Mafia V: The Cult of Sekham

[Zeriel]

@DiggitCamara

Notice that I didn’t say all three (Kyrie, Idle and ** Zeriel**) are Cultists. As of now, there are three points that lead me to believe Zeriel is scum:

1. His first Day vote that helped (in part) to save AzTeach
2. His involvement in the “Crusader’s demise”
3. His curious “let’s lynch HockeyMonkey” move at the end of the Day where she claimed being the Alchemist

Granted: it’s not evidence that would get you convicted in court, but since we are a lynch mob, my standards are far lower

Vote Zeriel

Looks like we have another liar on our hands, and surprise surprise he’s after me too.

1. has been explained already. It was a bad call on my part but show me a perfect voting record even from a confirmed townie.
2. is, in my opinion, you projecting your old character’s death onto your new character’s actions. It’s arguably the scummiest single action anyone’s taken so far, even if I’m not commenting on it much because I’m trying to nail down my feelings on NAF and Pleo. As has been pointed out, that discussion went on past where you claim the end of it was–namely, with Idle and Hockey finishing it up.
3. has already been debunked several times. Saying “I want a tie to give us more time” means “I want to kill hockey monkey now now now” will not make it so.

What the hell, do I have a “Please try to make poorly-supported cases against me!” sign on me somewhere?

[DiggitCamara]

@Zeriel

Looks like we have another liar on our hands, and surprise surprise he’s after me too.

1. has been explained already. It was a bad call on my part but show me a perfect voting record even from a confirmed townie.
2. is, in my opinion, you projecting your old character’s death onto your new character’s actions. It’s arguably the scummiest single action anyone’s taken so far, even if I’m not commenting on it much because I’m trying to nail down my feelings on NAF and Pleo. As has been pointed out, that discussion went on past where you claim the end of it was–namely, with Idle and Hockey finishing it up.
3. has already been debunked several times. Saying “I want a tie to give us more time” means “I want to kill hockey monkey now now now” will not make it so.

What the hell, do I have a “Please try to make poorly-supported cases against me!” sign on me somewhere?

First of all… liar? Where, exactly, did I lie?

1. You may “explain” your actions as long as you wish. But the sum of your actions, if scummy, still add up to scum.
2. I’ve done my best (sorry if it isn’t enough) to separate my identities. I have always spoken of “the Crusader”, never of “myself”. I’m not using my former actions to justify my current actions at all. And neither should anyone else.
   Yes, two people made one post each after the Crusader chimed in. But two people didn’t. I’m voting for one of them. And the other one recently questioned NAF on the topic of his attention towards you…
3. Debunking schmebunking.
   a.)In this post you retracted your vote against HockeyMonkey. Not because she claimed being the Alchemist but because you didn’t want to speed up the end of the Day. That means, in my eyes, that you didn’t believe her claim. This begs the question: why? (If you were the Alchemist, the easiest way to short-circuit her would be to counterclaim… after all, the Alchemist is the one power role whose loss outweighs the benefits of nailing a Cultist)
   b.) Shortly afterwards you reinforced my impression (that you disbelieved her claim). Again: why? If not, why would you want to tie up the votes?

[Zeriel]

@DiggitCamara

2. I’ve done my best (sorry if it isn’t enough) to separate my identities. I have always spoken of “the Crusader”, never of “myself”. I’m not using my former actions to justify my current actions at all. And neither should anyone else.
   Yes, two people made one post each after the Crusader chimed in. But two people didn’t. I’m voting for one of them. And the other one recently questioned NAF on the topic of his attention towards you…

This is still a spurious grounds for suspicion. Are we going to suspect everyone in the Oracle strategy discussions of trying to out Hal now?

3. Debunking schmebunking.
   a.)In this post you retracted your vote against HockeyMonkey. Not because she claimed being the Alchemist but because you didn’t want to speed up the end of the Day. That means, in my eyes, that you didn’t believe her claim. This begs the question: why? (If you were the Alchemist, the easiest way to short-circuit her would be to counterclaim… after all, the Alchemist is the one power role whose loss outweighs the benefits of nailing a Cultist)
   b.) Shortly afterwards you reinforced my impression (that you disbelieved her claim). Again: why? If not, why would you want to tie up the votes?

I don’t think it could be any clearer–as I said, I was suspicious of Hockey. I was not suspicious of Scuba_Ben. That was not changed by her roleclaim.
At the time of the roleclaim, it was just under two and a half hours until the deadline. Many have previously noted that only a subset of the players play on weekends–so much so that sachertorte later deliberately switched the timing of the votes on Mad, with help from a consensus majority, to keep the day off of the weekend. I didn’t think, as I clearly said, that two and a half hours was enough time for the alchemist to come out if Hockey was lying and Scuba was a townie getting railroaded by the roleclaim.
It turns out I was right on the latter half of that, and that Hockey is still not counterclaimed and thus probably the alchemist–but how would extending the day have harmed anything?

You’re itching real close to taking my vote away from NAF.

[Zeriel]

Not edited to add: I say that because NAF is getting cautious support from people I strongly believe to be town. That means he’s not being disingenuous.

You’re not getting much if any support from anyone with your line of reasoning.

Finally, as for lies? I didn’t retract my vote. I didn’t call for her death.

[DiggitCamara]

@Zeriel

Not edited to add: I say that because NAF is getting cautious support from people I strongly believe to be town. That means he’s not being disingenuous.

You’re not getting much if any support from anyone with your line of reasoning.

Finally, as for lies? I didn’t retract my vote. I didn’t call for her death.

You’re right. You didn’t retract your vote. You just said you were considering to remove it if voting stayed the way it was.

On the “you didn’t call for her death” part? Well, YMMV; you said:

@Zeriel

I’d like to go on the record as not liking the speed at which Hockey Monkey is being believed. I have no reason not to accept the roleclaim, but I’d really like to force a tie–I’d hate to see any other claimants to the Alchemist title do so after the 1pm deadline.

which sounded (and still sounds) fishy to me. You didn’t directly call for people to vote for her but you were questioning the speed at which people where retracting their votes.

[DiggitCamara]

@Zeriel

Not edited to add: I say that because NAF is getting cautious support from people I strongly believe to be town. That means he’s not being disingenuous.(snip)

… you do know that’s a truly bad reason to start trusting someone?

Mistake 1: If one townie trust someone, anyone, he’s making a bad mistake, because townies don’t know anything about other townies.
Mistake 2: Even if you have absolute confidence in someone, you still shouldn’t trust those people that someone trusts. (S)he wouldn’t have any additional information, after all.

[Idle_Thoughts]

Time to catch up. And I have a lot now since I was away some yesterday due to the start of mine. Not that I’m complaining mind you. : D
Going back some:

@amrussell

sachertorte
As the Oracle clearly didn’t breadcrumb MTS, I’m increasingly inclined to believe that sach was investigated and is town. He drew a lot of suspicion early on for harping on about the Oracle/Apprentice, but to me that level of enthusiasm and detail looks pro-town, and I think the “at least in my eyes” was a breadcrumb. Actually this is important: if we can get a consensus on Hal’s breadcrumbs, we’ll have something semi-solid to work on.

Despite the horrifice murder rate in this village, we’ve still got a lot of people to cover. This will have to do for me for now, however.

Yeah, same here. I mean, if you think about it, sach has to be one now. He’s one of the only others that Hal mentioned one way or another so I’m considering my suspicions of her/him finally laid to rest.

@Pleonast

I’ve been trying to find someone else besides Mal to put on my List of Suspicion. We need to develop a larger of list of suspects to consider dunking.

Huh. Tell me about it. I have a few after you, such as Cookies a little (well, now) and Mal still, but other than that, all the rest I had are either dead or slipped off the list due to role claims that now seem certifiable or breadcrums that seem to only make sense for some.

I really need to start reading over this thread from about Day Three (or even farther back) and looking for slips or weird/odd behavior/posts/votes what-have-you.

And you know I agree that people need to get talking and putting out there what they think. As the game goes on and fewer players remain, the remaining town really need to step up a bit more and become stronger players. I’ve noticed Fretful do this a bit more, although whether it’s because she’s town or not is still out there. Let’s just say she’s pretty low on my list of suspicions though. But more and more I seem to see people trailing off on posting rather than making more posts. We’re starting to get into the game time where nobody can afford to be light or afraid they’re going to offend someone. If you have suspicions, get them out.

That being said…

Idle Thoughts for his statements when switching his vote to me (2025) "I have a feeling this is going to come back and bite me on the ass the next Day or sometime but since I can spare no more thought or minutes in this Day’s game and it’ll be Night when I return…Unvote Mad and vote Pleonast. It doesn’t seem to matter at this point but if Mad IS TOWN and (and here is what I’m thinking) some sort of trip wire or bomb or Avatar for the good side (and he’s certainly acting like it), well, I’m not taking any chances.

I don’t mind so much that he voted for me, since he’s been marking me for quite a while. Instead, he wonders if Mad was some sort of anti-Avatar on the Town’s side, and changes his vote to protect himself. That seems like very selfish act and makes me doubt his Townieness. Considering the current clash between us, it’s better that someone else look at Idle carefully, since who’s going to listen my complaints about him?

I’m not going to deny it, that’s exactly what I was doing. Protecting myself based on feeling, at the time, that I was no longer sure of Mad scummiess but on top of that, that he was trying to GARNER votes for some reason.

Now I don’t know about you, but yeah, that sent up flags. And yeah, I changed my vote. To save my own skin? Sure. And holding me under suspicion for that is understandable. Don’t really know what I could say or offer as a defense other than he was acting odd and a lot of people didn’t know what to make of him, but I don’t expect that will do much.

@FlyingCowOfDoom

I agree with this. I can’t possibly imagine **AZTeach **getting upset because a fellow Cultist voted for him. It makes absolutely no sense. It doesn’t make sense that he’d get upset that a Townsperson voted for him either, by the way.

I think it’s pretty obvious that whatever AZTeach’s reason for quitting was, it was not because he got three votes on the first day. Anyone who has played this game before would never sub out because of three first day votes.

–FCOD

I don’t think it was so much as something in the game that made him mad but maybe just either having a bad day or being slightly easy to anger or stress out in general?

@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies

Sure there is. It is called a healthy dose of skepticism with a dash of acknowledgement that the true Alchemist is choosing not to counter-claim. Then there’s the whole tangential possibility that there could be more than one Alchemist, but the role as described (imho) indicates that they would be blind to eachother if that were the case.

This gets to me for some reason. I was in your boat too for the first couple of Days…but after a bit, it slowly faded. I don’t really possibly see that HM could be scum at this point, although there is an offchance. That offchance, though, I feel, is highly implausible. I just don’t see it and am wondering why you’re holding out on it. While I can understand some suspicions still and being cautious…you went so far as to even vote for her the last Day. Was this because you might be willing to have her dunked ONLY to see if she’s what she says she is?

@Zeriel

I’m going to concur with Queuing for purely practical reasons–I’m having a hard time keeping track of subs without a literal program (I have the player/sub list opened in another file every time I read now).

ESPECIALLY with the sub-deaders-back-in policy it’s hard to follow the game sometimes.

How many subs will that have been now? Five? Man alive, that’s got to be a record.

Yeah, I’m not too crazy about the “dead in for sub” either, if it makes any difference.

Time to check on my game and then start rereading this one…

[NAF1138]

You say things like this:

@Zeriel

You’re itching real close to taking my vote away from NAF.

And then flat out call me a liar when I say something like this:

@me

3. His fair weather voting pattern. He seems to have, as scuba_ben put it “on again off again suspicions”. Now this one is just an impression, as I will admit that I haven’t had time to do the hard analysis yet. But I will in one of my upcomming posts. But he seems to have lots of suspicion, but almost always votes with the crowd, and is usually late to the bandwagon.

:dubious:

Ok, so for those of you who aren’t following this too closely. YES Zeriel did say that after I made the statement I quoted above. And YES, technically Zeriel hasn’t changed his vote. And I even admit that calling is a fair weather voting pattern may be a mistake. But is it a lie? Note that I say:

@me

Now this one is just an impression, as I will admit that I haven’t had time to do the hard analysis yet

Is it any wonder I have this impression?

He was about 3 seconds away from calling me town and voting for Pleo at the start of the day, and now he is “real close” to switching his vote from me to Diggit.

And he says I am spinning? :dubious:

[Kyrie_Eleison]

@Zeriel

My first first-day vote for NAF1138 based on his either meaningless or scum-hiding list.
My final first-day vote for Mtgman based on his ridiculous interpretation of his tiff with storyteller as scum tells against storyteller.
My only second-day vote for fluiddruid based on her cavalier attitude towards dunking townies and lame vote for Malacandra followed by relative silence.

Thanks for the response, but I think I have to disagree that these exemplify concerns regarding shoddy reasoning. In the first example, you dispute and question NAF’s classification of players, but you don’t point out any fault related to his reasoning. In the second, you perceive Mtgman to be unfairly characterizing storyteller, but again, you don’t fault him for the logic behind his arguments. And, finally, in the third one, you vote for fluiddruid for voting without sufficient reason, not for the quality of her reasoning.

I don’t see any evidence to support your contention that you’ve been treating shoddy or misleading reasoning as a scum tell until now. However, I’m not sure that I find this particularly meaningful either.

[Kyrie_Eleison]

@NAF1138

Well, he SAID that my list only contains townies. Although that seems to have since been corrected as a misinterpritation on my part. Still I would be surprised if my list only contained townies. The odds of that happening would be very small. I would be just as surprised if my list named off all the scum in the game. And once again, it *wasn’t * a list of accusation, it was simply a list of people I wanted to hear more from.

Still, it seems to me that you were certain enough that Zeriel had revealed knowledge regarding the composition of your list to vote for him, and still refusing to believe what you thought he had revealed. This is poor reasoning, at best.

[NAF1138]

@Kyrie Eleison

Still, it seems to me that you were certain enough that Zeriel had revealed knowledge regarding the composition of your list to vote for him, and still refusing to believe what you thought he had revealed. This is poor reasoning, at best.

No doubt. I was reveling in a “gottcha” moment and got carried away without actually reasoning through my thought process on that one. Notice I haven’t brought it up again in my arguments aginst Z. It isn’t a sound argument.

For those interested my thinking went something like this.

@inside my head

“WAIT A SECOND!” Did he just say my list was all townies? Well I suppose that is possible, but how would he know that? CRAP he HAS to be SCUM!

As I said before I had already been a bit suspicious of him before that, but had kept quiet about it hoping that in his persuit of me he would slip up a bit. I knew that if I accused him without the proper evidence it would get written off as OMGUS. His subsequent actions in addition to me reexamining his past sealed the deal for me.

So even if the logic that pushed him firmly into the scum collumn for me was faulty (and it was) it wasn’t that one instance that has kept him there.

[Zeriel]

@DiggitCamara

… you do know that’s a truly bad reason to start trusting someone?

Mistake 1: If one townie trust someone, anyone, he’s making a bad mistake, because townies don’t know anything about other townies.
Mistake 2: Even if you have absolute confidence in someone, you still shouldn’t trust those people that someone trusts. (S)he wouldn’t have any additional information, after all.

It’s not a reason to trust him, but it’s a reason to trust his reasoning and therefore kick him down a notch relative to people who’re posting reasoning which is bad in my opinion that no one else supports.

[Zeriel]

@NAF1138

Is it any wonder I have this impression?

He was about 3 seconds away from calling me town and voting for Pleo at the start of the day, and now he is “real close” to switching his vote from me to Diggit.

And he says I am spinning? :dubious:

I am in fact consistent in contemplating switching my vote rapidly when I feel I’m being unfairly witch-hunted.

Generally, I do this in the hope of prompting scummy reactions from the person I’m considering switching to or from.

In this case, you’re both pretty much coming off as scummy. Grant that Diggitv2’s playing a wonderful game of scum catchup-ball, you’re still in the lead in my book based on your contemptible efforts to make your vaunted (and still AWOL) analysis stick while at the same time trying to ditch responsibility for it. You admit it might be wrong, but don’t admit it’s the only point of any substance among the four you’ve brought to bear.

[NAF1138]

@Zeriel

snip
but don’t admit it’s the only point of any substance among the four you’ve brought to bear.

I don’t admit that because I don’t believe it is true.

[Zeriel]

@Kyrie Eleison

Thanks for the response, but I think I have to disagree that these exemplify concerns regarding shoddy reasoning. In the first example, you dispute and question NAF’s classification of players, but you don’t point out any fault related to his reasoning. In the second, you perceive Mtgman to be unfairly characterizing storyteller, but again, you don’t fault him for the logic behind his arguments. And, finally, in the third one, you vote for fluiddruid for voting without sufficient reason, not for the quality of her reasoning.

I don’t see any evidence to support your contention that you’ve been treating shoddy or misleading reasoning as a scum tell until now. However, I’m not sure that I find this particularly meaningful either.

I’m willing to agree that what I describe as spurious reasoning you may describe as lack thereof. I’m also willing to admit that I’m not the best at phrasing things in the best of ways without a pretty extensive edit cycle. =P

Put another way, I’d categorize an “unfair characterization” in the bad/spurious reasoning box. I’d also categorize a subjective list based on impressions as such. I’d also categorize poor support as such. Clearly you don’t.

Glad you don’t really think it’s meaningful either way, though. I don’t really think definitional conflicts are the way to find scum.

[Kyrie_Eleison]

@Zeriel

Glad you don’t really think it’s meaningful either way, though. I don’t really think definitional conflicts are the way to find scum.

Agreed. However, if your current beef with NAF had been more consistent with previous arguments you’d made against others, particularly those not involving yourself, I’d assign a slightly lower OMGUS quotient to your current spat with him.

If things keep going the way they are now, I might have to join Queueing in voting for nava. I’m finding it difficult to decide whom I should vote for.

[Zeriel]

@Kyrie Eleison

If things keep going the way they are now, I might have to join Queueing in voting for nava. I’m finding it difficult to decide whom I should vote for.

To be honest, I’m leaning that way myself–if BM subs in another confusingly dead townie for Nava, I might vote for their dunking on general principles–I’m already confused enough as it is.

[Stanislaus]

…where was I? Oh yes,

Pleonast
596 : Disagrees with NAF - votes are cheap. Analysis of reasoning behind votes is what counts. Asks “Why should townies be reluctant to vote?”
605 : Reply to Mtgman. Generally anti strategy discussions - better to talk and vote, which creates meaningful data for later analysis
610 :“Townies don’t have anything to fear by being dunked. At least, I don’t have any fear.”
632 : In response to a vote by Hockey Monkey “You seem to agree with my conclusions [snip] and only disagree with how I said it. I guess I’m playing too aggressively.”
764: Short of time. Sees no reason to switch vote from Mal. May change later if no-one else agrees.
823 : Doesn’t like Mtgman’s argument against ArizonaTeach. Finds Mtgman’s accusation against him shallow. Suspects Mal, Mtgman, **sach **and **FCOD **in that order.
871: Switches vote to Mtgman.

This is a major plank of the case against Pleonast, so it’s worth looking at in some detail. As has been discussed before, this vote puts **mtgman **6-4 ahead against AzT. It is also only 6 mins after Zeriel’s 5-4 vote, so it could have been intended as tie-breaker. What really interests me is the sequence from post 610 on. Up until 610, the message has been clear - vote early, vote often, leave it to scum to strategize and lurk. In 632, having picked up votes from **Cookies **and HM, we see a realization of over-aggressivness. What happens next looks like a carefully planned move to safe ground: 764 - Announces possibility of changing vote if he can’t get consensus on Mal; 823 - declares Mtgman’s argument scummy; 871 - changes vote. In three posts we’ve gone from aggressively picking out scum and laying out reasons for posterity to backing a popular candidate - co-incidentally or not, the wrong one.

The key question is, are his reasons for finding **Mtgman **scummy valid? Check out the AzT vote and Pleonast’s response. It’s worth noting that Mtgman’s FOS of Pleonast, story and Mad has turned out wrong (he believed they were all three scum staging a fight to make at least one look good). Of course, his vote on AzT was right. Pleonast again responds to an accusation with an accusation - that Mtgman vs AzT is as much of a sham as he, story and Mad are meant to be in. So why not vote AzT? His reason for suspecting Mtgman hinges on also suspecting AzT. But that didn’t even seem to be a consideration in his vote.

Day 2
I know what you’re thinking - this is going to go on forever. In fact, at the beginning of Day 2 we’ve reached the halfway mark. Posting frequency goes down. Voting frequency drops significantly - only one vote each on Day 2 and 3, and two on Day 4 (one so far on Day 5). Given the repeated emphasis on the importance of voting in Day 1, this looks like a big change of strategy - why?
1004: votes Mal for “heads I win, tails you lose” logic.
1036 : Scuba_Ben, Kat, Mal and Idle Thoughts have all expressed suspicion. Mal and Scuba_Ben for the early vote on Mal. Pleonast reiterates his voting philosophy. Kat (scum) didn’t like Pleonast shutting down the Oracle discussion. Pleonast repeats arguments against discussion and asks not to be judged on aggressive play. Next, Idle didn’t like the timing of the mtgman vote. Pleonast says he switched from suspect 1 to 2, as he said he would. Then miscounts and says vote was 5-3 - actually 5-4. This minimizes the suspicious air of his vote, obviously.
1205 : On semi-vacation, reading along. No reason to change Mal vote.

Day 3
1442 : Still voting Mal. Suspicious of MonkeyMensch. Repeats miscount of Mtgman vote. Says will switch to MM if that’s where the votes are at the end of the day.
1457 : Says he ignores FOS statements. Looks at arguments. Votes are accountable.
1520 : Summarises own posts
1568 : Captain Klutz has noticed low posting levels. “I’m not staying off the radar, I just have little new to say.” Reiterates suspicions of Mal and MM. Others have voted for him - they’re wrong but reasonable. Wants votes in today to avoid rush
1649 : Doesn’t believe either Hockey or Scuba are scum. Leaves vote on Mal.

Day 4
1814 : Votes Mal again. Also happy to move to Mad orQueuing. (all based on possible Oracle breadcrumbs). Also recognises possible breadcrumbs in favour of sach and Hockey
1822 : Repeats Oracle suspicion of Mal.
1839 : Idle has picked up on low-content posts (e.g. “I have little new to say”). A defence of this, based on the “easy vote” philosophy plus avoidance of fluff.
1891 : Mad has announced his master plan, which leaves FOS on Pleonast amongts others. Accuses Mad of trying to bring innocents down with him. Announces intention to change vote later but wants to avoid insta-dunk.
1934 : Ye gods, we’re back talking about Day 1 random voting, again.
1936 : Queuing has presented a list of other people to discuss, which includes Pleonast. Pleonast has no problems with the list in general.
1937 : Incomplete overview of fluiddruid (on Queuing’s list).
1978 : Promised change of vote to Mad
1980 : Completes fluiddruid workup. Concludes nothing particularly scummy.
1992 : Thinks DiggitCamera’s Crusader-trap theory is interesting
2035 : Explains to Mad why no-one’s investigating Mad’s FOS’s

Day 5
2087 : Votes **Mal **for the fourth day running. No-one else looks suspicious? No one else is worth investigating?. Has noticed critics, but gives no defence. Trying to avoid attention?
2095 : Asks for rehash of arguments against him. [Don’t mention it]. Says Idle and FCOD’s votes against him were not out of blue, as Cookies suggests.
:2112 : My point about miscounting Mtgman vote has been raised. Says it’s just a miscount. Points out that he flagged up move.
2112 : A list of potential suspects other than Mal (Finally!). 8 quiet players plus Idle for changing votes to protect against Mad being reverse-Avatar and Zeriel based on Mad and HM voting for him, plus NAF’s (admittedly incomplete) case. A nice long list - but very little of that analysis that was trumpeted as so important on Day 1

Conclusions:

Because of the drastic change in strategy after he realised his head was above the parapet; because of the shift to Mtgman which meant abandoning his strategy in favour of finding the crowd; because he misrepresented the effects of that vote; because of his repeated, low content votes for Mal rather than further analysis of players; because a bold “Townies shouldn’t fear dunking” attitude was replaced with high self-preservation tactics: Vote Pleonast

[NAF1138]

@Zeriel

Put another way, I’d categorize an “unfair characterization” in the bad/spurious reasoning box. I’d also categorize a subjective list based on impressions as such. I’d also categorize poor support as such. Clearly you don’t.

Since you mention the list, this seems like an opportune moment to post my first bit of analysis that I have finished. Again, sorry this is all comming slowly but just this little bit took me about 2 hours of sorting through posts. And then I stopped working because all this other stuff started happening. (forgive the abrupt start to the next paragraph I am just snipping off the first couple of sentences that are no longer relevant now that I posted the mini recap analysis)

Zeriel hasn’t made any large slips, but rather a series of smaller slips that I think are more damning than any single slip would be. His one biggest consistent slip up is his willful twisting of the facts to make them reach the conclusions he wants them to reach, rather than viewing things impartially. This is major, but I suppose it isn’t fair to call it a slip. In short, I think his strategy is showing.

But let’s go step by step so you can see how my suspicions built.

Let’s start with this post (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8724038&postcount=522), where I fist noticed him. Notice what he says in this post. He defends himself by saying he hasn’t been lurking, and has in fact been posting.

Follow it up with this one (post 549. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8724867&postcount=549)
He refers to the list I created as “purportedly anti lurker” and then wishes to compare my list with the bottom 8 posters in the game. He is upset enough to cast a vote against me.

Here is the thing. I have defended my post several times, but how many of you have actually read it since I first posted it? Let’s take a look shall we? I will bold the relevant sections.

@me

You know what I noticed…in the 7 pages of game posts, there are a lot of players I am not noticing. Let me just list off some names and y’all can tell me if you think they have been making their presence known. Some of them have posted a bit, I’m sure, but like Fluid said, those are the people to be extra wary of, the people who can’t be called out as lurkers.

Zuma
Malacandra
Fretful Propentine
Captain Carrot
Zeriel
MonkeyMench
Autolycus
Captain Klutz
I know NOTHING about any of you. (in this game) The fact that some of you are veterans and yet have failed to make any real impression on me is even more surprising.
I know a couple of you are posting, (zuma and Malacandra are the only ones I remember off the top of my head that have posts) but you are like freakin’ blank pages.

Pay special attention to the two times I mention that some of the people on the list are indeed posting. Notice the bit I bolded and enlarged where I say that some of these people can not be classified as lurkers.

Nothing Zeriel accuses me of in his posts, is something I actually did or said. There isn’t even an accusation on that list. It is simple a call to hear more from people some people. The ONLY people who had reason to be nervous were scum who actually made it onto the list. Notice zumaver1(confirmed town)’s reaction was rather mild.

More importantly he is willfully misrepresenting my posting. Why do I say it is willful. Because he repeats the incorrect interpretation of my post several times, even after I corrected him. He is not the only one to have done this, but he was the first, and he is the only one to use it as a basis for building a case against me.

[Zeriel]

NAF, my objection has always been that I was posting substantially, and not flying under the radar as you accused–I was submitting input to the blowup that had been going on about Oracle strategy for the previous day.

Hell, your post is internally inconsistent from my point of view–“some have posted a bit, I’m sure”, “I know a couple of you are posting”. It’s not all-lurker, but you only called out two people as posting insubstantially (zuma and Mal), leaving the clear implication that the remainder of the list was composed of lurkers.

These days I’m more suspicious of you for bad logic than spurious lists. I thought that was pretty clear in my more recent postings.