Site Meta Thread

[Ellibereth]

I think you'll find a lot of arguments that concludes there's only "one method" is likely wrong. "Motivation" based reading is actually my last resort.

There are people on this site that will analyse their posts in excruciating detail to see what words, sentence length, post length, spread of topic, and lines of questioning to see what they do naturally as either alignment. And then they will draft their posts multiple times until it perfectly represents their town meta specifically to fuck with meta tells.

1) Most people DON'T do this and thus don't know their own set of unconcious tells. There's also a treasure trove of samples on this site and other mafia sites across the internet. Very few people bother to analyze them all thoroughly because of the work required. That doesn't mean the method is bad if it's done in a good way.

2) A competently written program (with varying amounts of human guidance depending on how it's coded) still might be able to find some unconcious tells that a player doing your cited "muffin" process might have missed. Things would be different if both sides put in the same amount of effort, then things would be more interesting. Then I would have to switch to other methods or try to code something even better. This arms race is actually easier for town though since I have to identify unconcious tells while the scum player has to identify which unconcious tells I've detected and try to correc them. However that's not the case right now since most people DON'T put in that type of effort.

[Ellibereth]

I mean regardless - you can't say there is only one "reliable" way to read people when there are players have demonstrated signifigantly higher accuracy over the norm consistently in terms of read accuracy and they use different techniques.

[Espeonage]

Everything someone does in a game of mafia pushes and agenda. That agenda is their motivation. Finding it out is the entirety of mafia. Everything else is just fluff.

[Espeonage]

I mean regardless - you can't say there is only one "reliable" way to read people when there are players have demonstrated signifigantly higher accuracy over the norm consistently in terms of read accuracy and they use different techniques.

I'm p sure I can successfully argue that every single technique is motivation reading. Because motivation reading isn't a technique.

[Ellibereth]

I input a bunch of peoples posts they made with a known alignment into a program and it returns possible patterns. How is that motivation reading.

I attempt to build an ai that teaches itself to read alignment based on people's completed games. How is that motivation reading.

[Ellibereth]

If a competent group of people with enough time, motivation, and resources got together to try and build an ANN for forum mafia it's very likely the result would do a much better job than most humans. Said ANN wouldn't care about abstract human concepts like "motivation" at all.

[Ellibereth]

Tech has helped use realize our original "human" assumptions in many fields were not necessarily correct and that there were other ways of vieweing and analyzing things. Mafia should be no different.

The point isn't that everyone should use tech or some other tool- the point is that its very likely wrong to think there's only one way of doing things or some set of rules that have to be true because its what makes sense to us logically as humans. There are plenty of true things that we can't prove yet. There are tons of methods for various things that may work that we just don't understand well enough. That doesn't mean we operate under the assumption they're false or don't work until then.

[Espeonage]

If a competent group of people with enough time, motivation, and resources got together to try and build an ANN for forum mafia it's very likely the result would do a much better job than most humans. Said ANN wouldn't care about abstract human concepts like "motivation" at all.

It would still be reading motivation. Because all indicators of alignment that work will be because of the motivation that causes them to be accurate.

[Ellibereth]

Do you think there are actions that humans do that have no motivation?

[Espeonage]

Yes.

But I don't think that any of them exist in a game of mafia.

[Firebringer]

most of my actions in mafia games tend to be motivated by my own personal enjoyment, not based on me trying to achieve win com so I think it’s hard to determine alignment based on something like that

[Ellibereth]

Yes.

But I don't think that any of them exist in a game of mafia.

Therein lies our disagreement!

[Ellibereth]

most of my actions in mafia games tend to be motivated by my own personal enjoyment, not based on me trying to achieve win com so I think it’s hard to determine alignment based on something like that

Eh, I think just knowing your wincon can subconciously make changes to how you post.

[Espeonage]

most of my actions in mafia games tend to be motivated by my own personal enjoyment, not based on me trying to achieve win com so I think it’s hard to determine alignment based on something like that

Then you should be modkilled. One of the most basic rules of mafia on this site is to play to win.

I also think self meta is an immediate mod kill offense but whatever.

[Alisae]

Also people think meta is trash for some reason

Spoiler: Wanna know a cool fact that will improve your play by 10%?

it isn't

It is. There are people on this site that will analyse their posts in excruciating detail to see what words, sentence length, post length, spread of topic, and lines of questioning to see what they do naturally as either alignment. And then they will draft their posts multiple times until it perfectly represents their town meta specifically to fuck with meta tells.

I know this because I have seen it happen. Muffin comes to mind as someone that does this.

Meta is fucking useless and I retain the right to policy lynch people who try to use it as a basis for argument. Meta has some limited uses to back up an otherwise metaless argument, but outside of that, utterly useless.

lol then they're doing it wrong.

--

There is only one reliable way to read people. And that is through motivation. And you read motivation by using all scumhunting tools at your disposal to build a picture of why people would do something.

Disagree
I just see posts I feel like are scummy and/or have a scummy approach/push to a lot and they usually flip scum.

[Mulch]

Hey guys

This thread is a great example of why mafiascum towns lose games

[Mulch]

I mean no wonder towns lose if half the town literally is opposed to meta and will policy lynch people who use the single most important tool to finding scum

[Firebringer]

most of my actions in mafia games tend to be motivated by my own personal enjoyment, not based on me trying to achieve win com so I think it’s hard to determine alignment based on something like that

Then you should be modkilled. One of the most basic rules of mafia on this site is to play to win.

I also think self meta is an immediate mod kill offense but whatever.

You want to punish someone who isn’t trying to win by hurting their faction by making it harder for them to win?
That’s clever.

[Espeonage]

That's the rules of this site.

[Aubrey]

To meta or not to meta? The ultimate question of all time. Just barely beating to eat that chocolate bar or not to eat the chocolate bar?

[mhsmith0]

most of my actions in mafia games tend to be motivated by my own personal enjoyment, not based on me trying to achieve win com so I think it’s hard to determine alignment based on something like that

Then you should be modkilled. One of the most basic rules of mafia on this site is to play to win.

I also think self meta is an immediate mod kill offense but whatever.

The key there is “most” as opposed to “all” FWIW.

[Alisaes French Maid]

You can't mod kill someone "who isn't trying to win" since that's a rule you can't really enforce onto scum and 1 sided rules are kinda stupid.
Also I just don't think trolling should be a punishable offense as long as someone is playing for there wincon it doesn't matter how much trolling and sub optimal plays they do.

[RadiantCowbells]

Playing to win is only enforced in the loosest sense.

[mhsmith0]

Mainly hosts will punish people who are actively an obviously sabotaging wincon... but since basically no one ever does that, it's not really all that much of an issue.

[mastina]

There is only one reliable way to read people. And that is through motivation. And you read motivation by using all scumhunting tools at your disposal to build a picture of why people would do something.

I have found this to be one of my greatest, most reliable tools thanks to its broad reach and interconnected nature with other tools (in that properly-utilized motivation is also intricately tied to properly-used meta), but motivation is not in of itself the one tool to rule them all.

It is particularly effective when you combine it with other tools, and can be used to point out what you feel are inaccuracies in the viewpoint of another player when it comes to a read of theirs you firmly disagree with (if you can show they have a strong town/scum motivation for their action and very little scum/town motivation especially by using the metric the player you are disagreeing with is using, your argument will probably carry more weight), but it cannot be used as a universal tool.

Especially given what I said previously--different tools are appropriate for different situations, AND, different players are better suited for different tools. Some players fundamentally cannot use motivation-hunting very well and asking them to do so is asking them to play to their weaknesses instead of their strengths. And even a motivation-based player would do well to familiarize themselves with these other methodologies for other tools, as they will need to link them to their own tool (motivation) in order to be charismatic.