MTG Salvation

Quote from Iso »

DV, are you okay with me posting my messages to you about my recommendations on how to handle this? It might elicit some helpful input from others.

Absolutely.

Edit: I should preface I think most of that is your story so I don't think I have any right to stop you either way.

I mean I think a townie getting irate at dying and attacking people is part of the problem. It works, and people are often cleared (correctly) for these sorts of emotional outbursts and I think it makes games less fun. Now GJ you're also correct that it's near impossible to police. And that's why I didn't really offer any solutions. I don't know how to handle it but it makes games less fun and encourages scum to fake townie indignation and anger at staring down death. Which is understandable and as of right now a correct line of play. But again makes for less fun games and bruised feelings after the fact.

@DV I understand the problem with trying to correct player behavior and that's why I tried to approach it as starting a discussion rather than having answers. I think that insults including calling players bad creates an unfun game state, but I'm thin skinned so my standard for that is different to others. While there is always gray area I think it's better to try to improve the environment even if means restricting peoples ability to express themselves ideally, but I'm very well in a minority there.

I'm not overly worried about weaponized complaints as I generally trust the discretion of our council and hosts. I don't think most of them are prone to rash decision and I know that in the past hosts have sought out expert/council opinion when in doubt. I think that is a good practice and likely to avoid rash decisions.

On posting restrictions and gifs I enjoy posting restrictions as long as there is an effort to make oneself understood. My frustration in Scum Love the King at Osie stemmed from the fact that the majority of my mafia playing time doesn't allow me to listen to soundcloud links. I very much enjoyed the pictogram restriction and if that had been the whole game I would have looked at it fondly. It's a matter of playing in a inclusive way that allows players to engage with you and have a back and forth. The audio clips didn't allow for me to have that but the images did. Some players don't use self imposed PR's in that way, but ideally that's the healthy use case. Give some variety but still allow for communication. I don't want to turn this into re-litigating SLTK again, just using it as example of both healthy and unhealthy posting restrictions from my player experience. Someone with easy soundcloud access might have found that PR to be healthy but the exaggerated drunk posting to be unhealthy.

I define aggression as elevated language or behavior targeted at another player. This would encompass calling someone bad, mocking another player sarcastically, and similar targeted behaviors. Aggression to me makes the game less fun but I am probably in at least the 90th percentile of sensitivity to it and worrying about it so I shouldn't be making policy on this issue, I'm just voicing my unique concerns.

Anyway I do agree that currently it feels like different players are getting differing amounts of leeway and that is a potentially a problem. It could be that is justified by past history and a shorter leash but it leads to a bad experience for those having very little leeway. Per the discussion on Discord I'd imagine that DBS feels like she got relatively little leeway with flaming/aggression than other players did, and that's probably accurate. Doesn't absolve her inappropriate behavior but it does suggest we could use more consistency in handling these incidents.

I'm going to say something that might be surprising.

I find a lot of aggression to be unfun too. Its mentally taxing. And when a player says I'm not enjoying X, that doesn't feel good either.

I'm not going to get into the whole SLTK thing either. But, on the topic of treating players friendly whats the difference between Tom's many iterations of PRs and Osies? Soundcloud thing aside.

I agree that DBS probabally go the short end of the stick. I got frustrated with DBS myself, but that was for a very specific reason. DBS was sort of being a problem in Arkham, but not in a way that I felt that someone needed to step in. Osie wanted to and I didn't feel strongly about it so Osie stepped in and gave a really GENERAL hey lets be nice guys post. DBS sort of took that as being directed at her, when it wasn't or at least wasn't directly at her. Then she claimed persecution without even asking at least me, and that sort of went over the line to me simply because she didn't ask the mod in the game.

In Playstation I was totally allowed to get away with more than I should have. Shadow has said he was trying to give me a fair shake. I don't blame him for that and it was his first time modding a game I think. I'd argue that there were numerous other players in that game that also were allowed behavior that shouldn't have been allowed. I'd also say that no matter how Shadow handled me at the end of the day in that game I would have been a problem I had some personal things going on and I at least partially took it out on the thread. To give you an idea how bad it was, I totally didn't think I was nearly as much of a problem as I was. Like, I've reread that game and all I can say is YIKES. It was bad. I'm sorry to everyone for having to deal with me in that.

Personally, I think TS also might have gotten a bad shake I've reread much of Startrek and to be honest his behavior wasn't that bad. His personality might have been. So, I think he got treated differently because of that.

Its hard to say whats right though in that circumstance. If players don't enjoy playing with a player what should moderators do? I come in post once every three days, post about 4 sentences and leave. Is that fun to play with? No. Is it breaking any rules? No.

So, I guess what I'm trying to get at is I think "toxic" is code for not fun. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Personally, I'd like players to want to play with me, so changing that behavior is needed if I want that. But, I'd go further, and say that perhaps we as a community need to change other behaviors too, because other people don't want to play with other behavior when its unfun.

Also, I don't think that policing outbursts is hard at all. If I can be expected to police my own behavior and I should, then other players should as well. What is really the difference at the end of the day?

The activity problem is a hard one. If we had MUs player base numbers I think we could easily come up with a solution to the low activity/low effort combo. I don't think anyone has a problem with low activity/high effort players. It would be easy to say something along the lines of "you must post at least once every 72 hours and if there is a gap longer than 48 you must make a substantial post with game related word count longer than x." But we're a small and rather insular community and finding replacements is hard. And that makes mods (including me in secret agents) more willing to give low activity players leeway that shouldn't be given. Maybe we just need to go play more in other communities and be awesome there so people are interested in coming here. The MAL/MTGS cross pollination has been good for both despite bumps along the way and if we had that with more communities we'd be a healthier place.

Back to the meat of your post I basically agree with everything you're saying. And I want to get into the different standards for different players. I have said some really inappropriate and out of line things. DV wasn't the only person out of line in playstation, I was right there with him and had been involved in incidents going back to ZE. I don't recall ever being approached by a mod and being told to cool down. I suspect this is because I'm awkward, self aware, and frequently apologetic as I'm limply raging at people but that doesn't make those attacks okay. In one of those games I definitely should have been told to chill and tone down my attacks on DBS. And that didn't happen. Probably because of the above to small degree but also mostly because she probably didn't go to a mod.

Again I don't have any solutions I'm just trying to keep some discussion going and be a bit self aware of how my actions are impacting all of you.

Quote from Grape »

I mean I think a townie getting irate at dying and attacking people is part of the problem. It works, and people are often cleared (correctly) for these sorts of emotional outbursts and I think it makes games less fun. Now GJ you're also correct that it's near impossible to police. And that's why I didn't really offer any solutions. I don't know how to handle it but it makes games less fun and encourages scum to fake townie indignation and anger at staring down death. Which is understandable and as of right now a correct line of play. But again makes for less fun games and bruised feelings after the fact.

That's not going to happen. What you are asking for is basically robot level compliance of emotion. Just because you wish for it really hard isn't going to make wolves or townies suddenly stop getting frustrated at being lynched, or taking their frustration out on the game. There are degrees, and I think it's ok to expect that. There are a lot of players with not Shadow's temperment that would have been a lot angrier in Secret Agents if they were lynched day 1. Added to the fact that Mtgs has such long day 1 phases compared to 90% of games makes that mislynch/loss sting even harder, than if the game had the speed of a turbo.

You betray your own words when you say it works. If you are aware that it works regardless of alignment, then you can press forward knowing that this could easily be wolf anger as well. What makes the game less fun is when 25% of the game is low post low effort. That's going to keep this site from growing, and that's the biggest thing that has kept me from proactively signing up for games here, unless asked. And while it doesn't have the vitriol of two players exploding at each other, it makes the game inherently unfun for everyone else without them even thinking about it.

Quote from Grapefruit21 »

I think the crux of this goes back to the lack of a clear line on acceptable aggression. It's a really hard thing to manage and different people have a different tolerance. I'm more thin skinned than average who supports a stricter line, while others would find my line chafing and limit their game play options. I think more important than a specific intervention here is a clarification of what's acceptable and what's not. And possibly codifying to some small degree what would lead to warnings/probation/blacklisting if that's going to be handled separately from site wide moderation.

One change that even if not codified would be a community decision to try and frown upon and discourage any sort of near death or post death emotional outburst as either alignment. This isn't restricted to anger but encouraging and rewarding players indignation and emotion when they are about to die as town forces scum to try and mimic that emotion. Which I feel is a problem. I know not everyone agrees though and last time we had this discussion that concern was largely not shared, but I thought it might be time to raise it again. Mafia is stressful, rewarding additional emotional input leads to bad incentives.

Kinda like GJ said, I don't think AtE is the crux of the problem. In fact, I would argue that the vast majority of times, AtE has nothing to do with things. It's more common that 2-3 people will get into an argument and that others will sit on the sidelines and take potshots or bandwagon on. And usually that pattern of behavior lynches town, and leads to feelbads for the majority of the players.

My two cents: I'm with GJ/Osie on the AtE/emotional outburst side of the argument. Mafia is a game of human interaction, and humans--for better or worse--are emotional beings. Trying to moderate that feels like a recipe for disaster. The problem as I've observed it tends to be one or two players getting angry (or faking getting angry) and resorting to personal attacks rather than in-game/game choice attacks. Which, to be frank, is completely understandable, in part because calling a player bad is a lot easier than actually breaking down their posts and demonstrating why their play is bad (and if you're scum faking the emotion/attack, then it provides an avenue of attack without actually pinning down why you're attacking a player).

Early in my Mafia career I took things a lot more personally. I recall (not the specific game/player, but the occasion) getting into a shouting match with someone and both of us just going NUTS with the personal attacks before the mod stepped in, and at the end of the exchange, I got townread all over the place for my sincerity. I remember thinking, wow, there's an easy path to victory. But that led to me becoming a lot more emotionally invested in my games, which led to me starting to feel paranoia and suspicion to people around me IRL, which led to my first Mafia hiatus. So when I returned, I was careful to build some emotional distance, which means that now I have a pretty thick skin. Many of the players in my games who have voiced complaints/concerns about other players' game choices have heard me say something along the lines of "Please keep in mind that if [player X] is town, they sincerely believe that you're scum/making bad play choices, and if they're scum, they're doing what they're supposed to do to win." (That isn't intended to excuse toxic behavior; I often employ it when confronting a player who's being toxic, themselves, to help calm them down.) That's pretty much the perspective I play with these days, always trying to keep in mind that regardless of alignment, the person who's attacking me is likely doing exactly what the game calls for them to do. And I've certainly been enjoying my recent games more because of that. If I ever get back to a point where I leave a game with more frustration or anger than happiness or excitement, I probably need another break.

(I'm sure it probably also helps that since starting to play Mafia, I've gone through a lot of life changes, including having two kids, so perspective/priority shifts and all that...)

This may not be a popular outlook, but I really feel like toxicity needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis, which means that the first line of defense are mods who aren't afraid to confront players exhibiting toxic behavior, tactfully, with constructive criticism and recommendations. I feel like I'm not great at this yet, as the combination of my general distaste for "real life" confrontation and my thick-skinned perspective means that I'm slower to address toxicity than I ought to be. Something for me to work on, I guess.

From a player approach, I would strongly encourage players to focus on defining bad play (within each game experience, not as a site rule or anything), rather than just calling players bad. I mean, I don't think it's appropriate for one player to explicitly call another "bad", but when you get down to it, that's an implicit and expected part of the game: calling out other players on what you see as "bad" game choices to identify who's faking it. So we can't stop calling play "bad", but we can change how we go about it. Making a conscious effort to define/explain why a particular game choice is bad (rather than just calling the player bad and mic-dropping out) would go a long way, imo, to eliminating toxic behavior.

Ok, I guess that was more like my $1.02, but there it is, fwiw.

Quote from osieorb18 »

I mean, I'd fully expect that you, Vezok, and Shadow would policy lynch Tom in any other games for self-imposed posting restrictions and I would call you out as toxic hypocrites who lynched me entirely for personal dislike of me and not any other reason if you did not. If you're going to take out-of-game reasons to go after someone for whom you openly don't have any opinion on alignment, be consistent about it.

In fact, as far as I know, no other player on this site besides Megiddo has EVER been policy lynched for a posting restriction. EVER. And the three of you have been in a ton of games with Tom and others that have regularly followed self-imposed posting restrictions. Even ones that people complained about. A lot. So you, Vezok, and Shadow can take your fake "indignation" at someone following a self-imposed posting restriction and shove that load of crap back where it came from.

This was way more aggressive than I should have been about this. I apologize. I think people might see where I was coming from a little more clearly on calling it game-throwing, though. And the point it led to me thinking about and bringing up in Discord about ESL which others agreed with en masse still stands.

In general, though, I agree with the point. People are regularly inconsistent about rules, moderation, and the like, both on an explicit level, and implicitly in the court of public opinion, and we should get better about that as a community.

Depends on the policy. Nothing wrong with a self imposed PR if it isn't actually hindering your ability to post content.

I have a hard core policy lynch that lurkers should suffer, unless their few posts actually have hunting mechanics. But for whatever reason, people do almost the opposite. Like, Shadow was the top poster in Secret Agents, and there was 2-3 lurkers (one was a wolf Vezok) and no one even glanced at it.

I'm against policy lynches as a general rule because a) they tend not to actually pertain to the game, and b) I don't feel like the likely response to being policy lynched is a change in behavior. And if repeated policy lynches for a player are what's necessary to create that change, then multiple games are impacted by that non-game-related process. But the counterargument would, of course, be that those games are impacted by the behavior of the player who is being considered for policy lynch, so...

Again, this feels like the kind of thing that timely mod-initiated conversations should help address. I contacted Osie as soon as I realized that the soundcloud bytes were links that could be "edited" without an edit showing in-thread, which shouldn't be an option for players. I didn't have a game problem with any of his other posting restrictions, although I wasn't a fan of all of them. I feel like if you're going to self-impose a PR, you're at a higher risk of getting lynched, but that's because you're drawing attention to yourself in a way that could come from scum wanting to hide behind that PR. At that point, it feels less like a policy lynch. A player who posts in a way that decreases communication or clarity should expect scrutiny and possible consequences.

Policy lynching lurkers always feels like the right thing to do but never feels like something that will fix the problem. I probably feel that way because almost without exception, my own lurking is caused by lack of time/opportunity, and getting repeatedly lynched for it (especially if people are saying it's policy lynching) would just drive me away from the game. (Perhaps that's the intent behind some people's policy lynch policies, but 9 times out of 10, I'd rather make the attempt to change the behavior constructively rather than just beat people over the head in the hope that they comply with my wishes.) Another reason that I'm not fond of policy lynching lurkers is that I know that when I don't put in the participation time for a game I've committed to, I feel horribly guilty already--regardless of alignment--so being policy lynched would be less of a punishment than a relief. Being kicked out of a game because I didn't play is <<< than my own self-recrimination. I realize that may not be the case for everyone, of course...

I don't mean this as a flame, but apart from a vacation or some other type of slank cover, it you can't make at least one post a day, you probably can't commit a fair amount of time as either alignment to try to read and analyze a post.

And we aren't talking about low posting Cantrip. Gan_Dan I don't think is in any current games. He posts once every other day, and he actually posts a lot. The policy is against low posting + no hunting analysis. And while it is policy, it's basically coin flipping. MAybe it's a relief, but if you are a wolf, you are putting pressure on an already shorthanded team. If you are town, you are basically a liability. Yeah, you don't lynch them day 1 because you don't want to policy lynch. Now it's mislynch and lose, and there are still alive and lurking. It's not so much that I think it's policy. It's that I am willing to tank them now if they aren't hunting, hope they flip wolf, but not have to deal with that headache when the lynch is much more relevant.

I think you have been playing long enough to see a difference in low post coasting and low post hunting. I have a problem with the former, and zero issue with the latter.

If lurkers are a problem we need to deal with, we need game hosts to use more stringent posting guidelines. I've been saying this since at least the team event ended, but our typical posting standards are 1 content post every 48-72 hours with 2 week phases. That makes it "legal" to make less than 10 posts per phase and never even be in prod range (post at game start (1), post on day 3 (2), post on day 6 (3), post on day 9 (4), post on day 12 (5), lurk the last 48 hours until lynch). I'm sure most people would be frustrated with a slot that only posted five times in a day phase, especially if they didn't produce much content, even though by the host's rules they're well within the 72 hour activity guidelines. Pushing those up to 48 hours only adds a couple of posts over a two week phase (from 5 to 7, essentially).

Of course, prods were never meant to keep activity levels high, their purpose was originally to remind players about the game if they've forgotten. But if we have a problem where players aren't forgetting about the game, they just aren't posting in it, we need stricter activity requirements and we need to make those clear during sign ups OR we need to design games with interesting mechanics to talk about to keep players engaged. Or we just need to try somewhat shorter phases.

We don't have a modbot or forum features like MU has, so it would be a ton of work on the host's part to count posts per phase.

We could, however, try rolling post requirements. 1 post per 24 hour period with prods every 72 hours, for example, so that if you post at game start and need to be prodded, you have to make seven posts before the next prod period to "catch up" to the requirements. This will lead to somewhat shorter posts and a lot of players maintaining the minimum posting requirement with short posts between their longer analysis posts, though (as well as some players who just don't do long analysis posts still being around).

We could try just straight up 24 hour prods with V/LA if you'll be gone for longer than a day and autoreplace if you fail to respond within 24 hours.

We can try 1 week phases (5/2 or 6/1) instead of 2 week phases, though we'd have to be careful to keep night phases off of the weekends because we have a lot of players that can only post or mostly only post on weekends. Maybe play Tuesday-Sunday with Monday Night phases.

We can temp close threads during the week and only allow posting on weekends (or some subset of days during the week like Sat-Mon) but still play the game over several weeks. Host would need to send out PM reminders before each posting session or something, though (this is not an elegant solution, I'm spit balling).

I was talking to Eco at some point near the end of the team event about trying out some new voting mechanics, like having run off voting instead of instant majority (where during the first, say, week of the day phase, everyone would vote, and the top three candidates are the only ones who can be voted for during the second week). That gives you two distinct periods within the day phase with new stuff to talk about in the middle of the two week phase, but it fundamentally changes the way the game is played, too.

Using stuff like Day vigs and mechanics that can be played during the day seem to help with activity, too. I don't recall too many lurker problems in Arkham, for example. We had a couple people not posting a whole ton, but everyone was pretty excited about the game and I credit that to both the excellent flavor and the auction house system, which gave people something else to do and talk about during the day phase other than "wow you suk".

Anyway, my point is that we can't take really take Council action or even recommend force replacement unless someone is actually breaking game rules. If you want "serial lurkers" to be talked to by Council members, be put on probation, etc. you need to write your game rules so that they actually break them instead of writing extremely lax posting requirements into your game and then being surprised when some people only do the minimum. I will not support across-the-board activity requirements with maaaaybe the exception of Basics where we really ought to have a standardized rule set for hosts to use anyway.

(edit: we can't really codify "sufficient content" either, so we either need higher posting minimums or to just accept that policy lynching noncontributors is the best we can do. There was some (very brief) discussion around giving town an extra mislynch due to "the lurking problem" but that has a whole host of issues, as well, mostly that you can't really predict when it will be needed and when it's unbalanced because you don't know the playerlist in advance).

Sufficient content = hunting posts. I guess policy might not be the correct word, since in my world(s) as both alignments, my hostility towards lurker spots is that they aren't hunting with their few posts, not necessarily that they have few posts.

Quote from Gentleman Johnny »

Yeah, you don't lynch them day 1 because you don't want to policy lynch. Now it's mislynch and lose, and there are still alive and lurking. It's not so much that I think it's policy. It's that I am willing to tank them now if they aren't hunting, hope they flip wolf, but not have to deal with that headache when the lynch is much more relevant.

No, I get it. I hate being in that position, too, but I also still don't feel like policy lynching them accomplishes anything in the long run unless they were specifically scum lurking as a tactic, in which case they *might* not do that in future games...but no guarantee.

Quote from GJ »

I think you have been playing long enough to see a difference in low post coasting and low post hunting. I have a problem with the former, and zero issue with the latter.

Yes, I know the difference, but speaking from experience, it's harder to condemn--across the board--low post coasting when I've been guilty of that, as both alignments, due to real life circumstances that arose after I signed up for the game. I can't justify establishing a policy that says that anyone who low post coasts gets killed off because it's not reliably a player shortcoming or malicious intent.

Now, an established pattern of a player lurking across multiple games is different, but I feel like that should be something brought up during signups. When I signed up for Banned Mafia, Wuffles (understandably) called me out on my recent serial lurking. He very kindly let me in and (I hope) I didn't disappoint on that particular issue, but that's what makes sense to me: mods looking at players signing up and saying "hey, you have a spotty record with lurking; how is this time going to be different?" (or even, "hey, you've lurked enough that I feel justified in saying you can't play in this game"). I suspect that's what I'd say if, for example, Kpaca signed up for a game I was hosting. I'm pretty sure he's flaked on the last 4-5 games he's signed up for, and as a mod, I'd be very leery to let him into my game. If I did, it'd be on a public probationary status, with heightened posting requirements, and I probably would look for a dedicated replacement before the game even began, just in case.

@Silver: I feel very lucky that I have a job where I spend most my time at a computer and I have periodic down time when I'm waiting on tasks that allows me to participate in Mafia during the week. My weekends are routinely spent away from screens/internet access doing projects that don't allow me to post on the weekends as frequently. If we as a site moved to a more focused weekend participation, I would be a lot less likely to play. Same with shorter phases, especially Nights that fall on weekends. Same with increased posting requirements: I already feel bad that I announce each game that I'm semi-V/LA on weekends. I know I'm the minority here, and if it's decided that that's what's healthiest for the forum, I wouldn't expect my schedule idiosyncrasies to weigh much in that decision, but it would make me rather sad. That's why I enjoy playing here vs MAL or MU; I just can't regularly do the shorter phases.

Sure Cantrip, I totally get that and I don't think I'd really want to see an intense focus on weekend posting. Certainly not as a forum. If we had 6-day Days and 24 hour Nights on Tuesday or Wednesday, maybe, that would work too, or just the rolling post count minimum, there are lots of things we can do. And I'm really not looking to "enforce" these on the board as a whole, per se, my point is mainly that the Council can't take action against "lurkers" who aren't actually breaking any game rules... and I'd rather not have strict prod enforcement where we go "okay, you're on probation for being prodded in your last 3 games" or something like that.

Cantrip, I don't know if we are arguing the same thing or not.

The point is if you lurk, and are still alive into lynch or lose, you are a liability. And the prayer is that if I am town, you are a wolf. Because otherwise we lose. It's not so much a policy, it's just "I am going to lynch you now, because you aren't going to be any more town tomorrow". If you have to deal with a lurker, you need to nip it earlier rather than later. Wolves aren't going to shoot low posters unless they have a good reason to read power role in them.

So if player A is a no hunt lurker, and I am town, I want them dead. Because maybe they are a wolf. But every other player is going to post more non irrelevant content and I can re-evaluate. The lurker will not. All that changes is that it's now 2 mislynches later, and you still have a player you don't know how to deal with, but the lynch is a lot more relevant.

Everything else is a mod problem. If Player B can post only once every other day and the host is ok with it, fine. But that one post better be something other than a one-liner.

As a player who has lurked D1 because of real life issues then blazed into D2 (or a subsequent Day) to become a high-content poster, I know that's not consistently accurate. Perhaps it's my accursed optimism speaking, but I tend to see most lurking as akin to my own, with players remorseful that they can't participate more and with serious intent to participate fully at their earliest opportunity. Not to say that I haven't been tempted to pursue lurker lynches; some games I've condoned them and contributed to them. But it's not my policy to do so.

That is your prerogative. I won't try and change it.

But it is and will be mine to hunt and push people who aren't hunting. Whether they post one time a day or a hundred times a day. Doesn't even have to be a wall, just an attempt to look like they are hunting. If you can't manage that, then maybe the other players will coddle you. I will not, and I think it's a mistake for those who do. Because like it or not, when you give lurkers a pass for a day, you letting players know they can live through day 1 if they just don't post.

Quote from D_V »

Quote from Iso »

DV, are you okay with me posting my messages to you about my recommendations on how to handle this? It might elicit some helpful input from others.

Absolutely.

Edit: I should preface I think most of that is your story so I don't think I have any right to stop you either way.

DV Last Sunday at 3:49 PM
Hey I remember you had issues at one point with your own behavior. Can I ask what steps you took to solve it?

Iso Last Sunday at 3:50 PM
The first step, for me, was realizing that I wasn't enjoying Mafia.
I asked myself why. Was it the people I was playing with? The fact that I'd been doing it for so long that it was stale? Was it general burnout? Perhaps I had fallen too far into my Mafia persona to realize I was being a general jackass?
Once I identified the cause, I took a step back.
I looked through some of my old posts and, rather than looking to validate myself and what I had been doing, I looked at how I may have antagonized or otherwise been unwelcoming to people.
I made mental notes about the kinds of things that people seemed to react poorly to, which were usually the reactions that caused me to get angry in-game.
I took another step back.
Mafia is a game. It's just a game. There are other people involved, and those people have emotions that also affect the way they play the game, and how they receive my own play.
I needed to stop being so emotionally invested in the game.
It was draining me in all the worst ways. I was definitely burned out.
I kept playing because I felt like I had to - to keep games filling, to keep up a presence in the community, etc.
It was detrimentally affecting my play, as well, because I assumed anyone who was intentionally antagonizing me knowing what I was capable of was scum.
It also demotivated me from keeping up to date with the game, which then made people think I was scum.
It was a double-edged sword, and both ends were pointing at me.
I took one final step back.
I played a couple of games, and every time I was tempted to flame someone, be toxic, or just generally unpleasant, I paused myself, separated myself from my emotions and the situation, and walked away from my computer for a moment. When I came back, I was usually clear-headed enough to make my point without coming across as condescending, ********-ish, etc.
I would remind myself that it's just a game and that it's okay if other people are dumb because "I'm Iso, and I ****in' got this"
Even when coming under pressure in-game, which makes it infinitely more difficult to stay level-headed, I did my best to keep ad hom out of it. It's not about attacking the player making the argument - it's about illustrating why the argument is bad without saying "this is bad and you are bad and you should feel bad".
It's all about impulse control, adjusting your perspective, and remembering that it's not just a game, but a team game.
You have other people relying on your success to win, even if they're not necessarily carrying their own way sufficiently.
Taking a break from constantly being in a Mafia game for 7 years was also a big step towards being able to reprioritize the way I viewed and handled things in-game.
Yeah, that can maybe lead one to get rusty, but it'll also help you get out of your head and remove a lot of your own biases and predispositions about people and how they're playing the game that were probably affecting your play in ways you didn't realize.
It's okay to put the noose down every once in a while to regroup and recollect yourself.
I don't have the same passion for the game that I did when I was a 19-year old college kid who didn't have time to sleep (so I spent all the time I was awake on Mafia anyway), but with all of the above in mind, I was able to find a way to continue to enjoy the game. There's no need to pointlessly bait people into giving you hostile reactions or anything that might cause a case of the feel-bads.
Just try to be empathetic, when all else fails.
If you have any questions, let me know - but I hope this helps you.

DV Last Sunday at 4:04 PM
I feel like a lot of that describes me to a T.
I've probably scapegoated my behavior on other things too

Iso Last Sunday at 4:05 PM
Likely the case.

DV Last Sunday at 4:05 PM
Thank you

Iso Last Sunday at 4:05 PM
<3 Glad to help. Let me know how it goes for you.

Iso Last Monday at 4:59 PM
https://nordiclarp.org/2015/03/02/bleed-the-spillover-between-player-and-character/ This might help you sort out your feelings on the matter a bit.

@GJ: Certainly your prerogative, as well. For my part, I'll a) try not to lurk in games I play in, b) try to be more discerning and active when modding a game with players who are lurking/have a history of such, and c) try to make my gameplay and setups interesting and friendly to encourage posting rather than foster an environment that rewards lurking.

Thanks for sharing that, Iso. Good advice all around, and I really enjoyed that article. Didn't realize there was a defined label for the phenomenon.

With regards to lurking, I agree that it's a prevalent problem in our meta, and I think a lot of that can be due to deadlines. I think that's another problem, though, because I know that I personally wouldn't be able to play Mafia with shorter deadlines, and I know that appeals to a lot of our older playerbase. Because of the relaxed deadlines, more people are able to participate. With such a small playerbase, I'm not sure we want to ostracize the people who can play here because of the not-so-stringent deadlines.

On that note, as far as lynching lurkers go, yes, GJ - I agree that this should be important to some degree - but when somebody is behaving in an overtly scummy manner to me, I would rather remove that player from the game before they can sow more dissension within the game. The lurkers can come later. The other thing is that lurker-hunting is a supremely easy tactic to pick up and utilize as scum to make it look like you're doing something without contributing meaningfully to the game. Nobody wants to read 30 posts of "not changing my vote because lurkers", and it's just lazy play, IMO. I think Amistaria III was a great example of this - we wiped out the scum, sans the lurker, and at the end of the game, I said, "Well, I don't feel like any of the active players are really scum, and they're not lynches I'd feel great about pursuing. So, let's lynch the lurker and win?" And then we won.

Edit: More chat with DV:

DV Today at 4:07 PM
A follow up question, how much would you classify yourself as someone that needs to win? Or wants to win. For example in magic playing for fun was always really hard for me in some senses. EDH always became semi competitive. I found play groups that thought the same way instead of trying to dull that desire.

Iso Today at 4:18 PM
When I play games, I think "having fun" and "winning" are about 50-50 for my goals. I've been trying to make having fun more of a priority, lately, but I've always had a competitive nature, so it's a difficult change. Actually, EDH has been a great foray for me into "playing for fun" more than "playing to win" once I realized that other people weren't having fun when I was playing decks like Slivers and Kaalia (partially because I realized I didn't have fun playing against decks like that). I took apart my oppressive decks and built decks that are more like Rube Goldberg machines that do wacky ***** to accomplish cool stuff.
I separate that from my mentality when I play Legacy, which, while I'm trying to have fun, is inherently a more competitive format
I think a lot of that came from my childhood where I could never beat Seppel at games because I was the younger of us and lacked the mental faculties to strategize as well as my older sibling, who had more experience than I in such things. Because I never won, a lot of what became important to me was winning and/or being clever while trying to win.
But, I've come to terms with that.
I'm simply trying to adjust my behavior, accordingly, now.
(That said, I still very much enjoy being clever while playing games, and winning.)

DV Today at 4:27 PM
Yeah, for sure. I moved to playing less "Competitive" games with friends.
A lot of co-op games and or team games like Battle Royals.

Iso Today at 4:31 PM
nods
Of course, those are still competitive, but not at the expense of your playgroup.
If you all lose, you can be butthurt at invisible people on the internet
Rather than each other.

DV Today at 4:32 PM
We used to play moba's but a lot of those games lasted like 45 minutes. So, a lot more of time was invested and when you lost it sucked

Iso Today at 4:33 PM
right

DV Today at 4:35 PM
Perhaps mafia is something that inherently hard for me to separate need to win versus fun. I know a lot of my thoughts in the last on going game were "want to win" and "I'm not performing enough to win"-so I got more stress, and "Team mates are not performing enough to win".
I didn't used to think about the game this way.
So, I think that is a large part of it for me. I'm ******* getting too competitive.

Iso Today at 4:35 PM
Mafia's a huge investment mentally, emotionally, and energy-wise.
Our games are super long, so it feels that much worse when you lose.
It's hard when you don't feel like your teammates are carrying their weight, but remember there's nothing at stake.
If it were a $10,000 Mafia Championship I could understand the frustration, and it might even be justified at that point
But it's just a game that you knowingly invested your time and effort into.
You're not always going to win.
Yeah, it feels better when you do, but even if you don't, it's not necessarily a reflection on you of not being good enough to have won.
And at the worst, if you contribute to the game meaningfully and in a positive way, other people will have enjoyed themselves, more, and will want to play with you again in the future.

DV Today at 4:38 PM
Last part is the most important.

Iso Today at 4:39 PM
Yes, winning is fine to have as a goal in Mafia. But what you truly want is to foster a welcome and friendly environment that people want to come back to so that they can play more epic games with you. Right?
Don't lose sight of the goal.

Now I want a $10,000 Mafia Championship.

Quote from shadowlancerx »

I think self imposed PRs are a case by case thing. I think it’s disingenuous of you Osie to suggest that I dislike you as an individual, as you know that’s false. And I think it’s apmost certainly false for the others as well. Certain scenarios cause people to react more strongly than others. And Scum love the king is a good example of a very visceral reaction to a type of PR that wasn’t well liked. As others have said, the MS paint posts could have actually done you well, it was the other stuff that didn’t.

As far as hard and fast policy lynching, I only have one rule that I won’t break, and that’s self voters. And even that I can’t always sway the thread my way, but I’ll stand by it.

See DM.

You both seem to think that I am advocating lynching a lurker over a super wolf read player. I am not, and apologize if I gave that impression. If I have someone I have as a stronger wolf read, I would go for that person. But earlier, it's hard to figure that out with bodies, so lurkers are easier.

Cantrip: Half your posts if they were the single post you made for a day would have had me reading it town in Playstation. Quality > Quantity. It's just that if quality is low, YOU DIE.

I feel like shorter deadlines would help with lurkers, especially as the longer a day phase goes, the more likely someone runs into a vacation or time period they can't post. Plus, I feel like long days wear out the town (and while they wear out the wolves too sometimes), which hurts the game in the long run. Apathy runs really high on longer days, especially when it ends in a mislynch.

My resistance game in signups will be experimenting with shorter phases by mtgs standards. If the first nominator is approved a cycle will max out at 1 week, and can go quicker if players nominate faster.

I plan to experiment with 10 day phases in more traditional mini's going forward which while a small step might help keep things moving for those at least but still allow the players who need more time to join in.

I said this in discussion with Shadow and I think it's important enough to repeat here:

I absolutely think it comes down to the host. Because the goal of any competent host is for the players to have fun. And if the majority of players needed to lynch are [policy] lynching because they aren't having fun with the game, then the host has failed.

Except as the host you can't reasonably do anything about players that aren't breaking the rules, they're just adhering to the minimums. I would be pretty upset if someone came to me or I found out about someone getting force replaced (or even mod killed) for "lurking" without violating the host's activity requirements.

If you want to pin the blame on the host for not force replacing/modkilling lurkers, you have to set the expectation for those punishments in advance. We had this problem during the team event because we said we would police activity more stringently but the actual rules required repeated prods and had no defined timeline for force replacement and modkills. Some players thought we should have force replaced or immediately modkilled 24 hours after the first missed prod because that was how they interpreted the stringent policing of activity, but the actual rules didn't allow that. They actually pretty much straight up forbade it because after missed prods we had to find out if their teammates could source a replacement and give them time to do that, then look for one ourselves, *then* go to modkills, but that whole process took far too long.

Which just goes back to the activity requirements. You can't reasonably modkill or force replace someone who is meeting them. If you want to be able to take action against them as a host, you need to write activity requirements that they actually violate.

Quote from Silvercrys3467 »

Except as the host you can't reasonably do anything about players that aren't breaking the rules, they're just adhering to the minimums. I would be pretty upset if someone came to me or I found out about someone getting force replaced (or even mod killed) for "lurking" without violating the host's activity requirements.

If you want to pin the blame on the host for not force replacing/modkilling lurkers, you have to set the expectation for those punishments in advance. We had this problem during the team event because we said we would police activity more stringently but the actual rules required repeated prods and had no defined timeline for force replacement and modkills. Some players thought we should have force replaced or immediately modkilled 24 hours after the first missed prod because that was how they interpreted the stringent policing of activity, but the actual rules didn't allow that. They actually pretty much straight up forbade it because after missed prods we had to find out if their teammates could source a replacement and give them time to do that, then look for one ourselves, *then* go to modkills, but that whole process took far too long.

Which just goes back to the activity requirements. You can't reasonably modkill or force replace someone who is meeting them. If you want to be able to take action against them as a host, you need to write activity requirements that they actually violate.

I wasn't talking about lurking, that was more general, though it spurred from PRs.

"You're making this game unfun for people to the degree that they want to step outside of the game and lynch you. Please change your behavior or I'll have to seek replacement for the health of the game."

I would like to chime in with regards to the whole D_V thing, having thought about it for a while.

D_V absolutely deserves to be banned for his actions. He should have been banned long ago, and on a sane site, he would have. His actions were utterly unsportsmanlike.

However, D_V is also correct in pointing out that he was allowed to get away with way too much.

The fact of the matter is that the state of moderation on this site is appalling. It's questionable what the mods actually do. I know I won't make any friends on the mod team saying this, but I respect you enough to be honest about it. When I first came here, I gave up trying to report inflammatory posts. What was the point? The mods made it very clear they weren't ever going to respond to them. They were just allowing them to run rampant. It was unbelievable to me. What is the point of not angrily trolling people? **** it, let's act like angry kids on Fortnite, it's not like the people whose job it is to police conduct seem to care. If they don't, why shouldn't I just tell people what I think of them?

In fact, I actually had a mod tell me, and I am not making a word of this up, that a problematic player was warned, but they didn't want to publicly announce it. This mod apparently thought the best way to promote a law-abiding community was making certain that the fact that a post was against the rules was keeping it a secret. Literally making certain that other people didn't know. Breathtaking.

For context, I used to play on MTGNews, which was the parent site of MTGSalvation before the schism (long story). On MTGNews, if you had to be replaced ever, even once, you were put onto a ban list. If you had to be removed from the game for bad behavior, which was almost entirely unheard of, even once, you were placed onto a ban list. The ban list was not binding, hosts could choose to ignore it at their own peril, but the fact was that this type of behavior was very infrequent because if you acted up, THE MODS DID SOMETHING.

That might seem draconian. Fair. You have to adapt your method of governance to suit the community, what worked in one place might stifle another. But the fact of the matter is the moderation here has been toothless, and this is what you get as a result. Be gentle with weeds, and your garden gets overrun.

So no, I don't believe it's necessarily fair that D_V gets banned, because yes, he might be one of the most flagrant cases, perhaps the most, but it's not like he's 100% responsible for the caustic environment here, and it's not on his watch that this occurred.

The objection I have is calling this "probation." No, it's not probation. D_V should be banned if he ever does this again, but that's not because he did it a bunch of times, and therefore if he does it once more, he's out. It should be because if ANYONE goes to that flagrant and gratuitous a level of personal attack, they should be banned, irrespective of how many times that person has done it. They should be banned on a first offense for this.

It's fine to say that we need to shape up, but that "time to shape up" shouldn't merely apply to him, because singling him out is ignoring the problem, which is not him, it's the forum at large. There needs to be a clear delineation. This was the old site, we're tightening things up now, this is the new era of moderation. And the mods need to follow through on actually enforcing the rules. People will continue to flame if there's no real punishment for flaming. People will continue to troll if there's no real punishment for trolling. People will continue to drop out of games if there's no real punishment for dropping out of games. This is basic.

Quote from Highroller »

The fact of the matter is that the state of moderation on this site is appalling. It's questionable what the mods actually do. I know I won't make any friends on the mod team saying this, but I respect you enough to be honest about it. When I first came here, I gave up trying to report inflammatory posts. What was the point? The mods made it very clear they weren't ever going to respond to them. They were just allowing them to run rampant. It was unbelievable to me. What is the point of not angrily trolling people? **** it, let's act like angry kids on Fortnite, it's not like the people whose job it is to police conduct seem to care. If they don't, why shouldn't I just tell people what I think of them?

In fact, I actually had a mod tell me, and I am not making a word of this up, that a problematic player was warned, but they didn't want to publicly announce it. This mod apparently thought the best way to promote a law-abiding community was making certain that the fact that a post was against the rules was keeping it a secret. Literally making certain that other people didn't know. Breathtaking.

For context, I used to play on MTGNews, which was the parent site of MTGSalvation before the schism (long story). On MTGNews, if you had to be replaced ever, even once, you were put onto a ban list. If you had to be removed from the game for bad behavior, which was almost entirely unheard of, even once, you were placed onto a ban list. The ban list was not binding, hosts could choose to ignore it at their own peril, but the fact was that this type of behavior was very infrequent because if you acted up, THE MODS DID SOMETHING.

That might seem draconian. Fair. You have to adapt your method of governance to suit the community, what worked in one place might stifle another. But the fact of the matter is the moderation here has been toothless, and this is what you get as a result. Be gentle with weeds, and your garden gets overrun.

I agree with parts of this, somewhat.

Just out of morbid curiosity, did you feel that the moderation of the Debate section when it still existed was also toothless?

I know that we're talking about a few different subjects here (at least DV, lurkers, and host versus player responsibility), but I wanted to bring up another one, hopefully without entirely derailing the first ones.

I think that the three-post limit is ridiculous. 99% of the time, people who go beyond that limit do it on accident or in a context in which moderating it doesn't make sense, to the point where it isn't moderated. I myself just in the past few weeks have found myself accidentally posting four times or being very ready to post a fourth time, and then giving up and leaving a post unposted for HOURS.

I readily understand having a rule against spamming the thread. Heck, it's not super often that there's any reason someone should be posting more than about 5 posts in a row. That said, I would never put even 5 as a limit. And the subjective judging of whether or not multiple posts count as content... Well, if someone posts like, 10 posts, okay, they should probably wait a bit. That said, who's to say those 10 posts aren't content in the context of the game? A site mod who is just sticking their head in? I think this is something that should absolutely (as it is on pretty much any other mafia site) be down to the case-by-case judgement of the host and/or the players talking to the host. If something egregious happens, and mods are called in, or something is obviously a bunch of spam posts, that's one thing. But I've played in and/or read games and/or rules of probably 7-10 sites ranging from very populated like MU or MafiaScum to relatively lower population like Mafia 451 or even SC2 Mafia. And as far as I can recall (I'll check if people want me to do so) NONE of them have a posting limit like we do.

Quote from osieorb18 »

Quote from Highroller »

The fact of the matter is that the state of moderation on this site is appalling. It's questionable what the mods actually do. I know I won't make any friends on the mod team saying this, but I respect you enough to be honest about it. When I first came here, I gave up trying to report inflammatory posts. What was the point? The mods made it very clear they weren't ever going to respond to them. They were just allowing them to run rampant. It was unbelievable to me. What is the point of not angrily trolling people? **** it, let's act like angry kids on Fortnite, it's not like the people whose job it is to police conduct seem to care. If they don't, why shouldn't I just tell people what I think of them?

In fact, I actually had a mod tell me, and I am not making a word of this up, that a problematic player was warned, but they didn't want to publicly announce it. This mod apparently thought the best way to promote a law-abiding community was making certain that the fact that a post was against the rules was keeping it a secret. Literally making certain that other people didn't know. Breathtaking.

For context, I used to play on MTGNews, which was the parent site of MTGSalvation before the schism (long story). On MTGNews, if you had to be replaced ever, even once, you were put onto a ban list. If you had to be removed from the game for bad behavior, which was almost entirely unheard of, even once, you were placed onto a ban list. The ban list was not binding, hosts could choose to ignore it at their own peril, but the fact was that this type of behavior was very infrequent because if you acted up, THE MODS DID SOMETHING.

That might seem draconian. Fair. You have to adapt your method of governance to suit the community, what worked in one place might stifle another. But the fact of the matter is the moderation here has been toothless, and this is what you get as a result. Be gentle with weeds, and your garden gets overrun.

I agree with parts of this, somewhat.

Just out of morbid curiosity, did you feel that the moderation of the Debate section when it still existed was also toothless?

If we followed HR's advice half the active players would be banned himself included.

Specifically, him only calling for me and ignoring GJ seems highly disingenuous.

What exactly do you agree with Osie?

Quote from osieorb18 »

Just out of morbid curiosity, did you feel that the moderation of the Debate section when it still existed was also toothless?

No. In fact, I told you that you were being too strict.

Quote from D_V »

If we followed HR's advice half the active players would be banned himself included.

No. Half the active players didn't have to be replaced in a game.

Quote from D_V »

Specifically, him only calling for me and ignoring GJ seems highly disingenuous.

My understanding is you're the one in the most hot water.

Which is 100% warranted, and I totally understand the impetus to ban you, I initially agreed with it. But it's not as though we can suddenly change posting standards and then ban you retroactively for not living up to them. And to say these were the standards before now is disingenuous, because no one was actually enforcing them.

Quote from osieorb18 »

I myself just in the past few weeks have found myself accidentally posting four times or being very ready to post a fourth time, and then giving up and leaving a post unposted for HOURS.

I've literally done this multiple times in the past 48 hours, then facepalmed and gone on with my day.

It also has openly made the site less welcoming to new players.

I generally just post what pops in my head. I didn't even know what the limit was until I got here. Lol.

I think the limit should just be "Not Excessive".

Train of thought is important to Mafia and sperate posts is the most effective way to separate thoughts.

I'm really fed up right now so I'm just going to leave this here and come back later.

Since I started hosting, reviewing, and moderating mafia much more than playing, there have been a larger number of posts made by players in games that completely take me out of the in-game persona, usually because as a host I would warn those posts for toxicity or similar.

Policy lynching to me is when the majority of players have decided that they a player is so detrimental to their enjoyment of the game that they will temporarily break the game and push through effectively a modkill for reasons outside of the game mechanics. To me, that means the host has failed at their number one job of making the game more enjoyable for the players.

If people want my lynch in any game for real reasons, then go ahead. But if I get policy lynched multiple times...

The only two things tying me to the site are the mafia community and the EDH Primer Committee. If I'm policy-lynched two games in quick succession, that is plenty to signal to me that the former doesn't want me here. I already made clear to site admins that if I am not part of the mafia community, I am not part of the site. So if I get policy lynched two games in quick succession, regardless of alignment in those games, I will leave the site and not look back. I don't say this lightly.

Osie, while I can understand that perspective on policy kills, and your frustration with the idea makes sense given that definition, I don't think that's a universal definition of the term. That's certainly not how I, at least, would interpret the term, or what I would mean with the term.

A good example is "lynch all liars". I would absolutely describe that as a policy kill, but it's not because liars make the game unenjoyable - without liars, there wouldn't be a Mafia game! It's a "policy" because of the theory that doing it consistently over multiple games increases town win rate, even if it's not necessarily the optimal move in a single game. I think multiple "policies" are built on that premise - "if we do this consistently, and it is known that we do this consistently, it will increase town win rate".

The kind of policy kill you're talking about certainly exists, but I don't think it's the only kind.

Quote from Highroller »

Quote from osieorb18 »

Just out of morbid curiosity, did you feel that the moderation of the Debate section when it still existed was also toothless?

No. In fact, I told you that you were being too strict.

Quote from D_V »

If we followed HR's advice half the active players would be banned himself included.

No. Half the active players didn't have to be replaced in a game.

Quote from D_V »

Specifically, him only calling for me and ignoring GJ seems highly disingenuous.

My understanding is you're the one in the most hot water.

Which is 100% warranted, and I totally understand the impetus to ban you, I initially agreed with it. But it's not as though we can suddenly change posting standards and then ban you retroactively for not living up to them. And to say these were the standards before now is disingenuous, because no one was actually enforcing them.

Ahhh,

I understand this a lot better now. I probably overall agree with you I think.

Do you think a more formal rule structure would help then? IE specific steps that should be taken etc. Personally, I dislike the outright ban because with hosts ignoring the list then I say what is the point. So, I'd like hosts to listen to the list when it comes to that. Also, we don't have enough players to be able to be that strict.

If you think about it this way those rules work like a sift. It will work with a high amount of players, the players left probably fit a certain play style. So, it works but it needs a decent amount of players to feed into the system.

I'd propose since we have smaller player base we should work more on sculpting players into model players. That would IMO take a more proactive approach from the community on voicing opinions of problems. In my case I don't want to play if players are not going to enjoy playing with me. Like, whats the point? It isn't fun to have people go "OH X is joining". You feel?

So, I'd argue that we might need a more standardized approach to the moderation. Right now its up the the individual game hosts. Which as Shadow pointed out you are conflating game hosts with forum mods. They are not one and the same on this site.

That all being said, I think a lot of this is case by case. Exceptions should be made for somethings and not for others. Having a set of rules and then having them be broken could cause some players to feel ostracized.

For me personally, having this open conversation has worked for me very well. Iso's been a good help, so have others. I think for me its realizing how much of a problem I was, and that I wasn't willing to admit to myself that there was an issue. It might surprise you as well, but I have very little contact with mods on these issues.

I don't recall ever policy lynching you in any past games. I don't really policy Lynch in general.

Quote from KamikazeArchon »

Osie, while I can understand that perspective on policy kills, and your frustration with the idea makes sense given that definition, I don't think that's a universal definition of the term. That's certainly not how I, at least, would interpret the term, or what I would mean with the term.

A good example is "lynch all liars". I would absolutely describe that as a policy kill, but it's not because liars make the game unenjoyable - without liars, there wouldn't be a Mafia game! It's a "policy" because of the theory that doing it consistently over multiple games increases town win rate, even if it's not necessarily the optimal move in a single game. I think multiple "policies" are built on that premise - "if we do this consistently, and it is known that we do this consistently, it will increase town win rate".

The kind of policy kill you're talking about certainly exists, but I don't think it's the only kind.

Okay.

I'm sorry if my terminology wasn't specific enough. I don't have a problem with LAL, though as Azrael has expressed in the past, I don't believe it's a very good strategy.

But there's a very big difference between voting someone on actual in-game behavioral tells (self-voting, lurking, etc) and saying "I don't care what your alignment is, I just don't like that you in particular as a player have this particular posting style, so you're getting lynched." (Gimmick or not a gimmick.)

The former is lynching someone based on behavioral tells. I would not call that a policy lynch, to be honest. If, say, Shadow, leads to the lynch of an IC for self-voting because Shadow has declared that he will lynch all self-voters regardless of alignment, then he's broken the social contract of the game. He and any other players involved in that lynch for "policy" reasons have stepped out of the game and taken the game away from the host.

There are a bunch of questions that come up though, and Shadow and I have discussed this some. To use my lynch in SLTK as an example as one of the more extreme examples in the past two years that I've witnessed...

Would any other player (e.g. Tom or Rodemy) be lynched in that situation?

If yes, what makes a stylistic choice that either of Shadow/Vezok at least would know is not alignment indicative "inherently scummy behavior"? Well, here's the thing. It isn't a lynch for in-game alignment reasons. Most players, myself included, have made it very clear that self-imposed posting restrictions have nothing to do with alignment. I would have followed that self-imposed posting restriction if I was either town or scum in that game. And on top of that, it has been repeatedly explicitly mentioned by the two of them that I was lynched regardless of alignment.

But Shadow's answer at least, wasn't yes. It was that the specific individual and setting mattered. So here's where we get to what I would call a "policy lynch" instead of just "a lynch due to strongly-associated behavioral tells." If another player had been in that slot, according to Shadow's own statements, they would not have been lynched. That's not how a lynch on in-game behavioral tells works. That's the majority of players in a game deciding that they wanted another player gone for non-game reasons.

%%%

Lynching someone regardless of alignment is playing against your win condition by the basic premise of the game of Mafia.

This is what I've been arguing this whole time.

This is what has been dodged by people arguing against me this whole time.

While I don't blame Grapefruit nearly as much due to the technical difficulties, and I have expressed resolution as such to him in private, I was "lynched" (if you can call it that; the game WAS broken at that point) by three members of the community (Shadow, Vezok, Grape) who took it upon themselves to break the social contract of the game rather than communicating with the host, and another player (DV) who lynched me for strategic reasons.

Shadow, Vezok and Grape were playing against their win condition and should have received warnings (Grape) and potentially modkills (Shadow, Vezok). Would that likely have destroyed the game? Yes. Was it still the correct course of action? Absolutely. Do I begrudge Cantrip the game for not doing so? No. Do I begrudge Shadow and Vezok's breaking of the game? Absolutely.

Quote from osieorb18 »

Policy lynching to me is when the majority of players have decided that they a player is so detrimental to their enjoyment of the game that they will temporarily break the game and push through effectively a modkill for reasons outside of the game mechanics. To me, that means the host has failed at their number one job of making the game more enjoyable for the players.

Yeah no. If a player is not having fun, that's the fault of the host. If the player decides to ***** on the game? That's the player's fault. He's the one going out of his way to ***** on the game. It doesn't matter whether he's doing it because the game isn't fun, or for any other reason. It's still his fault. The person could have dealt with this in any number of ways that weren't doing something that sucked the fun out of the experience of others.

Regarding your situation: You can't just arbitrarily decide you're going to make the game unfun through a self-imposed posting restriction that no one had anyone to do with but you, continue doing it even when everyone tells you outright that it's not fun and gives you ample warning that they will lynch you because of it, and then blame anyone else but yourself when you get lynched. You cannot say you weren't warned.

Quote from D_V » »

Do you think a more formal rule structure would help then?

Absolutely. Right now it seems to be subject to the subjective whims of people who are being far too lenient.

Quote from Highroller »

I would like to chime in with regards to the whole D_V thing, having thought about it for a while.

D_V absolutely deserves to be banned for his actions. He should have been banned long ago, and on a sane site, he would have. His actions were utterly unsportsmanlike.

However, D_V is also correct in pointing out that he was allowed to get away with way too much.

The fact of the matter is that the state of moderation on this site is appalling. It's questionable what the mods actually do. I know I won't make any friends on the mod team saying this, but I respect you enough to be honest about it. When I first came here, I gave up trying to report inflammatory posts. What was the point? The mods made it very clear they weren't ever going to respond to them. They were just allowing them to run rampant. It was unbelievable to me. What is the point of not angrily trolling people? **** it, let's act like angry kids on Fortnite, it's not like the people whose job it is to police conduct seem to care. If they don't, why shouldn't I just tell people what I think of them?

In fact, I actually had a mod tell me, and I am not making a word of this up, that a problematic player was warned, but they didn't want to publicly announce it. This mod apparently thought the best way to promote a law-abiding community was making certain that the fact that a post was against the rules was keeping it a secret. Literally making certain that other people didn't know. Breathtaking.

For context, I used to play on MTGNews, which was the parent site of MTGSalvation before the schism (long story). On MTGNews, if you had to be replaced ever, even once, you were put onto a ban list. If you had to be removed from the game for bad behavior, which was almost entirely unheard of, even once, you were placed onto a ban list. The ban list was not binding, hosts could choose to ignore it at their own peril, but the fact was that this type of behavior was very infrequent because if you acted up, THE MODS DID SOMETHING.

That might seem draconian. Fair. You have to adapt your method of governance to suit the community, what worked in one place might stifle another. But the fact of the matter is the moderation here has been toothless, and this is what you get as a result. Be gentle with weeds, and your garden gets overrun.

So no, I don't believe it's necessarily fair that D_V gets banned, because yes, he might be one of the most flagrant cases, perhaps the most, but it's not like he's 100% responsible for the caustic environment here, and it's not on his watch that this occurred.

The objection I have is calling this "probation." No, it's not probation. D_V should be banned if he ever does this again, but that's not because he did it a bunch of times, and therefore if he does it once more, he's out. It should be because if ANYONE goes to that flagrant and gratuitous a level of personal attack, they should be banned, irrespective of how many times that person has done it. They should be banned on a first offense for this.

It's fine to say that we need to shape up, but that "time to shape up" shouldn't merely apply to him, because singling him out is ignoring the problem, which is not him, it's the forum at large. There needs to be a clear delineation. This was the old site, we're tightening things up now, this is the new era of moderation. And the mods need to follow through on actually enforcing the rules. People will continue to flame if there's no real punishment for flaming. People will continue to troll if there's no real punishment for trolling. People will continue to drop out of games if there's no real punishment for dropping out of games. This is basic.

You seem to be under some drastic misconceptions about the way Mafia and MTGS site rules operate. Let me clear this up for you (though shadow did an okay job of this on the last page).

There are three entities as far as rules are concerned within the Mafia subforum. In this way, we're a unique structure within MTGS.

1. Site Moderators+. Mods govern actions that are against site rules. Currently, shadow, Cythare, and I are the Mafia mods. We card posts that are reported or that we happen to spot that are in violation of MTGS's rules. I opt not to leave public warnings in posts, because WITHOUT FAIL, any time I did, I received multiple PMs from people whining about how one person got carded but another didn't, when the other post was not reported and I did not see it, or because the other post was not in violation of the site rules, and arguing with users about who does and doesn't deserve cards is not how I like to spend my time, and arguing with users about who does and doesn't receive cards is not their business. There is also a statue of limitations wherein if we miss a post that deserves a card after 2 weeks, we do not card it, as doing so in the past (in other parts of the site, as well) has looked like targeted Moderation and received cries of discrimination from the affected users. (Contrary top popular belief, we can not read every post on the site every day, and more often than we would like, things slip through the cracks. This is the downside of having a very human team of volunteers under whom the site is run.) I guess you misunderstood what I said when you PMed me about your reports (where if a rule was violated, I issued a card, otherwise, I declined the report), but hopefully my language here is less open for misinterpretation or ambiguity. The short version is that Mods are enforcers of site rules. We do not decide which players are and are not allowed to play Mafia. The Mafia Council does. On that note...

2. Mafia Councillors. Mafia Councillors dictate the specific rules of the subforum beyond the basic site rules. Because of the nature of Mafia, a little more leeway was requested with regards to flaming matters. There's a clear difference between calling an argument bad and calling the player making it bad. Mafia Councillors have the power to put players on probation, blacklist players, determine the Mafia Secretary/Secretaries, and implement programs (such as the Mafia League or when to run FTQs and the like), but will generally elicit feedback from the playerbase before making a decision of this nature. Mafia Councillors do not have site Moderator powers, unless that Councillor is explicitly also a site Moderator (as I was, before, and shadow is, presently.) Mafia Councillors can request that, if a player circumvents a probation or blacklist order, or is otherwise completely toxic to the playerbase, that they can be banned from Mafia, and, if that order is violated, a site suspension or ban will be issued, to be carried out by a senior staffer of MTGS Moderation. Again, MTGS staff, in this capacity, acts as an enforcer.

3. Mafia game hosts. Hosts have the ability to forcibly replace or modkill players they feel are violating the spirit of the game, or are explicitly breaking the rules set forth in their game's OP. This is in addition to whatever penalty MTGS Moderation decides to hand out per site rules, whether it be a blanket "Play nice and behave," in-thread, or carding a user, and is a completely separate decision from any site staff's intervention. Hosts and MTGS Mods can and will collaborate regarding particularly problematic users - i.e. if I see a player I've just given 2 warnings to toeing the line, I may bring it to the attention of the host so that they are aware of how that may affect their game, and they may choose to speak to the player privately, or post a warning of their own in-thread, i.e. "any further flaming will be met with modkills". Again, this is independent of MTGS staff actions.

So, to sum it up, no, nothing about the rules is "kept secret". When users sign up for MTGS, they agree to abide by the site rules. The players who are misbehaving in violation of site rules are receiving cards as they should, and are fully aware of how their actions are against the rules. Any further action regarding whether or not that player is eligible to participate in future Mafia games can and should be brought up to the Mafia Council by either the hosts of games where this player was a detriment to the enjoyability of the game overall, or by fellow players who were on the receiving end of such actions of their co-players, as that responsibility falls on them given the unorthodox nature of the way Mafia governs itself in our community.

Honestly, Scum Love the King be damned. It's a cool setup, and it's unfortunate that the game went to a *****ty place. It's honestly completely irrelevant to the discussion at this point, at least for me.

Lynching for reasons outside of perceived alignment is entirely unacceptable any day, and outside of the context of this discussion, people have acted or spoken as if they agree on that.

Lynching for behavioral tells that people find scummy is one thing. But that is explicitly not what I'm arguing against. But the response to me has been "No, it's acceptable to lynch regardless of alignment."

If that's the community consensus, then whatever. But you might as well be telling people that cryptography, derogatory slurs, or discussion of timing of replacements/modkills are acceptable in games of mafia.

After talking with Iso some, I want to request that the council and/or game hosts in general codify policy on lynching regardless of perceived alignment in games such that it is clear and visible to players new to the site.

As I said to osie, I don't believe policy lynching is anywhere even close to being akin to slurring or cryptoclaims or what have you. If you're not enjoying someone's presence in a game, you do something about it - either by complaining to the host, or by lynching the player. That said, I think complaining to the host should probably be the reasonable first step in that chain of events, which I believe osie is pushing to become an official rule, here.