And a final note. If my guess is correct, we now have 8 Town, 5 Scum and 1 Third Party. That means another Day/Night cycle like the last will result in 5-5-1, which is lynch scum (not 3rd party) or lose.
I don’t really see anyway to debate that vote 
But that isn’t gonna stop me from trying…
No, I just what to point out that SANTO is on that list as well - and he was Town.
Is you vote only based on the vote records?
If yes - then I can only add: I feel fine about my votes. I don’t mind explaining them again - but if you only vote on the records there wouldn’t be must sense in that.
Oh boy, oh boy! Pleo posted some math posts! 
Another point that I like to look at is post count. Interesting note that our top 2 posters in Santo Rugger and pedescribe are both dead.
Boozahol Squid, P. I. - 87
Ok11 - 82
Hero from Sector 7G - 74
Rapier42 - 68
Blaster Master - 60
Total Lost - 55
Pleonast - 48
amrussell - 46
Zsofia - 44
ShadowFacts -38
Hal Briston - 37
Kat - 34
Fretful Porpentine - 32
One and Only Wanderers - 21
Note, numbers may be off slightly since I was dynamically updating it as I was generating my thoughts.
Anyway, here’s some thoughts:
First, I roughly broke it up into interesting clusters, you may or may not disagree, but it’s basically, high posters, medium posters, low posts, and lurkers. In general, I’d suspect there to be about 1 in every group, so this looks really bad for OaOW, especially considering the way things have been going, I’d expect the scum may be laying low, so I think it’s not unlikely that there’s at least 2 scum in the low posters and lurker groups. Count this as another point against Fretful, and especially since I have no read on Kat and OaOW, I want to hear more from them. Hal and Shadow, even though they’re low posters, I at least have a decent read on because they’ve both been under a significant amount of scrutiny, especially Yesterday.
Interestingly enough, Zsofia is a medium poster, but I have much less of a read on her than any of the rest, and less than I do on Hal and Shadow.
So, I’d guess 1 in the top group, I think 2 is pushing it with how things have played out. I cannot imagine that the PFK is in the top group. I think 1-2 is reasonable for the middle group. I suspect the highest concentration of anti-town elements is amongst the bottom group.
However, town power roles may also be posting strangely (more than usual, less than usual, more or less fluffy than usual) and look scummy on a vote count list.
I’m not crazy about voting Hal just because even though we’re aware of it, there’s still a “lynch Hal if Zerial’s town” vibe going on. I still don’t like his interaction with JSexton during the gambit thing, which was my reason for voting him yesterday. That’s not a very strong reason, though.
I find the argument against Fretful Porpentine interesting, as well as the fact that although he’s a low poster (sorry, I think he - I apologize if you’re a she) he immediately responded to it in the next post. Reading a lot but not posting, maybe? Or coincidence?
I’m open to changing my vote, but right now I’m going to
ban Fretful Porpentine
I don’t vote only on my vote record analysis, but it is a large part. It is based not on a single player’s actions, but the pattern of the votes. It is both a strength and a weakness that it is hard to argue against–Scum can’t wiggle out by trying to justify their votes, but neither can Townies.
It is quite possible that you are a Townie only voting like Scum. And it is also possible that you are Scum who’s had your bias revealed.
If you want me to change my vote, your best action would be to convince me that Porpentine or Wanderer (who have the same suspicious voting record as you) are more scummy. (If one of them gets lynched before you and turn up scum, my analysis will give a much lower chance of you being scum. It’s a zero sum process. (Enjoy the bussing. 
) )
lol I’m not going to smudge others to remove you vote on me 
I will look for scum-signs and vote (but I’m late for a meeting so I don’t know when) - but I don’t think I have seen Porpentine or Wanderer as that scummy…
I’m not encouraging we poke the low posters until they claim a power role (if some of them are). The point is, I at least have some sort of read on most people, and I want to start hearing more from the lower posters because it’s VERY easy to let the loud people continue to post ideas and the lower posters to hide behind their reasoning and thus avoid a lot of suspicion.
Also, considering that I believe it is highly unlikely that there’s a second Detective, otherwise he probably really should be coming forth about now unless he’s had terrible luck with his investigatees, I don’t think it’s likely that any pro-town power role will have any real extra knowledge, and thus their actions should be, more or less, indistinguishable from any other vanilla power role, at least as far as voting and posting patterns go. That is, I would tend to expect their distribution in any sort of analysis to be essentially random, while the scum will tend to be distinctly non-random.
I certainly don’t agree with the “Zeriel was town, so let’s lynch Hal” sentiment. I think the circumstances have shown that the JSexton wagon was probably just a “OMG that looks bad” from a townie perspective and/or “OMG it looks bad, so I can take advantage of it” from a scum perspective. Either way, those motivations are very similar and difficult to separate.
That said, I also don’t think that Hal should necessarily get a free pass Today either. As I said Yesterday, I think Zeriel’s towniness (or scumminess, had that been the case) sheds no light on Hal’s alignment at all. Personally, I saw his reaction to JSexton’s gambit as consistent with a townie “WTF?” moment that only seemed off because of how it coincided with his availability. However, if there’s something else about it that I just didn’t see, I’d be interested to hear your perspective because, quite frankly, that’s about thing that my read is on him is based on, and if we’re getting opposite reads, it might be worth reconsidering to see if one of us is wrong, or if it’s really just a null tell.
FWIW, I’m fairly certain Fretful is female. Of course, my memory was dead wrong about Zeriel, so… you’re probably better off just ignoring me on this one.
I am female, for the record.
After thinking things over, I have decided to role claim. My role is not confirmable, so I don’t think this post will dissuade anyone from lynching me, but since I do have a schmancy title and the death posts haven’t described roles and powers in any detail, I think it’s best to claim now so that the Town won’t waste time speculating about my powers if I’m lynched. (Also, I’ve always wanted to write one of those role-claiming posts. Yay!)
I am the Celebrity. My screen name is Normal Al. I am town-aligned, but I have, alas, no powers. (My role PM informs me that I do have a lot of money, but money won’t help me here.) I am basically a glorified vanilla townie. I have been doing almost the only thing I can do with my role, viz., amusing myself by making Night posts in the character of various celebrities named Al: Gore. Capone. Franken. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’m pretty much useless.
Now, who wants to be my bodyguard? I can be your long-lost pal… 
Ha! If you’re scum, I’ll give you credit for the best-planned fake claim ever.
Um, can someone find a post from toDay where anyone has mentioned lynching Hal because Zeriel turned up Town? (I think I remember Boozahol saying it YesterDay, but that’s it). Hell, I’ve clearly been the most vocal Hal-lynch-advocate, and even I haven’t suggested such a thing. Where are these comments coming from? What is this “vibe” you speak of? 'Cause I ain’t feeling it.
As for Fretful, I just re-read everything involving her from amrussell’s first exploration of her from yesterDay, and I’m not seeing anything scummy there. She has answered every question posed of her and most if not all of her explanations made perfect sense to me. I am currently inclined to think she is Town. (And, on Preview, now she’s claimed.) If anything, ok11 came off looking the worse from their exchange, but that’s my gut talking more than anything else.
Pleo, please forgive me, but I just cannot give much weight to your analysis. I don’t think you can predict/detect behavior mathematically, but more importantly, I think if you are scum you could manipulate the numbers to move them toward a result you wanted. In fact, you’ve admitted to doing that in a previous game when you were scum. So I personally find this method to be unreliable, and fraught with problems.
EBWOP: I’m not a math guy by nature, so I’m also not sure I understand it completely, either, which adds to the sense that it can be manipulated.
There was quite a lot of discussion yesterday of the Hal/Zeriel “unit”, I guess you could say, and some concern that we would autolynch the one we didn’t get yesterDay.
I relate mafia much to poker in terms of the various forms of analysis. Some players are highly mathematical, but those players can be fooled by deliberately manipulating one’s own bet patterns. Some players read other cues, like the sorts of things they say, or how they react to pressure in various situations to get reads. Some players just play a lot on gut. But any decent player will tell you that any player that relies too heavily on bet patterns or hunches and not enough on others simply won’t succeed in the long run (barring luck, of course). That is, mathematical analysis is not something that should be outright dismissed, and there’s several reasons why it shouldn’t.
Numbers can be used to give deceptive results, but it’s very difficult. Unlike in poker, where each person shares some common amount of information, and have some amount information to themselves, here some have additional information and others do not. Also unlike poker, everyone takes part in discussing the numbers. So outright manipulation of numbers just isn’t possible. If someone came out and said “I think there’s only three scum to start with, and here’s my analysis based on that assumption”, we’d probably laugh at him because it’s just not reasonable. In the case of Pleo, I tend to agree with his initial condition, 5 scum is most probable, 4 scum is possible but unlikely, and anything else is horribly unbalanced. We also have good reason to believe there were 2 PFKs. Scum cannot easily manipulate it, and won’t even try unless there’s good reason to do so.
Some motivation might be that the town believes there’s 5 scum, when there’s actually 4, so he’s trying to induce panic in the town about how close we are to LyLo, but there’s simply no manipulation of the numbers because it’s still a logical conclusion that any pro-town player could easily have come up with.
The part I have trouble with in his analysis are when bits of arbitrary information or values are entered. Why “0.75” as a factor? He’s assuming motivations, so he’s simply finding an objective scoring system to evaluate what people are fitting his intended motivation. THAT is a point that can and should be evaluated in his analysis. Are his assumptions about the scum motivation reasonable? Are the values he selected reasonable? What sort of light does this put on people he may or may not be connected with (eg, Hal)? If he is making disgenuous assumptions and conclusions, what could his motivation possibly be? And if there’s no manipulation, it’s absolutely a null tell because there’s equal motivation for town or scum to post accurate mathematical information.
As for my part, I think his analysis is mostly consistent with the facts, but his analysis of Day 3 is interesting. He states that scum have no reason to vote for Zeriel, but I’m not sure I agree with that. That is, while I do think that the whole “JSexton train was made to protect Hal” argument is logically flawed and says nothing about Hal’s alignment, scum may or may not have had motivation on Day 3 depending on whether Hal actually is scum or town.
My other objections to his system are things that probably have no bearing one way or the other to his alignment, like the selection of “0.75” or the likely accidental implication of precision when it his really a highly imprecise number. However, the first is simply his subjective assessment, which is plain and open to debate. And the latter is handled by him not simply going “this is the highest score, so he’s the scummiest” and instead grabbing a larger sample of the highest scores.
It was something I recall reading several times Yesterday. My concern is that I think that some people are so scared of the “auto-lynch” that no further analysis has gone into looking at Hal. That is, the reaction that resulted in the logic that pitted Zeriel and Hal against eachother that one must to have been saved by JSexton was bad. I’ve been arguing this for some time, but I think the revelation of JSexton’s and Zeriel’s towniness has no bearing on Hal’s alignment at all, as such, Hal should not be auto-lynched. OTOH, fear of said auto-lynch should not completely exclude Hal from consideration Today either, I simply believe that his consideration should not be conditional upon Zeriel’s alignment.
So, to reitterate something I mentioned earlier, I read Hal’s reaction to JSexton’s gambit as generally townie with the weirdness most likely do the the timing of his mentioned posting availability. Obviously, some people have disagreed (sorry, I can’t remember who), so I think that IS a good avenue of discussion. And, with that said, I will look on anyone who uses Zeriel’s towniness as justification for voting for Hal as making an anti-town move, unless he can come up with a much more robust explanation than we’ve currently seen. However, a vote for Hal that is logically based on his reaction to JSexton, his voting pattern, or any number of other things is perfectly reasonable and should not be taboo.
Yeah, I don’t really expect others to vote based on my analysis. Especially after only three Days. But I do try to make it as transparent as possible. You can see my reasoning explicitly:Starting player hypothesis: 16 Town, 5 Scum, 2 Third Party. I will also assume third parties will vote like Townies.
Day One hypothesis: scum votes spread uniformly; no need to go any particular direction.
Day Two hypothesis: scum are likely to avoid heat between two Townie vote leaders.
Day Three hypothesis: scum have no reason to jump on Zeriel.
The math is a direct application of those and is checkable by anyone with the inclination. It’s fairly simple math. For example, I’ll explain the line from Day Two:Zeriel: 5*6/20 votes *0.75 == 1.13 scum => 0.38 pts for Kat, Hero, BlaMIf Scum had voted with a uniform distribution, the fraction of 5 scum voting for Zeriel would have 5 [scum] * 6 [votes for Zeriel] / 20 [players total] = 1.5 [scum likely voting for Zeriel]. But my hypothesis for Day Two is that they are less likely to vote for either of the (now known as Townies) vote leaders. So I multiple by 0.75 [reduction factor, not too large, not too small] to get 1.13 [scum likely voting for Zeriel]. Now, out of the 6 voters for Zeriel, we know that 3 were Townies. So that means 1.13 [scum likely voting for Zeriel] / 3 [players of unknown Side] = 0.38 [scum per unknown player]. The higher that number is, the more likely those players are scum.
I do this for each Day and get a score for each remaining player for each Day (multiplied by 100 for easy reading). A single high score isn’t enough to condemn anyone. No one currently has three high scores, but several have two. So those are who I’m most suspcious of.
If anyone has a reasonable set of hypothesis they’d rather use, tell us and do the math, or if I have time, I’ll redo the calcs with their hypotheticals.
Note that the scummy manipulation I did before was implicitly including the assumption that I was Town. I am not doing that now.
What about today, though? You said there was “still a vibe” going on about it today - can you explain where you were getting such a vibe? I don’t mean to hound you about it, it just seems so out of nowhere to me…
This is precisely the area where manipulation is possible and where those of us like me who are not so mathematically inclined are not well-equipped to discover or rebut it. Meanwhile, he can pretty much justify a vote on a whole set of people simply by appealing to numbers. “I’m not scum for voting got that townie, look at my formula! It should have worked, must need a little tweaking…”
I’m not saying this kind of analysis is scummy by nature, but I’m concerned about it getting too much consideration, as well as it possibly serving as cover.
On preview: thanks for the further explanation, Pleo. I definitely see what you’re getting at, but I still think there are too many unsupportable assumptions in the formula, as Blaster has pointed out in his post above. I’ll point out another just for kicks - there’s no reason to think scum voted uniformly on Day One. In the last game I was scum, several of us voted for one person on Day One - I remember because I was concerned about it at the time. Sure, it makes sense that they would try to spread out a bit, but what makes sense generally doesn’t necessarily hold true in specific instances.
Anyway, I don’t want to throw a wet blanket on your work, but I’m trying to explain why I won’t be using it and why I think we would be well to take it with a grain of salt.
FWIW, I checked Pleonast’s math, and at least numerically everything is right. I also put amrussell back into the mix to see where he’d fall, and his score was always in the bottom half of players, even when I changed the 75% factor to 65% and 85% (to see whether the results would change dramatically). Despite all those changes, the 6 people Pleonast listed always had top scores. So at least he’s not manipulating the numbers outright.
I just don’t think that this type of analysis is accurate by itself, because depending on the assumptions, you can put anyone into the top category. For example, here’s what I got when I assumed there are 5 scum, and split the voters into 2 groups each Day, with 2 different scenarios per Day.
Day 1 Scenario 1: 3 scum voted for our 5 top vote getters, 2 voted for someone else or didn’t vote [this is if the scum spread their votes the same way as town]
Top 5: 313/23 votes == 1.70 scum => .21 pts for Hal, Squid, Hero, ok, Shadow, Wanderer, Total, Kat
Others: 210/23 votes == 0.87 scum=> 0.17 pts for Zsofia, Porp, Rapier, BlaM, Pleo
Day 1 Scenario 2: 2 scum voted for the top 5, 3 didn’t [this is if they wanted to keep a lower profile]
Top 5: 213/23 votes == 1.13 scum => .14 pts for Hal, Squid, Hero, ok, Shadow, Wanderer, Total, Kat
Others: 310/23 votes == 1.30 scum=> 0.26 pts for Zsofia, Porp, Rapier, BlaM, Pleo
Day 2 Scenario 1: 3 scum voted for our 2 top vote getters, 2 voted for someone else or didn’t vote
313/20 votes == 1.95 scum => .22 pts for Squid, Zsofia, Rapier, Hal, Pleo, ok, Kat, Hero, BlaM
27/20 votes == .70 => .18 pts for Shadow, Total, Wanderer, Porp
Day 2 Scenario 2: 2 voted for top 2, 3 didn’t
213/20 votes == 1.3 scum => .14 pts for Squid, Zsofia, Rapier, Hal, Pleo, ok, Kat, Hero, BlaM
37/20 votes == 1.05 => .26 pts for Shadow, Total, Wanderer, Porp
Day 3 Scenario 1: 3 scum voted for our 3 top vote getters, 2 voted for someone else or didn’t vote
311/17 votes == 1.94 scum => .22 pts for Kat, Squid, Pleo, BlaM, Hero, Hal, Rapier, Zsofia, Porp
26/17 votes == .71 scum => .18 pts for Total, Wanderer, ok, Shadow
Day 3 Scenario 2: 2 voted for top 3, 3 didn’t
211/17 votes == 1.29 scum => .14 pts for Kat, Squid, Pleo, BlaM, Hero, Hal, Rapier, Zsofia, Porp
36/17 votes == 1.06 scum => .27 pts for Total, Wanderer, ok, Shadow
By mixing and matching all these numbers, I got a variety of outcomes. Here are the top 4 for each combo:
[ul]
[li]Scenario 1,1,1: Boozahol Squid, P. I., Hal Briston, Hero from Sector 7G, Kat[/li][li]Scenario 1,2,1: Fretful Porpentine, One and Only Wanderers, ShadowFacts, Total Lost[/li][li]Scenario 1,1,2: Ok11, One and Only Wanderers, ShadowFacts, Total Lost[/li][li]Scenario 1,2,2: One and Only Wanderers, ShadowFacts, Total Lost, Ok11[/li][li]Scenario 2,1,1: Blaster Master, Pleonast, Rapier42, Zsofia[/li][li]Scenario 2,2,1: Fretful Porpentine, Blaster Master, Pleonast, Rapier42[/li][li]Scenario 2,1,2: Ok11, Blaster Master, Pleonast, Rapier42[/li][li]Scenario 2,2,2: One and Only Wanderers, ShadowFacts, Total Lost, Fretful Porpentine[/li][/ul]
I have no reason to doubt Fretful Porpentine’s claim. Besides those genius Night-post breadcrumbs, the role description fits nicely with the rest of the game, and in retrospect post 318 looks like a possible hint.
Otherwise, I don’t have much to add. We have several people who haven’t checked in so far toDay, and it sucks because the Day might end in 2 hours.