONE.

[Firebringer]

I may try to make this a weekly topic discussion.

[Firebringer]

Many players don't post with the intention of making an easier reading experience, they mainly communicate info in a way they'd like to hear it. Which often makes otherwise great players, difficult to play with. You know?

Are you going to talk more about contrasting posting styles and how they affect the game state?

I'm interested in your perception of joke posting, and how that helps you develop reads vs serous posting.

Yeah, many people post in a way they want others to post which can be difficult if the styles of posting are different.

I don't know about making topic for contrasting posting styles, i think that might be more of "how to deal with other styles appropriately?" I do expect to cover word choice as a topic.

I think joke posting is a good thing overall, especially to alleviate any tension exists in a game, because trust me tension will build in a game. Just like it can build in any interaction you have in real life, and making a joke post can alleviate and call to attention that tension and make it so that its dealt with without a "blow up", I often find myself joke posting a great deal of the time, and half of it is to continue making the game fun for myself to alleviate any tension building in me and other half is for players to enjoy the game besides myself. Of course some think I do it too much but thats another thing.

[Firebringer]

I think my next topic will be on specifically building a rapport with someone.

[Firebringer]

hi camn, you are looking stunning today! Is that fresh blood in your hair?

[Firebringer]

I think doing that is difficult. If you build a proper rapport like what you would do with a colleague in mafia you would be a scumfuck. I've read that in live mafia, towns almost always win unless scum forced the town to love them.

So yeah, thats something about building a rapport and trying to get understanding of someone. In a game of mafia, people will see that as deceptive behavior and think your scummy, but "Buddying" isn't and shouldn't be a scum tell. It is a charisma tell. You can think of the person doing it as manipulative or at least hold one eye open to them at all times but i think going at them with "you buddying me makes you scum" is bad in general, and i have been burned by that before too.

The way you try to build a rapport is actually damaging to you in long run, in the short run it can produce the results you want with getting a good and solid read on them, but in the long run you kind of salt the fields for making a good relationship with that player by either being overly hostile or just trying to push their buttons, which they will recognize.

Like the method you use probably can give you good read results, the problem is it can make the game toxic and unplayable and ruin possibly good relationships with people who don't like that behavior and hate you for "going there".

[Firebringer]

I think to build a rapport with town one has to understand what that particular roster would see as a "Trustworthy town interaction." I don't think there are many truly flexible methods that can be used in any given situation to build a good relationship with others.

I guess the goal is to be really self aware, and to think on ones feet.

So like, really tactical players, and play styles.

Yeah a bit like this, but you don't need a starting knowledge of how any player roster plays to build up a rapport, its more about like being flexible in your approach to try understand other person and then use that understanding to try and inform them of what you think/believe and show them how you kind of operate under that might be different than the way they see things.

Related: I will try getting that topic written down sometime this week, i am just lazy right now.

[Firebringer]

yes. But its my own, sadly.

well it still looks great, you have to tell me your secret.

[Firebringer]

Weeeell.... really nothing is inherently a scum tell because everything kinda depends on context.

notice how nancy is over extending her words here? That is HER SCUM TELL!!! GET HER EVERYONE!
VOTE: nancy


yeah, everything is mostly dependent on person to person and situation your in. I don't really want to make this about how to scumhunt though, thats not the purpose of this discussion thread so.....

[Firebringer]

Buddying shouldn't even be a NOMINAL scumtell.

I will start a game day 1 and be like "Oh! FireBringer! I love tigers!" And everyone will be like "camnscum"... until people that know me show up and say "duh camn loves everyone" and I freak out and say "THIS IS HOW EVERYONE SHOULD BE ALL THE TIME"

Exactly!

If you want to be more charismatic, which helps you for both alignments, you should buddy players.

[Firebringer]

You know what I love ESPECIALLY?

As town, buddying my scumreads.. then they don't kill me.. then i betray them in endgame.

ITS THE BEST

[Firebringer]

theres a reason why i put in my sig "be nice to your scumreads"

[Firebringer]

you can do that while being nice about it though!

[Firebringer]

i am not perfect, god you know how many problems would be solved if i was perfect?
like 2.

[Firebringer]

You can tell them with cute gifs.

[Firebringer]

I decided that the topic of this week will be how to be likeable.
Which in general helps people listen to you and makes them less likely to scumread you, and less likely to see you as a liar.

[Firebringer]

Likability

The keys to being likable are connected with a few things, but the core of likability has to do with one person being able to see another other as a friend, family member, someone they can relate to. The most likable people in the world are the ones that you feel a connection too and have an understanding and positive uplifting spirit that you can walk away from.

So, starting with basic idea of reliability and projecting your humanity, how do you present that in a game like mafia?

Reliability is paramount for getting someone to see through your eyes and for you to see through their eyes. The idea being that if you can relate to another’s experiences/thoughts/idea you will make it easier for yourself to both read that player and get that player to understand and listen to you. The ways to do this is to first start at what you have in common. Ask them questions first, this can be anything. My favorite questions to ask someone is things going on in real life at the time, this first creates a topic that interests me because I like getting to know people and real life is easy branching point to seeing the person behind the screen, and then relating to them with any experience they may be having and empathizing. So, for example, you may have someone who is having a really horrible day and is just taking it out in your game and you can just ask them, “hey, is everything going alright in rl?”. Maybe they don’t want to talk about it but you can shift and talk about how that you are open to talk or say something about how you feel similar with frustration in some regard, continue on that conversation if they open up to being able to understand their POV. I can’t state enough how understanding someone elses point of view is CRITICAL. Taking an interest in others and trying to really get them will go a long way when they are trying to read or understand you.

Reliability can go further than just taking an interest in a person, because sometimes as stated before, the person just doesn’t want to get personal in the game. So, to bridge that gap, you may have to talk about other topics that you can mutually talk about that is interesting to both of you. Maybe you had a past game that you could talk about, maybe you both have anime avatars and you two can talk about that, maybe they mentioned a movie and you can talk about that a lot of posts contain something where you can see a new place to take the conversation. This is great for starting and building a good rapport and maybe allowing you to engage in some banter. (both topics to be covered another time).

This can be hard for a lot of players, because they feel its offtopic and unrelated to the game, and yeah they are a bit. However, building these interactions and forming bonds with players is a key part of games. Too many players get focused in the game on just the central point of it all when that isn’t how life and people work. Games can be EXCRUCIATING. You may never want to open the thread and yet you do and you continue on, why continue playing a game that is unpleasant? Why not turn it enjoyable? Is a conversation unpleasant? Shift it. In the immortal words of Don Draper “if you don’t like what is being said, change the conversation”. A likable person doesn’t change the conversation to avoid criticism, questions, or heat. They change the conversation because the tone of the game has shifted away from being fun and playful to heavy and dreary. A lighthearted person who can play the game but not in a serious fashion can be a powerful thing that motivates others and turns a game that is annoying/depressing/frustrating into an enjoyable experience. Mafia can be a fun experience when you realize the absurdity in it, and when you embrace it but not treat it as though its life or death, when you can scumhunt without being negative, when you can enjoy the small things in the game like a particular post without making someone feel like shit for posting it, or just enjoy the enjoyable aspects of the game.

Some people to be likable will go out of their way to compliment and be cheerful, while this is generally good it can lead to problems. Some people will see you as fake if you are always positive, or they will see you as a kiss ass if you are just always complimenting. This is where you should be more genuine in what you say, don’t compliment people just to say it, say what you think. The more genuine it is, the better it will be. This is a change in mindset that might be difficult to achieve and this is why I always suggest trying to post in mafia when you are in a good state to be playing.

Don't go in the opposite way either, don't blow up and start going ballistic in a game to express how you feel. Find a different outlet then the game to get your feelings out, but don't hide it from the game either. Tell everyone you are upset, explain why you are upset, in a controlled fashion. You want to make sure people see you as human not a crazy person.

In summary of all this, you want to make sure when you are presenting yourself and trying to make yourself likable that you present yourself as a person that is real, and that you are positive in general. This can be a balancing act as sometimes you may supplant realness to be a bit more positive but still letting people know that you aren't up to par, at other times you may very negative just to show people that their is someone behind the screen. The approach and balance you might have to find on your own. Just remember to think of others and try to add to the game and make it enjoyable for others and yourself and you will win hearts and minds.

[Firebringer]

Hmmmm topic dead I guess

[Firebringer]

i kind of want people to choose their own topic for me to discuss.
I kind of want to also go back to my previous topics and see if I can improve them a bit (I am one of those people who does posts in one try and then posts them)

Ummmmmm topic for this week is still undecided.

Maybe this coming topic will talk about comedy and its persuasion ability and how to use and when to use humor in a game?

[Firebringer]

I still haven't wrote up what i wanted to talk about or even decide what i wanted to talk about.

[Firebringer]

I wanted to post here to let people know i am reviving this and have things i still want to talk about and maybe will go back to talk about previous things i said if i disagreed/had more to say.

Things I wanted to still talk about is:
How to build a bond with someone
How to be more effective in the words you use
And more.

[Firebringer]

Okay the topic on charisma I am covering today is to place yourselves in someones shoes. This will help you get an idea of who a person is. How to read them better. What kinds of arguments you need for that person to convince them which will be a big focus for people who want to be more charismatic in general.

So I am going to cover this in a big way by covering getting baseline understanding, the two general types of players, predicting behaviors, and finally how to formulate arguments to better convince people once you get all that.

Let us get started with the baseline. The baseline of a player is what you use to get a basic idea of what a player is at a neutral point. This is things like temperament, posting style, and thinking patterns. For general sake these can often relate to one or the other for instance a person who is very temperamental might swing wildly in posting style versus someone who is less temperamental. People act differently based on situations. I for instance am often a shit poster but might be compelled to write a detailed post every now and then that tries to articulate lots of thoughts into a post like this one. The baseline gets you a good grounding in what is not something that you should focus on when deciphering reads but what can help you with knowing how a player should be behaving all else being the same.

The thing with this baseline, is you should also be gathering answers to questions about the player that help you inform you of playstyle and thought patterns. You shouldn't just gather prejudgements of what you observe without questioning any of it. This means continual observations and inquiry into it. Questions you will want to ask include: What is their philosophy on mafia? How do they think each alignment should be played? How do they think most people play each alignment? Each of those questions gives you lots of information into their mindset and how they play/want to play the game. If they say Scum play like X. That is how they view their own play of scum. Same with town. These are projections of their thoughts onto others. If you don't know how a person would answer these questions. You missed a step for getting a grasp of how a player thinks which will get you to make more missteps a long the path to convincing people.

Once you think you have that down. You are overall gonna want a idea of how a player operates on a scale of emotionality vs analytical mindset. Now there are many other ways to make a dichotomy of players on things but I think this is the most important one because it speaks to much stronger value of how a player is operating under when considering arguments. Now I think no one player is completely one of these, its more of a scale/spectrum than anything, each is used from time to time for people but every player favors one over the other. I consider myself on the emotionality (tone reading) side. What a player does with this is search through what a player is doing on an either analytical mind of how their actions contribute to a goal or how their emotions match up to what they are saying. A basic rule of thumb (not always accurate) is read through a players posts and see if a person is saying I think or I feel. The player that is saying "I think" more is usually more analytical than a person saying "I feel" more and vice versa for tonereading.


If you are trying to convince an analytical person that someone is scum you have to walk them through how a person actions reflects the goal in a way they can accept. If someone is emotional than you need to walk a person through how the emotions aren't matching up or make no sense in the position that player is in. Now I could go into the downsides/upsides for each of these approaches to reading players but this is more of just talking about how people are thinking not whether it is best. If people want to get a better grasp for each line of thinking I could go into that but trying to attempt one over the one you favor might help you get a better grasp.


Second to last, predicting behaviors. If you get all the things I said before about a player but hey, how do I know these are at all accurate. Well test them obviously. If you know how a person mind works you can predict certain behaviors to high degree and if you don't you won't predict it well enough. So the challenge now is to actually test the model of the person you made and then seeing how well the model fits and readjusting till you get it right. That means continual predictions of how a player responds to certain actions. You can do the test yourself or you can just watch and make a prediction. The patterns exist you just need to identify them and make sure you aren't fooling yourself into a false sense of security with your possibly misleading info. A person posted that X is scum. How will X respond? A poster made Y argument. How will X respond to Y? Leading wagon is on X. What will Y say about this?

Now all of this can be a lot of work. Maybe you read this and went. Tldr. That is fine. Take what you want that helps you better to get a grasp of a person. For me, I don't do enough predicting or understanding the actual philisophy of a player. These are my weaker points that make me less effective. If you get all these down though. You will know what sways a person. You will know what the person thinks and what arguments are best used at what time and how.