How much should mods help VCA?

[Gypyx]

This question kinda arises from the lack of standardized information required on a votecount, as far as i'm aware most people just put votes and a warning when someone approaches the execution requirement, but that's it, and i'd argue the warning is mostly a way to help with game integrity and avoid accidental hammers

but, and while it's more rare, a lot more things are done here and there, linking to the individual vote, tracking everyone's vote through the day, coloring confirmed alignements in one color or another

this is all great, and certainely a lot of help towards VCA, but my issue is mostly that all that strongly favors the town

in short, the question boils down to if the data scraping part of VCA is viewed as part of the expected work town is supposed to do or if the mod doing it still doesn't cross the expect line of neutrality one should keep when moderating

I'm curious what the "ideal mod" would look like, i myself don't really have any opinion

[DragonEater70]

I think mod should facilitate VCA, which btw can and does get used by scum. The official modding guidelines require the mod to post VCs, and my interpretation of this is that this information is meant to be as accessible to the players, and is not "optional" if that makes sense.

[Gypyx]

I think mod should facilitate VCA, which btw can and does get used by scum. The official modding guidelines require the mod to post VCs, and my interpretation of this is that this information is meant to be as accessible to the players, and is not "optional" if that makes sense.

i do know that it can be used by scum, just that imo it's still a fairly townsided tool

[Jingle]

I think mod should facilitate VCA, which btw can and does get used by scum. The official modding guidelines require the mod to post VCs, and my interpretation of this is that this information is meant to be as accessible to the players, and is not "optional" if that makes sense.

Setting aside the question of effectiveness of vca as irrelevant to the conversation, the important thing for vcs is actually internal consistency.

As long as the information given by the mod is public and accurate, they can add as much detail as they want. I personally link votes, not to aid in vca, but rather so that if something goes wrong in my counting of votes both the players and myself are more likely to catch it and point it out. It also helps with questions of “did that nickname get chosen as acceptable” even if those questions are uncommon.

Extra information should not be a requirement, however, as regular, accurate vote counts are enough for players to be able to play the game.
i do know that it can be used by scum, just that imo it's still a fairly townsided tool

[usesPython]

If the only barrier to VCA that's being dropped is in the "can be replaced with a python script"-tier then I don't really see the problem with it. I know some players on this site already have their own private scripts to gather what votes people made in what posts, and extending that to format it in the nice VCA colors wouldn't be that much more work for them.

Speaking strictly on a winrate level, mod automated VCA increases town winrates. This however ignores the fun element where scum winning because town doesn't have the time or motivation to comb through thousands of posts to do more granular VCA is kinda more boring than town winning because they did cool VCA to catch scum since the mod automated the hard and boring part

[JacksonVirgo]

I think that this information greatly improves game quality, even if they're not used to any degree that matters. There's already quick and easy ways to get this information for those that are tech savvy, which gives them an unfair advantage over those that aren't. That advantage does not have anything to do with skill at playing mafia, so I personally want the information to be as easily accessible to those that don't have time or the tech skills as it does the chronically online or the tech savvy. I am on the side of always lowering the barrier to entry for things such as this type of tooling regardless, which is why I'm (slowly) working on that browser extension for automated VC's and other quality of life additions to the site. I don't think the information favouring the town is that much at all, especially to a point I believe people would genuinely hate.

[DragonEater70]

I think mod should facilitate VCA, which btw can and does get used by scum. The official modding guidelines require the mod to post VCs, and my interpretation of this is that this information is meant to be as accessible to the players, and is not "optional" if that makes sense.

i do know that it can be used by scum, just that imo it's still a fairly townsided tool

Right but my point is, if you take your argument to its logical extreme, maybe we shouldn't have VCs at all sonce they help town by preventing town from accidentally hammering and by preventing scum from faking accidental hammers.
HOWEVER, it has been collectively decided that since this is public information anyway, it is not only okay for a mod to supply that information but in fact

required

of the mod. And an extension of this logic says that ideally, mods would facilitate access to public information as much as possible and would never intentionally reduce or deny access to that public information (such as by intentionally omitting it from VCs), even though it "favors the town", because it is simply not considered "undue influence". Quite the opposite, it is considered "desirable influence".

[Jake The Wolfie]

Mod-omated information exists on a spectrum, spanning from "Giving out the bare minimum legally required from them" to "Giving out as many information-dense VCs as possible, coloring in names corrosponding with their public-facing alignment, providing complete and detailed vote histories for each player, and generally never leaving out any detail in every VC."

Neither of those extremes seem like fun to me. The _less information that's regularly provided, the more it'll frustrate the players and hide trends. The ^more information that's regularly provided, the more it'll confuse players and obfuscate trends.

[Skygazer]

I do a lot of modding on my phone (I know, I know...), so I tend to go with simpler. There are a few things I do that I think help facilitate VCA, and that's: 1) I post VCs frequently (perhaps an obnoxious amount to some people) 2) I make sure chronological order is preserved in the vote order for each wagon 3) I sort the wagons by size first, and then I sort by which wagons have been that size for the longest period of time 4) I keep the formatting simple so it's easier for others to copy/paste/manipulate.

Those are all kind of little things, I guess. I've thought about getting more detailed but decided to stick with a formatting that's easy to produce on my phone. In my mind there's nothing wrong with providing more details that are already publicly available, as long as the information provided in consistent from VC to VC for the sake of mod neutrality.

[Psyche]

In general I like it.
I think it's potentially even a viable approach to address hypothetical issues like replace-out rates and meta decline.
IMO we should in general look favorably on practices that streamline the game and make it easier to engage with them on a substantive level.
It makes games more satisfying and easier to stick to, even if it could boost a faction's relative performance in the long run.
That concern can be addressed by balancing setups differently anyway.
I think a tendency toward purism sometimes keeps us from giving these values as much priority as they deserve.

[yessiree]

I do not think mods should help facilitate VCA (spoon-feed players info), because mods should remain neutral so as to not favor one side or the other.
If mods go out of their way to facilitate this process, imo they are actually hindering player agency to do VCA on their own - because all the voting data are public info

I think establishing a regular cadence of posting vcs and sticking to it throughout the game is the best way to go about it. That means not increasing the frequency in response to increased activities, and vice-versa

I think there are other, arguably more important things mods can do to help make their games more engaging for the players, such as prodding players on time, starting days on time, and handling flips in a timely manner

[DragonEater70]

That means not increasing the frequency in response to increased activities, and vice-versa

I disagree with this (though I agree with the rest of your post). The VCs are supposed to reflect the actual movement of votes in the game, and if I usually post a VC every 12 hours but there's a 6-hour period with 3 successive flashwagons, I do want players to have access to that information of how the wagons looked without having to look at the votes post-factum and create their own VCs, which defeats the point of even making VCs as a mod in the first place. I don't think that this robs players of agency any more than posting VCs at all "robs them of agency". But again I agree mods shouldn't spoon-feed players info.

[Alianna]

I also disagree, for reasons that are admittedly mostly selfish. Not only is it more work for the players, it's also more work for me as the mod. If there's been a spike in activity/lots of votes over the last [insert chosen time interval for VC posting] and I'm not too busy to make a VC, it would really annoy me to have to wait until the designated time and then sift through a million pages to count a million votes and then have the VC be outdated anyway because in the time it took to count all 1 million of the votes, there have been half a million more votes.
Exaggerating, obviously, but adjusting VC frequency to match player activity helps me stay on top of things and honestly makes modding more enjoyable.