Mini 275: Subject Mafia - It's all over!

[snowmonkey]

I read your post dg. and I chose to answer one part and ignore the rest. any role abilities that I may or may not have are none of your business, unless you are a wolf. you aren't a wolf(scum) are you?

[Sotty7]

Snow, we get it. Your subject maths. If you want people to unvote you then you need to give us a full role claim. Even though I feel like I've had to fight for my vote on you, if you were to claim a pro town role I'd have to unvote and look else where. As of right now, because of your dodging and ducking of a full role claim, I'm still more than happy to keep my vote on you.

give me a break. this is about the dumbest thing ive ever heard. EVER. Ive said all Im going to say about my role. if you want to lynch me, lynch me. but dont give me this crap about me dodging a full role claim because I havent. its as if you have your own personal agenda. most of you are more interested in making these long soliquoy's or posting a diatribe devoid of logic and reason rather than trying to figure out whats what. might as well play lets run everyone up day 1 and get claims. boy, thats fun.

those of you that asked, when i say wolf im referring to scum. i play werewolf and also the wolves have their own board where they can plot and scheme. running up I guess is synonymous with bandwagoning. but, as I said earlier, im not posting anything else about my role. Ive said on more than one occasion that Im a townie. all you are doing is helping to shrink the field for the scum to look for ggrps. good job fellow townspeople...well done. bravo.

I gotta say, I find this post really condescending and if I wasn't already voting for you Snow, something like this would get my vote. How hard is it for you just say “I'm a vanilla townie”? You have used the word townie in a few posts but how is the town to know that you don't mean a cop or doc? It's not like I was the only one to ask you to come completely clean.....

You say people have been posting with no logic or reason, well then Snow help us all out here. Why don't you come out and say who you want lynched and why. Do you still believe Ranger to be the play today? If not who? Give us your opinion of those on your bandwagon, the lurkers, your defenders....anybody. Since I got into the argument with Turbo over you, I have noticed that you've been pretty quiet on your suspicions accept for the odd line here or there. If you really truly are a pro town player, then help us find scum.

As for Turbo's new focus, I'm not sure what to think. I'm finding it hard to read and process all the points he is trying to make. My gut is telling me that this is just a ploy to move us away from Snow, but I'll re-read the last few post between the two and see if my opinion changes with a better understanding.

[Stewie]

I read your post dg. and I chose to answer one part and ignore the rest. any role abilities that I may or may not have are none of your business, unless you are a wolf. you aren't a wolf(scum) are you?

First game on mafiascum?

[Turbovolver]

OK, people don't like all the long posts, so I'll only respond to the questions Stewie has asked. The only other thing I can do is urge people to take a look for yourselves at his posting, and mine too I suppose.

The two above contradic each other. I can't explain why my posts had content, but I fail to deny your summary which implies that my posts lack content? What are you on?

I found it strange that you were justifying things like random votes, or corrections when you voted the wrong person. This has nothing to do with how much content you have posted.

But let's give you the benefit of the doubt, and include all your extra bits. Sure you've justified reasons for posting what you have, but that doesn't mean you've posted a lot of content. Even if we assume the question in #51 is important (i.e. ignore the fact that Sotty basically answered it herself), and that your post #139 is completely relevant... you still hadn't contributed much up until that point. Also, the whole game you still haven't expressed suspicion about anybody except your bandwagon target (and me *after* I started attacking you).

Where are you going with this?

Well, the first part was me saying why I didn't think it was a contradiction.

The second part was arguing that even if we accept all the extra content you claim your posts had, it still isn't much.

Lastly I point out that you seem to be only expressing suspicion on your bandwagon target and your attackers, which I think is the way scum think and not townies (see me for example, I'm paranoid about pretty much everyone).

Stuff about no suspicions of people being a scum tell

Read my post again, I'm pretty sure I addressed this. You even replied to it. If you say something twice, I shouldn't have to answer it twice.

I had a quick look, I don't see where. Please point it out.

Not to mention you deciding a reasoning for vote is "shit" also counts as over-analysis in your books, as you've been so keen to shoot down any other time the town identifies craplogic as "full-assed reasons and not evidence".

Uh... Explain?

You are saying you don't agree with the reasoning for snowmonkey's vote on Ranger (i.e. it's craplogic), yet whenever other people (me for example) have accused people of craplogic (e.g. the start of my argument with Sotty7) you've said the reasoning was over-analysing and not evidence.
I'm getting the feeling if you are pro-town then your view is we should be looking more at voting patterns and claims as evidence, and this is why you've been saying there hasn't been much evidence. As I've said I don't agree with this idea, but I suppose it's fair enough. If this is what you believe though, you cant go around calling out people's reasoning for votes because in your own books it's not real evidence.

OK, I'll explain again: A half-assed reason is a reason that is half-good, half bad. A shit reason is completly bad. Therefore, a half-bad reason is good (day one) and a shit reason is not.

I suppose. I still don't like the way you insist we will never find a completely good reason though.

You might as well link to this post snowmonkey made, because I sure can't find it.

I don't know how to link to posts, but it's post #126, the red text inside the quotes.

So you are also suspicious of all the other people voting for snowmonkey?

I am, yes. Especially Sotty7 because I also didn't like her reason for joining the bandwagon. You have reminded me of RangeroftheNorth here, who I must admit I had kind of forgot about. But I can see him keeping his vote on snowmonkey if he's pro-town because snowmonkey was determined to lynch him and solely him.

I cannot understand that Turbo has gotten himself involved in yet another stupid argument. Why start this argument now, before we've resolved anything with snowmonkey? We can restart the Turbo/Stewie argument later if you want to, but for now my focus remains on snowmonkey

snowmonkey has given us all the information he's willing to give, and I think there are better places to look today. I've said what I think of snowmonkey, so there hasn't been much to contribute on that matter. I've been rather distracted with the Stewie thing, so if you want my latest thoughts on snowmonkey:
I think he's one of those people who's against claiming. He definitely hasn't been expressing that view in a very nice fashion, but he's certainly not the first person to disagree with claiming either. Sotty7 raises a good point that if he doesn't want to claim he should be out there trying to catch scum - I agree with that. If he also refuses to do that, I'd be much more willing to add my vote.

As for Turbo's new focus, I'm not sure what to think. I'm finding it hard to read and process all the points he is trying to make. My gut is telling me that this is just a ploy to move us away from Snow, but I'll re-read the last few post between the two and see if my opinion changes with a better understanding.

You've already avoided commenting on the argument once, so I'm suspicious that you've done it again. Especially considering I think you two are scum together.

As for it being a ploy to move the town away from snowmonkey, well I've already addressed that in my reply to Don Gaetano. I am definitely willing to concede that if snowmonkey is scum that I am looking pretty bad.

Just to reiterate, snowmonkey, you need to post your current suspicions. I'm not necessarily asking for an analysis of every player like some people have provided, but we need to hear more from you than just "I refuse to claim".

[Don Gaetano]

I gotta say, I find this post really condescending and if I wasn't already voting for you Snow, something like this would get my vote.

I've been a lot more condescending than Snowmonkey throughout this game Sotty. A condescending attitude in itself says a lot about a players personality, playstyle, mood and ofcourse manners but not much else.

By the way, I hope I haven't offended you too much, Turbo. I'm just an arrogant, disrespectful know-it-all by nature

-----

If you're truly pro-town and your behaviour is based on you being annoyed with the town's behaviour so far, or because you just like being a pain in the ass (both of which I can accept), then please get your act together. If you don't claim (or agree with the claim I wrote out for you), and keep refusing to answer completely legitimate questions then I won't accept any other lynch today except you under any circumstance. If you want to do it in a condescending way, while you call me names, please go ahead, but just do it already.

-----

To the people who still not agree that Snowmonkey is the best lynch for today (aka Turbo). How are we ever going to catch scum if we let people who refuse to claim and refuse to answer allegations against them live. I'm not even going to make up my mind on your arguments against Stewie because if Snowmonkey doesn't start cooperating with the town, nothing, and I mean NOTHING could persuade me from pushing to get him lynched.

-----

And Turbo, you keep repeating that it has been proved that Snowmonkey wasn't only suspicious of Ranger because of the OMGUS vote, but that's not true either like I pointed out in my long post. You yourself asked the question that proved this, and use it as an argument why it isn't true.

Ragner took this as you finding him suspicious for an OMGUS vote, and that started up a mini-bandwagon on you (Don said he was voting you to get you to clarifiy this point too). So, is that the reason Ranger stuck out? The OMGUS?

His answer was:

that and his non posting inthread. I dont believe that he would bother posting in another thread and not find anything to contribute to this game.

Since by the time he mentioned his suspicion of ranger, it already had come to light that you (turbo) messed up the links on ranger, the 2nd reason is nonsense. Not only that, but it had been discussed over a whole page, IMHO there's no way someone wouldn't have noticed that. So his suspicion about Ranger was based on the OMGUS vote AKA nonsense and nonsense/deliberate misrepresentation.

[Sotty7]

As for Turbo's new focus, I'm not sure what to think. I'm finding it hard to read and process all the points he is trying to make. My gut is telling me that this is just a ploy to move us away from Snow, but I'll re-read the last few post between the two and see if my opinion changes with a better understanding.

You've already avoided commenting on the argument once, so I'm suspicious that you've done it again. Especially considering I think you two are scum together.

Yeah You've stated lots of times you think me a Stewie are scum partners based on the fact he defended me against some not so great logic on your part right?

152: Defends Sotty7. Fair enough.

Fair enough that he defends me?

The second paragraph of this post is completely true. I was wrong to be suspicious of the game speed crap.

#152: The first point he refutes doesn't actually refute anything, though perhaps he misunderstood my post because it wasn't particularly clear. He also defends Sotty7, though his points there aren't bad.

snowmonkey has done some really strange things and even acted intentionally obtuse, but the way he has acted doesn't really seem to benefit scum more than town. All he's done is attract attention to himself and *Ranger*, of all people. Stewie on the other hand has picked an easy bandwagon and stuck to it, tried to hurry along the day and has avoided posting about anything other than himself and his lynch target

(apart from Sotty7, but she's his scum partner ).

So if it's “fair enough” why do you still think that we are scum partners? Is it because I haven't commented on your theory that Stewie is scummy?

As for why I am not posting much, I don't really find anything really suspicious, exept the fact that you are all

coming to conclusions from things which aren't really scummy

, but I can't vote for all of you. I wouldn't if I could anyways, because if you all OMGUS vote me, then I'd die.

It's day one, and all it takes is a half-assed reason to vote for someone. We got plenty of half-assed reasons, let's pick one and stick to it.

Stewie, it's quite a big statement to say that we are coming to conclusions from non-scummy things without backing it up with some evidence. I believe that you're including the Turbo-cropcircles debate eons ago, but could you be more clear what has happened, but more importantly who is doing all of this? I think it would be important to bring the offenders into awareness of their "reaching" to see if we can read more into it all...unless you believe that we've already done it all with both Turbo and snowmonkey. Therefore for the moment,

FOS: Stewie

This is good posting. I too would like more evidence about the non scummy things and just who Stewie himself finds scummy after everthing that has gone down in the last few days. It's a shame that your post got lost Stewie, I'm looking forward to what more you have to say.

It's not much sure, but I wasn't finding Stewie particularly scummy at that point but I did think he needed to address Pablito's points here. I found it interesting that Stewie's post “got lost” but it could happen, the interaction that followed between the two was something interesting to note, espically since the moment you (Turbo) mentioned that Stewie and Pablito could be linked, Pablito upgrades his FOS on Stewie into a vote. It almost felt like he was trying too hard to distance himself from your suggestion.

I haven't yet commented on the recent exchange between Turbo and Stewie because like Jimmy, I am having a very hard time picking out Stewie's quotes in your quoted text. It's very hard for me to read, so I skipped most of it and posted what I did about Snow because I felt it was a valid point that needed to be said. I am currently working though Stewie's posts and seeing if you do have a point about him or not Turbo, I'll let you know when I'm done. Until then, I would like you to answer me on why you

still

believe myself and Stewie to be linked, after you yourself have conceded that some of the argument you had against me was flawed.

[Turbovolver]

By the way, I hope I haven't offended you too much, Turbo.

No, you haven't.

To the people who still not agree that Snowmonkey is the best lynch for today (aka Turbo). How are we ever going to catch scum if we let people who refuse to claim and refuse to answer allegations against them live. I'm not even going to make up my mind on your arguments against Stewie because if Snowmonkey doesn't start cooperating with the town, nothing, and I mean NOTHING could persuade me from pushing to get him lynched.

The not-claiming I don't really have a problem with. I can link to another game where I said (as pro-town) that I think the game shouldn't have much basis on claims, if you really want.

As for not answering suspicions, there haven't really been many raised against him apart from by you Don. I'll re-read what you said, but most of the other players haven't really given many suspicions against him - just that he his obnoxious and a hypocrite and etc etc.

PPE: Responding to Sotty7 now, will re-read the suspicions at a later date.

Since by the time he mentioned his suspicion of ranger, it already had come to light that you (turbo) messed up the links on ranger, the 2nd reason is nonsense. Not only that, but it had been discussed over a whole page, IMHO there's no way someone wouldn't have noticed that. So his suspicion about Ranger was based on the OMGUS vote AKA nonsense and nonsense/deliberate misrepresentation.

The links I messed up showed only that Ranger had posted in other places and not in this thread. They were a mess-up because Sotty wanted examples AFTER he posted his excuse, and I only posted examples from BEFORE he posted his excuse.

So mess-up or no, it doesn't change the fact that Ranger had not been posting much in thread when snowmonkey originally called him suspicious.

Yeah You've stated lots of times you think me a Stewie are scum partners based on the fact he defended me against some not so great logic on your part right?

His actual defense of you is fair enough. I think both you and Stewie are likely to be scum based on individual evidence, so when one of you defends the other I will note that. While it would look even worse if the defense wasn't solid, it doesn't mean it still doesn't look suspicious to me.

Until then, I would like you to answer me on why you still believe myself and Stewie to be linked, after you yourself have conceded that some of the argument you had against me was flawed.

I feel I have explained this above.

Also, you are the only person Stewie has defended, despite him saying that he thinks pretty much all of the attacks people have made are over-reasoned and insignificant. When both of you are scummy in my mind (for individual reasons) and then something like that happens, I think it's rather natural to link the two of you together.

[Kenji]

...and as if by magic you all feel compelled to reach a descion about who to lynch.

A deadline has been set, by 8pm GMT on Saturday you will have reached a descion, in the event of a tie then there will be no lynch.

[Turbovolver]

The deadline is still a few days away, but it sounds like we need the whole 7 votes to avoid a no-lynch.

Even though I think snowmonkey is town, I would rather see him lynched than nobody because I think it would provide a significant amount of information. So if lots of people are still voting for him but a no-lynch looks likely, I'll add my vote closer to the deadline.

[pablito]

I can't be bothered to read the long posts right now, but I'll try to do that tomorrow. As a note, I will be gone from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon.

As for snowmonkey, right now the lack of full claim wants to make me believe that he has a power role, and he has a right to not claim if he doesn't want to on the first day. However, the way that he defends himself and the right to not claim is uncivil and unconventional. As Don Gaetano has stated before repeatedly, it's almost as if snow wants to get lynched - as if it's a signal that he is a vanilla townie and that he could be sacrificing himself to protect the power roles. This is a stupid analysis, but snow simply does not make any sense.

At the moment, I would rather not lynch snowmonkey because I do fear that he has a power role, but it's fairly obvious that snowmonkey isn't really helping uncover scum either, so I don't condone his lynch. I'd much rather lynch Stewie though. It seems that some people might be on the snowmonkey bandwagon only because they find him as not analyzing for the pro-town stance.

[Kenji]

Hmmm, it's obvious I'm not as good as explaining myself as I thought I was...

I'll edit my previous post.

[cropcircles]

I'm actually going to have to agree with Turbo on a lot f his points against Stewie. I think he's a much better lynch choice then Snowmonkey.

[Stewie]

The not-claiming I don't really have a problem with. I can link to another game where I said (as pro-town) that I think the game shouldn't have much basis on claims, if you really want.

Then you won't mind me not addressing any points in the thread (until snowmonkey claims). If snowmonkey can get away with being two away from a lynch and not claiming, surely it's also ok for me not to address any points you bring up (not that I can't, I'm just too lazy to at the moment) when I am four votes away from a lynch. I could, if you really want, link to games in which I was four away from a lynch and I refused to reply to points against me.

Really, you are fine with the non-claiming? The only people who are this resistant with claiming are scum who can't come up with a claim. It's ok that he tried to talk his way out of it without claiming, but his bandwagon is not dying down, so he failed at that.

I'm willing to let myself die instead of SM iff he claims doctor and nobody counterclaims. I am also willing to answer that post you made iff snowmonkey claims or if you give me one good reason why a pro-town player would not claim in the situation sm is. Until then, I'll have a lot of time to work on my Bio project.

[Turbovolver]

Then you won't mind me not addressing any points in the thread (until snowmonkey claims). If snowmonkey can get away with being two away from a lynch and not claiming, surely it's also ok for me not to address any points you bring up (not that I can't, I'm just too lazy to at the moment) when I am four votes away from a lynch. I could, if you really want, link to games in which I was four away from a lynch and I refused to reply to points against me.

Claiming is very different to answering to your actions. There is no good reason not to answer to what people say to you (apart from outside circumstances), whereas there are arguments that can be made against claiming. Considering a deadline is coming up, this sounds to me like you are trying to avoid answering my points before the day ends.

Really, you are fine with the non-claiming? The only people who are this resistant with claiming are scum who can't come up with a claim. It's ok that he tried to talk his way out of it without claiming, but his bandwagon is not dying down, so he failed at that.

It is certainly not only the scum who will refuse to claim. I've seen frustrated townies do it all the time in newbie games, and I imagine it happens elsewhere too.

I'm willing to let myself die instead of SM iff he claims doctor and nobody counterclaims. I am also willing to answer that post you made iff snowmonkey claims or if you give me one good reason why a pro-town player would not claim in the situation sm is. Until then, I'll have a lot of time to work on my Bio project.

Why doctor and not any other sort of role?

You want a good reason why a pro-town player would not claim? Well, I don't know if it could ever be considered "good play" to flat-out refuse to claim, especially when it looks like pressure won't let up. But just because it isn't good play doesn't mean a townie couldn't do it.

[RangeroftheNorth]

You want a good reason why a pro-town player would not claim? Well, I don't know if it could ever be considered "good play" to flat-out refuse to claim, especially when it looks like pressure won't let up. But just because it isn't good play doesn't mean a townie couldn't do it.

It may not mean that they couldn't do it, but it certainly means that they shouldn't do it. If sm continues to refuse to give a full claim, he is acting in a way that is not beneficial to the town and therefore should be lynched.

[Turbovolver]

If sm continues to refuse to give a full claim, he is acting in a way that is not beneficial to the town and therefore should be lynched.

It is not our goal to eliminate those who are not beneficial, it is our goal to eliminate the scum. Advocating a lynch based on anything but alignment is a bit scummy to me.

Not quite an FOS: RangeroftheNorth

[RangeroftheNorth]

Our goal is to when the game. If snowmonkey is determined to make that harder for us, he needs to be eleminated.

[Turbovolver]

Eliminating a townie will also make the game harder for us though.

It was less than an FOS, so let's not get too hung up on it.

[RangeroftheNorth]

I'm not particularly hung up on it, I was just clarifying my opinion. Let's just agree to have different opinions on this as I don't think either of us is likely to persuade the other.

[Turbovolver]

I'm happy with that.

[Sotty7]

In an effort to make the thread a little more readable, I have read the Stewie posts and have shortened my thoughts on it to simple points. If anyone wants further clarification, ask and I'll deliver.

1)I agree with Turbo that saying “I'm not suspicious of anybody” is generally a scum tell

2)I'm with Stewie on Snow's reason for his vote on Ranger. Just because you took him a face value doesn't mean the whole town should. People can disagree with you and actually not be scum.

I'm voting because I chose the least-non-suspicious person, and voted for them. I don't think I'd vote snowmonkey right now if this was day three or day four. But it's day one, and we already have nine pages. She seems like the most likely to be scum, and even more as time goes on.

It is in the interests of the town to vote without a good reason because there aren't any (or at least there weren't any at the time) and we gotta lynch someone. If we let this go much longer, we won't be able to get replacements, should the need arise

3) I find this statement some what scummy. I am currently voting Snow because his actions point me into believing that he is acting the scummiest today, I'm not thinking about day three or four at all. Stewie, do you find Snow to be the most suspicious so far today? This quote just suggests that you don't believe that to be the case

4) I agree that the question of if Stewie and myself are partners is something that is just wasting time for today. I have already explained my thought process to this, so I will not clog up the thread again with it. (post 186)

5) It's pretty true that Stewie hadn't posted much content until Turbo started picking out his posts. This really isn't a strong point of Turbo's argument however. Plenty of other people have posted very little content lately (Snow, Sineish and Quail) so I don't really hold this against Stewie. Plus his reasons seemed forgivable to me (exams)

In a nut shell, I can understand, in places, just what Turbo is trying to get at with Stewie. His latest play saying that if Snow can get away with what he's doing, then he won't answer any more points, I find quite a scummy thing to say. I can understand the frustration when you know that you are innocent and yet people keep questioning you on things you believe are pointless. But don't just give up on it! Stewie if you truly are innocent then keep pushing that point, if you hold to your promise of not answering points in the thread until Snow does then it will definitely be a strike against you in my eyes at least, especially with the deadline coming up.

His actual defense of you is fair enough. I think both you and Stewie are likely to be scum based on individual evidence, so when one of you defends the other I will note that. While it would look even worse if the defense wasn't solid, it doesn't mean it still doesn't look suspicious to me.

Grudgingly I'll have to say that this is a good answer. If you truly believe that we are both scum based of individual evidence then I guess you are allowed your opinion (as wrong as it might be). If you were to try and push the “link” that does not exist then my slight suspicions of you would have sky rocketed.

[Stewie]

Then you won't mind me not addressing any points in the thread (until snowmonkey claims). If snowmonkey can get away with being two away from a lynch and not claiming, surely it's also ok for me not to address any points you bring up (not that I can't, I'm just too lazy to at the moment) when I am four votes away from a lynch. I could, if you really want, link to games in which I was four away from a lynch and I refused to reply to points against me.

Claiming is very different to answering to your actions. There is no good reason not to answer to what people say to you (apart from outside circumstances), whereas there are arguments that can be made against claiming.

Make one.

Really, you are fine with the non-claiming? The only people who are this resistant with claiming are scum who can't come up with a claim. It's ok that he tried to talk his way out of it without claiming, but his bandwagon is not dying down, so he failed at that.

It is certainly not only the scum who will refuse to claim. I've seen frustrated townies do it all the time in newbie games, and I imagine it happens elsewhere too.

Rarely if ever. I can't recall any situations off the top of my head.

I'm willing to let myself die instead of SM iff he claims doctor and nobody counterclaims. I am also willing to answer that post you made iff snowmonkey claims or if you give me one good reason why a pro-town player would not claim in the situation sm is. Until then, I'll have a lot of time to work on my Bio project.

Why doctor and not any other sort of role?

Every other role is easy for scum to fake, and is not nearly as valuable... might consider cop, but I think I'd lynch anyways.

You want a good reason why a pro-town player would not claim? Well, I don't know if it could ever be considered "good play" to flat-out refuse to claim, especially when it looks like pressure won't let up. But just because it isn't good play doesn't mean a townie couldn't do it.

I want you to tell me what good for the town could come out of not claiming when the pressure won't let up. You didn't give me a reason, you gave me a WIFOM.

[snowmonkey]

If you are not lynching either ranger or myself today then you should be lynching sineish. he's the second dirtiest player here(besides me and ranger, of course). I would love to tell you more about my role, but I can't, or won't. neither of which is justification for you to lynch me. sometimes it just takes a fresh pair of eyes to see stuff that regular players miss. you get used to a players playstyle and you miss stuff or a player is doing the same thing before when he was a gg so he must be good and it gets overlooked. he's posted what 3 times inthread? first he votes ranger, then a week later he unvotes and says more to follow tomorrow. then we don't hear from him until another week has passed and we get a four sentence blurb mostly about nothing. taken by themselves the posts are pretty innocuous. taken in context they just verify my belief that he's scum.

lynch me or not, you are not getting any more info about my role from me.

[RangeroftheNorth]

Can we lynch him now?

[Turbovolver]

Make one. [an argument against claiming]

Off to the top of my head, claiming gives the mafia far more information than it gives the town. The town can rarely, if ever, be sure that you speak the truth, whereas the mafia will always know.

If the scum have good safe-claims (or are good at making up false claims), a mass-claim will hurt the town. Individual claims are just a small piece of a mass-claim, and although it could be said there is a better chance of forcing just scum to claim because of how the lynches go, this is no guarantee.

Are those arguments particularly watertight? Probably not. But some people believe claiming is a bad idea, and those are some possible reasons why.

It is certainly not only the scum who will refuse to claim. I've seen frustrated townies do it all the time in newbie games, and I imagine it happens elsewhere too.

Rarely if ever. I can't recall any situations off the top of my head.

Well, I've seen people give the following speech a bunch of times:

what am I supposed to do?

If I claim vanilla townie, you guys will lynch me anyway.
If I claim scum, you guys will lynch me.
If I claim power-role then the scum will kill me at night.

To be honest, I haven't actually made sure that only scum give these speeches.

You want a good reason why a pro-town player would not claim? Well, I don't know if it could ever be considered "good play" to flat-out refuse to claim, especially when it looks like pressure won't let up. But just because it isn't good play doesn't mean a townie couldn't do it.

I want you to tell me what good for the town could come out of not claiming when the pressure won't let up. You didn't give me a reason, you gave me a WIFOM.[/quote]

What I said was in no way a WIFOM. All I said is "townies don't always make good plays". You really want to call that a WIFOM?