Death to the Conspiracy! Game over, town wins!

[webby]

To the people who have been saying I haven't been posting enough/as much as usual - sorry, I'm in four games at the moment and this one had the latest deadline. Should be able to focus on this game more soon, but here are some quick impressions for now:

I think it's correct that we need to find some middle-ground between a massive bandwagon which scum can hide on, and everyone voting for different people and someone getting lynched with 2 or 3 votes, which would give us practically no information (and would likely lead to ties). Choosing three options sounds like a good plan. Obviously I'm going to favour those three being the three I put as scummy, but I am open to it being different players.

I like Sruixan's analysis, it seems well-thought out. Also, it's broadly consistent with mine. Much sympathy for the ambivalence - it's not easy on day 1.

In terms of more_people (and to some extent Hausdog, but I think his posting so far is scummier than usual), I'm cautious because I've been part of mislynches in early game on both of them before. See Lucid Dreamers for Hausdog and C9++ for more_people.

[more_people]

In terms of more_people (and to some extent Hausdog, but I think his posting so far is scummier than usual), I'm cautious because I've been part of mislynches in early game on both of them before. See Lucid Dreamers for Hausdog and C9++ for more_people.

I believe I was lynched because you said that the way I was posting in C9++ was the same way I was posting in Dethy (it was).

[Not A Raptor]

*does a full thread reread*

Current summary of everything:

The order of events will be written in blue. My commentary will be in green, and I will mostly withhold it for my own posts.

1. John Citizen

(25): Adds perspective to Dr Ug's interpretation. He's right! Leaves me wondering a little about Dr Ug.

2. NecklaceOfShadow
3. Misnomer

(3): Does the sensible thing and trusts the mod.

(64): Misnomer gives a few impressions. His gut feelings are good, I suppose. However, by this point... people have already been discussing all of that at length. Could just be parroting the thread's gestalt decision.

4. webby

(19): Corrects me and is confident in lynching scum on day one. Sensible. There are multiple possible reasons for scum voting for scum, or even throwing each other under the bus.

(30): Argues against assumptions. Effectively counters a-wan's argument against him. Tells jayshu that speaking up is good. Pings mild town.

(44): Promises to review contributions by people. Yay!

(46): A promise is fulfilled. And then some. There is some mild analysis of the posts. At the point he does the analysis, my disagreements are: Hausdog should be moved from "scummy" to "ditzy", a completely new class of uninterested players lurkers. Sruixan should be moved from Neutral to Towny. A-wan should be moved from Towny to neutral. Ditto with weiyaoli and softchews. I should be moved to towny (You can ignore that, if you want. I know how well I trust myself, though.). Dr Ug is straddling towny and neutral. Otherwise, I like what I see.

(75): Reasonable excuse for lack of content. Wants a middle ground concerning voting patterns. Likes Sruixan's analysis. Cautious about Hausdog and more_people. Liking webby's post, here.

5. Hausdog

(16): And now, for something completely off topic... Pings "not paying attention at all". Gains 30 "pissed me off" points. These are to be redeemed at the nearest Fuck Giving Booth. One would find, however, that it is fresh out of fuck to give, at least concerning the reaction of Hausdog's friend to the duckinaglass avatar.

6. Chandani

(61): Finally shows up. Answers the questions. Strategizes about the kill power. The answers are reasonable and make sense. I am not sure I like the idea of limiting the number of kills, especially by a number we all know. Also, how would we decide who kills? We don't even know our teammates. By the way, where were you? First impression is slightly disappointing.

(68): Reassures Lorenz regarding the deadline. Neutral. Also, give us more content. In this game, "neutral" is "lean scum", due to the player composition.

7. more_people

(14): "me too"'s Lorenz, advocates a lack of strategy on the town's part. Either a real strong scum ping or he doesn't know what he's talking about. "no strategy", in my view, is throwing one's hands into the wind and devoting yourself to fickle luck in the hopes that it'll help you.

(17): Criticism of Hausdog. Perhaps picking an easy target? Hell if I know. Certainly legitimate to criticize, at any rate. No ping one way or the other.

(36): Criticizes weiyaoli's suspicion of jayshu. Scum might be "town" in numbers and using the lynch, but terminology mindfuckery is hardly productive.

(70): Suspicious of Sruixan and Hausdog. Is now calling strategizing scheming. Seriously? Sruixan and Hausdog? Sruixan, for not reading the entirety of one of your posts despite lots of consistent contribution and a player analysis? And Hausdog, merely for a gut feeling instead of being a lurking player? I'm about to kick your butt off Slappy Island, here! >.< (Can this place please be Slappy Island in the flavor? )

(72): Forgives Sruixan, answers the questions. Anti-plan forever. Urgh.

(76): Talks about the metagame in such a way that doesn't directly apply to this game. Not really relevant, but I don't care at this point. I'm almost done.

8. softchews

ROLL! (This is only for fun, and not really a jab at you. )



(5): Says the mod should just be trusted. Hypothesizes the existence of scum power roles with protective abilities, or bad probabilities of a certain strategy succeeding. Good post. First mention of power roles on the scum side, something which seemed forgotten by the other players who spoke.

(39): Criticism of my "plan". Reasonable enough. Discussion is good, though, so talking about strategies is a good thing anyway. I guess we should look for a balance. What can we talk about without potentially revealing anything key? That's the question. Although, I've already responded to this post.

(42): Proclaims to have seen the light of discussion (I'm getting tired by this point. You can tell by the florid phrasing. Notices my post and reaches a middle ground. Reasonable post is reasonable.

(58): Answers the questions I don't have any arguments there., doesn't like the idea but can't find another way to avoid doubling up on kills If we needed to be pretty damn sure of a player's alignment in order to kill, then only existing cops would kill. Not something we're guaranteed to have. Remember the numbers breakdown if we all withhold kills? That's something to think about. Also, the criticism of Jayshu's self-placement seems a bit... pointless to me.

(74): Softchews has stayed up too late. Dislikes more_people's posts. Waffles on Sruixan, due to infiltration possibility. Delicious scum rolls. Tasty. Also, all everything in this post remains possible. Except literal scum rolls.

9. a-wan

(2): Agrees with weiyaoli, admits he had a strategy that was foiled by the word of E_P, essentially states a desire to spread the kills out. Seems like a neutral post, no real content. The only interesting thing is the desire to spread kills out. That way lies the likelihood of town vs. town kills rising. Perhaps he hadn't considered it, or perhaps he's really scum. I don't have a good read on him. At the same time, it might leave redirectors with a better chance of mucking around with kills that would've hit scum. All in all, bad strategizing.

(4): Wants to see if people can come up with reasons why it's a bad idea to talk about who is being targeted. Also claims to be baiting scum into slipping up/getting town to reveal towniness. Technically reasonable, but the circumstances make it seem like making excuses.

(6): Is corrected by the thought of scum powers. Dismayed by a lack of obvious strategies. Thinks voting for a lynch is scummy. Wants to target a the scum as they bandwagon. Seems reasonable at first, but the fact is that scum and town are very likely to have mixed votes. After all, we don't know who's town. It's possible that two town players or two scum players wind up on the lynch block. Also, it's possible that town could vote for a townie in a fast manner due to playing badly.

(11): Resigned to a townie getting lynched. Thinks that the way to get scum lynched day one is to bandwagon scum while they're distancing with votes. Flies in the face of what he said at (6). Votes Lorenz for an arbitrary reason. Voting=scummy is bad logic, as has been stated before.

(28-29): Makes a lot of points. In order, they are: "I wanted information regarding what the scum know, scum mustn't kill with merely a plurality, scum mustn't kill with merely a plurality, vote for webby because scum couldn't possibly want to lynch scum, Lorenz voted and the vote is the scum tool, scum mustn't kill with merely a plurality, town voting is good, OH WOW TOWN CAN KILL TOWN?, does town have to kill?" Wanting information is good, scum lynching or with or without a plurality seems like a red herring to me, seems oddly sure of not being able to lynch scum especially when scum have thrown each other under the bus before, yet asking if we have to kill on day one is plausibly a town action. I disagree with his vote on webby very strongly, and it's possible that scum would try to reduce the amount of kills being made (especially if people claim to withhold their kills, thus increasing the likelihood of kill redirects) In totality, he's pinging scum.

(33): Strategy regarding town on town kills. Sound logic regarding night one kills, but falls apart when we become the majority, as that is when we finally control the lynch. An obvious scum target when we're the majority is when we all lynch the guy, not double-team with NKs!

(35): Nitpicking, allows the possibility of a scum lynch (surprising, given his still present vote on webby), still wants to use the lynch votes to determine NK targets. Seems unhelpful. Possibly trying to make things predictable.

(48): Analyzes the analysis made by webby, and makes a few alterations that are stated. I would argue that John Citizen and Misnomer are also inactive lurkers, at only one post each. Also, that the "great idea" isn't so great, though it looks like it is at a first glance. I like the point made about more_people and planmaking. I still say that getting a scum lynched is reasonable.

(55): Lurkervote: ENGAGE! Hausdog is voted for. Also, statistically exploiting the scum. Numbers are fun! I'll answer the three questions here. If you tl;dr'ed this, it's your fault for not catching my responses, damn it. Play the game! Question one: The plan is good for the reasons outlined by a-wan and because scum will prefer to vote for those of the three who are town, revealing our targets. Question two: Locking in people seems like a way to dodge discussion of other people for the moment. I don't like that. Let the list be fluid. Question three: Don't lock it in. Duuuuuh. Also, see the list at the bottom for the three I consider most scummy if you really must have three.

10. weiyaoli

(1): Town:Scum ratio speculation. Settles on 6 town:9 scum. Seems like reasonable speculation. It's also the most obvious. Good to get out there quickly, though.

(10): Ignores the vote. Pokes holes in a-wan's plan. This seems to be exactly the sort of post I'd make in this situation as either town or scum. It doesn't make accusations, it points out flaws, it sidesteps the problem of defending against a supportless vote. Good tactics. I just wish I could get a read on it.

(21): Agrees with webby Re:scum playing cautiously/distancing Again, the possibility of bussing does not crop up. Incidentally, who remembers Frogmafia?

(23): Quotes E_P Re: power roles. Tit...

(27): Suspects Jayshu. Wants information. Sound post. Short, though.

(43): Says that more_people's most recent post was incorrect, voting early and often is good, and prods lurkers. Me likey this post. Me likey a lot.

(52): Weiyaoli notices how unfeasible targetclaiming is. Quite unfeasible, I say! Good post.

(54): Lurkervote: ENGAGE! Lorenz is voted for. Dislikes his early contributions. He has a fever, and the only prescription is moar content. Weiyaoli is looking good to me.

(59): Criticism of Jayshu. The two of them are getting a bit personal in their argument by this point. Any arguing between them at this point will not ping me. It could conceivably be town vs. town unknowingly bickering. Of course, it could also be town and scum. I don't fucking know at this point.

11. Lorenz

(9): Likes a-wan's strategy at (6). Has reservations, though. Votes weiyaoli, seemingly at random. Ah, the classic "discussion vote". It tends to produce discussion just fine... However, the discussion is mostly about the voter, and not the votee.

(13): Ignores the real reason for Sruixan's post in order to criticize or accuse Sruixan. Pings scum or inattentive town.

(53): Unvotes. Promises to post more later, wants town to vote a lot and that those who don't deserve to get killed. Uh, okay? I like the sentiment regarding voting, but condemning death? Let's make a cumulative assessment of whether we think each person is scum or not and include their voting status in that assessment as another data point. Does that sound more reasonable? Yes? Good.

12. Jay

(7): "I'm here, but I'll post content after I have a grasp of things." Probably didn't have much time to make a post.

(26): Thinks town should only vote to move the lynch away from town, and that town should, perhaps, lurk. Seems a bit distracted. Seems to be suffering from a bit of terminology confusion. Also, BAD STRATEGIES ALL AROUND. Also, isn't the town already "given away"? Scum members know the scum team's other members. Either inattentive, or scum. Leaning more toward scum.

(31-32): Webby convinces him of discussion being good, remembers that we can kill after being lynched, is late to recognizing the likely existence of scum powers, refers to the collective town as... they? "we" are not "they", are we, jayshu? Places you firmly in the gray zone with this post.

(56): A lovely numbers breakdown concerning withholding kills. I like this post.

(57): Jayshu's player analysis. Given the information he's demonstrated he knows, this is an excellent analysis. My complaints:t softchews should not be the most scummy neutral, as E_P has essentially confirmed the presence of individual power players in the rule post. Now, as town powers need scum powers to balance out and vice versa, we can be assured that there are scum power roles out there. Also, as I am not in his perspective, I do not look so harshly upon weiyaoli (at this point in my analysis, he ranks just behind Dr Ug in towniness. And finally, a-wan shouldn't be leading the town list. That spot goes to Sruixan, followed by Dr Ug.

(60): Responses to softchews and weiyaoli. Keeps a cool head regarding weiyaoli within this post. Advocates all town people using the kill power.Reasonable.

(62): Stresses the importance of posting. Doesn't have any reply to Chandani's post. Ideally, you'd have read the post before replying.

(66-7): Votes for Lorenz. Mostly to avoid being lynched. Give us more content, at least...

(69): Undoes his last post, effectively, and nitpicks the disparity between flavor and reality. ... Fucking seriously? Content! Less care about the flavor! AAAAA-

13. Sruixan

(8): Same as (7), wants to strategize.

(12): Returns with content. Tries to find a reason for the targetted-kill method to have been discouraged. First to propose the thought of the kill-redirector. Strong town ping, bringing up that power. It seems like a role that would obviously exist, but no scum would be likely to mention its existence, even if the particular scum didn't know of it. After all, the mod already discouraged that strategy. Another reason could have been found, to give a 'speculating' scum an out.

(15): Gives Lorenz some scathing words about what is thought about suppressing discussion. I approve.

(34): Sruixan is optimistic about our odds. Criticizes webby's assuming the likely amount of kills. Quite reasonable, though certain word choices webby made dilutes the criticism.

(37): A breakdown of what the most optimistic scenario with a starting composition of 5t/10s and two town deaths before the dawn of day two.Quite helpful. In my opinion, narrows down the starting composition to either 6t/9s or 7t/8s. Town pings.

(49): Notices the flaws in Dr Ug's plan. Doesn't realize that it's a pretty shoddy plan that can't really be salvaged, due to how open we're being with who we think is scum. Especially with scum powers floating about.

(63): A player analysis! In my estimation, pretty damn good. I'd have placed weiyaoli at the lower half of the neutral category (closer to scummy), but that's just my feel. Same with Jayshu. Then again, perhaps I'm a bit more cautious with who I consider scummy. Perhaps too cautious, considering the fact that they make up the majority of the player composition.

(65): Things that bug Sruixan. One is important. The other is irrelevant, save for causing less annoyance if the advice is taken. Remember: Suspect people regardless of how much they jabber. Trust in signal, not noise.

(71): Replies to other people. Boils down to "scum can manipulate anything, but we'll always be able to see through it in the end because that's how we roll." Still hasn't answered the questions. Reasonable post.

(73): A moment's thought about locking things in being bad. Reasonable, if it's assumed that the original three in the selection have a good chance of being townies.

14. Not A Raptor

(18): Wary of votes, thinks about the setup, gets corrected by the mod, gets told to read the goddamn rules.

(38): The first day/night cycle is make-or-break, throwing strategies out like candy is good, I like people who talk a whole bunch because they're good for the game. Did I mention discussion is good? It's good. Also, smugness concerning the "brilliance" of throwing strategies around.

(41): Clarifies the context of an earlier sentiment (mentioned by Dr Ug), considers softchew's criticism and takes it into account, critiques Dr Ug's response.

(77): I have found a post... and I will call it... This Post.

21. Dr Ug

(20): Corrects me, role and setup speculation Mentions several possible scum power roles that hadn't before been thought of. Town ping., criticizes and votes for a-wan over Lataro, gives more explanation for his vote of a-wan than his suspicion of Lorenz. Seems odd, to me. Lorenz, at this point, sticks out as more obviously unhelpful, due to the (unmentioned by Dr Ug) criticism of Sruixan/silencing of discussion.

(22): Weiyaoli's quote triggers the realization that other shared faction powers aren't there, but that individual powers are likely to remain. In other words: no new content. However, his referring to the scum knowing who each other are as "all-knowing town" strikes me as an interesting confusion in terms. It may just be continuing the terminology of post (20) as town vs. bunch of mutually winning SKs, but it doesn't sit well with me either. I will remain cautious regarding that suspicion, though. Dr Ug has been helpful, after all.

(24): Goes to reread the rules. ... tat. Neither post (23) nor post (24) contained anything worth reading, in my eyes. >.<

(40): Thwacks softchews with the metaphorical newspaper. Instavote. Discussion is good, and questioning that is BLASPHEMY! While he makes the point to educate regarding discussion, he definitely overreacts in both tone and action. May just be to drive the point home, but instantly voting is too harsh for being done to a new player. It's conceivable that he's going for an easy target.

(45): Unvotes, promises future content. Seems like he's backing down in as reasonable a manner as possible. Seems fair, anyway.

(47): Comes up with a potential strategy for avoiding doubling up on kills. It only really works if we don't publicize who we're suspicious of. Try again, man.

(50-51): Strategizes around the flawed strategy, the situation of the lynched townie (targetting the third or fourth voter?), and reporting kill targets. The lynched townie does have more information, but I dislike the idea of predictable killing. Also, I see muddy waters in the future of target claiming. Oh, and Dr Ug's having fun. Nice to know.


SUMMARY AND SCUMLIST
As you might be able to tell from the way the above post was written, I wrote it in the order that the blue numbers indicate, and not directly up-to-down. Please take that and the fact that my views have shifted around during the composition of this post to accommodate information as I learned it. This particularly applies to the scumlist that I post below. You will notice that it will not correspond to the scumlist sneak peeks that are in the above post-by-post breakdown. In fact, those sneak peeks might even contradict each other due to the evolution of my opinion. The information down here, however, will remain consistent.

As for actual content, I will begin with a possibility that many have overlooked and bears repeating down here: Scum bussing each other and deliberately voting away the weak links in their team. I view it as a larger probability than has been thus far considered, considering the fact that we have multiple lurkers (NoS, John Citizen, et al.), incompetents (those who are heavily suspected by many people at this point), and the fact that scum want to distance themselves from a scum identity. If you vote for somebody who can't help but look bad, and that person turns up scum, ask yourselves this: was that lynch too easy? If so, do not automatically consider a vote for that person to be a towny ping.

And now, my scumlist:

NOT ON THE SCALE DUE TO LURKINESS/LOW CONTENT: Necklace of Shadow, John Citizen, Chandani, Misnomer, Hausdog

NOT ON THE SCALE DUE TO INHERENT BIAS: Not A Raptor (ME!)

SCUM END OF LIST
more_people
Lorenz
------------------------
weiyaoli
jayshu
POINT OF EQUIVALENCE
a-wan
softchews
------------------------
webby
Dr Ug
Sruixan
TOWN END OF LIST

The area between the lines is "neutral". Due to the nature of the game, however "true neutral" is the area of the neutral zone on the town side of the point of equivalence. The area on the scum side is "lean scum".

And now, to follow through on my list...

Vote: more_people

That is both a command to the entire player list (to vote more, not necessarily for more_people, although voting for more people is okay, I guess) and, itself, a vote.

[Sruixan]

I'm rushing this somewhat since it turns out I'm going to be afk for a bit more of today than I had intended to be, but I did promise that I would answer a-wan's questions so here we go.

1. - I'm rather satisfied with this plan. By limiting the lynch prospects and insisting on a majority lynch, it makes it easier to pick out scum through retrospective analysis of the votals and with three, we're not limiting the discussion to simply which side of a line you fall. Plus, with this game still being in the opening stages, there's less likely to be a townie on the list, I think (although I'm not sure since I am rushing the thought train here) since in the original free-for-all voting system, getting a townie to the noose would have required a bit of careful planning so as not to give any scum away... maybe that's not quite so accurate since votes on townies at the start could be used to make any case later not look quite so out of the blue, but still...

2. - I'd personally prefer to switch Hausdog out for more_people, since with Hausdog he hasn't actually visited the fora since his one rather useless post was made, and if he continues to be absent then we might be able to get a replacement and thus an actual contributing player. Oh wait. That's more an answer to question 3, isn't it? Still, had I answered these questions a tad earlier I would have said "no, not just yet; wait until we've got more opinions on the table before we go about locking anyone in". We've currently got the following:

a-wan - Lorenz, jayhsu, Hausdog
jayhsu - weiayoli, Lorenz, (softchews/Chandani)
Chandani - doesn't have enough info yet, would be ok with the three originally proposed though
Sruixan - more_people, Lorenz, jayhsu
Misnomer - Lorenz, more_people and jayhsu
more_people - switch jay or Lorenz for Sruixan
webby - Hausdog, Lorenz, jayhsu
NotARaptor - more_people, Lorenz... I assume weiyaoli for the last one?

We've got just over half of the playerbase's shortlists now. There is some definite deviation from the original proposition, methinks. So no, I wouldn't lock the three a-wan suggested in, but after my previous late-night post I would say we have to lock it in relatively soon. I don't mean in five minutes time. Not even, circumstances depending, tomorrow. Or the next day. Just not a couple of days before the deadline, please. As it stands, it looks like we're going to come to a consensus soon anyway...

3. - I'll repeat to make it nice and clear where I stand; more_people, Lorenz, jayhsu.

[Dr Ug]

I haven't had much of a chance to read the thread today, but it seems like we're rushing a bit by locking in a 3-man vote this early - the day can run to 2 weeks, and this is only day 2-3. Long day 1's are good while conversation is continuing (as it has so far), so I'd be reluctant to rule out most of the players this early.

I think it's the sort of thing we need to do more like (at least) halfway through a day, rather than less than a quarter through.

[a-wan]

First, I haven't actually answered the questions myself, so I will:

1. I haven't come up with a good reason why not to do this plan yet, so as of now I support it.

2. I could go either way on locking in these three. These three are not necessarily my three scummiest players. As has been pointed out, Hausdog is slipping into true lurker territory and we may have to let the mod deal with that. Two reasons I would support locking in these three are because (1) they were proposed before people knew they might be locked in so these three names would be less subject to scum tampering and (2) they were proposed and voted on by three different people, so, again, less tampering.

3. As of now (if we're taking Hausdog off the list--seriously too many lurkers at this point is seeming rather unfair) my three scummiest active players are jayhsu, more_people, and softchews. My biggest point against jayhsu is that with his strategy he seemed to be both trying to limit the number of town kills and give himself an alibi for not killing anyone tonight. more_people is on my list for discouraging discussion and sticking to it. I'm less sure about softchews. He said to trust the mod at the beginning, which is obviously reasonable and he was the first one to give a good reason why, which clearly pings town, so I was happy with him. I became suspicious of him when, after a very good townie post for his first post, he proposed that we should be limiting discussion. When someone called him on it, he claimed that the mistake was because he was new. A lot of people have bought into this, but if it's true that he made that mistake because of newbishness, then why was he so confident in his first post? Maybe his confidence came from the knowledge gained by his role (roll?) PM, so he understood exactly how scum would be able to use powers to disrupt the strategy of announcing NKs before the night. It seems to me that softchews posts have either been lacking content or attempting to squelch discussion. I know a lot of people have accepted his excuse of being new, so I'm not as confident about this, but maybe everyone just accepting his excuse so easily should also be a red flag. As I said, I'm not as confident about softchews, but if I were picking the three, those are the three I would choose.

I really liked NAR's analysis. I would have liked it more if he didn't seem to be intentionallly misreading my posts at times, but that's understandable, I guess, given the number of posts he was going through. I also don't know why he put weiyaoli as high on his scum list as he did, but overall he made some convincing points. I still don't see how we can possibly expect scum to use their only kill on themselves, but we'll see, I guess, won't we?

[a-wan]

EBWOP:

Almost forgot.

Unvote: Hausdog

Hopefully, he'll start posting soon, or the mods can do something about him.

[Elvish Pillager]

a-wan, I'm flattered, but there is only one of me.

Effective immediately, existential_elevator is replacing NecklaceOfShadow.

Votals:

Lorenz: 1 (webby)
more_people: 1 (Not A Raptor)

[John Citizen]

1. Is [limiting the lynch to three people] an okay plan? Please give concrete reasons for yes or no.

No, as this restricts the options of townies when scum have the most say in who is chosen. Even if only 2 out of 3 are townie, chances are they will be lynched.

2. If we did this plan, should we lock in the there we have currently or choose a different (though not necessarily non-overlapping) group of three.

I would not choose these three, as I am unlikely to take suggestions lightly when scum has a majority.

3. If we choose not to lock in these three, who would you choose?

Not entirely sure yet, but I'll post some thoughts.

In general, I'm suspicious of anyone who has stated or implied that scum is essentially town. This list consists of Dr Ug and jayhsu.

Dr Ug is less suspicious, however, as he later defended the reverse position, while justifying a vote on softchews. He has also provided some decent content.

I also feel that more_people is suspicious, for accusing hausdog on a gut feeling, especially since hausdog has only one (non-substantive) post.

Sruixan and NaR feel townie for contributing good analysis.

John Citizen - One post, and I don't understand the point - scum acting like town will just get killed by town? As opposed to scum acting like scum?

To clarify, I'm referring to scum acting like scum is really the town faction.

[existential_elevator]

Oh, hello. I need to go back and read thread and stuff. I'm inadvertantly warning of a lurky game, given suddenly I'm in three and I just got a new job which won't allow for work-time fora-ing But I will do my best!

[existential_elevator]

So, I've now sort-of-read the thread, and boy am I going to have to read it again. I swear I've not seen a game with this much content in it since that one where Felstaff turned out to be the godfather.

To be honest, the thing that's still making my head spin is making sense of the setup. This is a surprisingly complex setup, and thinking about strategy is slightly maddening.

My first general observation is that scum knows who everyone is. Now - yes, I know that's not a revelation, in a regular setup where there are two factions, scum knows who everyone is. With the lack of night chat, I guess what we're looking for are two things:
- scum trying to convince town that they're town.
- scum communicating with their buddies.
I know, I know that's all normal stuff, but it's kind of not when scum is the majority. Because, in reality, the majority kind of control the discussion. It's not like simple role-reversal, because scum don't need information from the day chatter, they just need to get a lynch, and they already know who to lynch. Town are the ones who need the information, and good scum play probably involves withholding that.

At this stage, scum control the lynch, so I'm considering day 1 a town write-off until there have been enough deaths to even out the numbers. I don't know how to advise on killings. On one hand, it seems that scum would benefit from the cries of encouragement to whittle down townie vig kills (FoS on the people who have been doing that). On the other hand, if the town have a really off-night they could wipe themselves out.

I'd also be suspicious if we do lynch scum at all, because it's likely to be a plot to gain trust. My gut feeling is that scum will wait for someone town to push a lynch on someone, then bandwagon them and blame the lynch on the first person afterwards. The tactic for them is to wait until something comes along and someone can frame them.

I'm suspicious of people calling other people townie. Very. Did you just get called town correctly? Remember: the scum know who you are Don't take the buddy bait. Trust no-one! Death to the conspiracy!

[webby]

I like Not A Raptor's analysis, but of course I'm going to be cautious because it's a pretty good and common scum move to find a townie's analysis which isn't so accurate and agree with it. However, it does seem very well thought out, so I'm reasonably happy with NAR.

e_e's first post is reasonable, same with Chandani. Still going to reserve judgment until they've posted more.

Apart from that, I haven't seen much to change my previous impressions as of yet.

[Sruixan]

Well, there was me fretting over the fact I hadn't posted for two days, only to find out now that I've missed a grand total of seven posts. Righty ho...

I probably should say now that I am generally busier at weekends than I am during the week, hence my absence. Anyhow, I should probably have a spare hour somewhen later this evening to do some browsing and thinking, so this is just basically a filler to say that I'm not dead.

[jayhsu]

Yeah, I fall into the same boat as sruixan, its been a busy weekend. I'll do a reread tomorrow morning of the (8?) posts.

Mod, how much time until the end of the hour?

[Elvish Pillager]

You still have a week left. Recall:

Hour 1 begins! Start lynching!

The tentative deadline will be two weeks from this post, or around UTC 16:00 on Monday, August 15.

[a-wan]

The last votals we got from the mod left out weiyaoli's vote for jayhsu, so we still have three candidates. We've already spent a week in discussion and haven't really gotten closer to getting someone lynched and only one person has even had two votes for him at the same time, though even that didn't last for too long.

Most people seem to be okay with choosing three people, so we should probably nail down a list of three soon so we can make sure to get as much as we can out of voting for candidates. I'm fine with the original three and I'm fine with the current three. I'll be okay with any list that includes one of more_people, jayhsu, or softchews.

How should we decide which three people to choose?

[Elvish Pillager]

I do apologize.

Votals:

jayhsu: 1 (weiyaoli)
Lorenz: 1 (webby)
more_people: 1 (Not A Raptor)

[Sruixan]

How should we decide which three people to choose?

This... this is actually a very good question. Were this any other game the obvious way would be by majority, but in this setup that's potentially dangerous. There's a rule against using randomness to decide the lynch vote, just to make things far more fun. It's reasonable to assume that there's a townie in the pool of potential candidates, if not a couple, otherwise the scum haven't been playing particularly well. In an ideal world, we'd pick three mafia lynchees, but I can't see much of a way to even as much as slightly increase the chance that that happens; picking the players who've cropped up the most really shouldn't work, since the scum have probably placed a townie/some townies on their lists purposefully to make it more likely that one gets through to be lynched. I suppose that a townie in the final three would make the scum's voting habits rather interesting and hopefully help us pick them out a bit better, so maybe there is a benefit to be gained if we can't guarantee an all-scum selection.

Or maybe I'm being a bit optimistic; how can we say for sure that we will get any scum at all? I mean, I know I'm town, and I know that more_people put "some" effort into getting me onto the list. What's to stop the scum from having already built cases up around townies, painting them in a worse light to make them seem suspicious enough for inclusion? I'd have thought, though, that the townie involved would then realise what was going on and fight back a bit, but that does assume that everyone is at least attempting to win. I can't help but notice that this is exactly how jayhsu has been playing, by-the-by. Moreover, for both jay and Lorenz, the cases against them stem from very early in the game, when I would expect that the mafia would have been a bit more subtle with their voting habits, so either their scumbuddies noticed that they weren't acting all too well and decided to attack them with the view of disguising themselves a bit better and possibly gaining townie cred if they ever ended up dying, or the mafia noticed that they were townies not playing a townie game and called them out on that because they had grounds on which to do so. Either way, it's not certain that they have to be town.

I was going to comment on the other candidates and the lock-in in general, but I have to go right now and would rather get this out and do that later than do it in haste and be incomprehensible, so there you are.

[a-wan]

Well, this is going no where. At this rate we'll end up with three people with one vote each. Chances are one of them is town, so we'll get town lynched and almost no information on anyone.

Here's what I propose:

1. Over the next 24 hours everyone selects the three people they consider to be the towniest (but people may not self select--that lets scum hide a vote by picking themselves).
2. We tally up the votes for each person and the top three vote getters put forward the three people they consider to be the scummiest.
3. The three people who get the most votes from the selection committee are locked in.
4. We vote to lynch one of the locked in candidates.

I'm not sure what to do in the case of a tie, but we can cross that bridge when we get to it. Here's why we should do this:

1. Scum is going to be able to manipulate things some no matter what we do, but if they start calling people towny who aren't towny, then we'll just NK them, so they have to pick the towniest people.
2. Lurking is a good way for people to not get a good read on you, so lurkers are more likely to be scum, but lurking also prevents people from being seen as town, so we further bias the pool of people for the selection committee towards town.
3. Even if scum manipulates this, at least we get a lot of votes out there, so we'll have a better idea of who to target tonight.
4. Lurking is not in scum's interest if they intend to manipulate this, so maybe we'll get to hear from some of the quieter players.

I'll start. For the selection committee I nominate: Not a Raptor, Dr Ug, and Sruixan.

[more_people]

For the selection committee I nominate: Dr Ug, a-wan, Not a Raptor

[Sruixan]

My brain is saying "Hmm... that doesn't sound half bad". My gut is saying "Yes, it sounds very good actually; too good to be true in fact". Call me paranoid, but I can't help but think that something might be off. And yet it seems so reasonable, logic-wise. My first thought against it is that all it takes is a mafioso who's been very townie so far and we end up with the possibility of one-third of the lynch nomination being controlled by them. Two scum on the committee and you might as well not bother with the townie at all. To be frank, NaR and Dr Ug, who you suggest, are of the sort cunning and experienced enough to have constructed such a convincing town charade that it's difficult to tell quite what side they're on.

It has benefits; you're right about scum not being able to pull a townie candidate out of thin air without getting some rather funny looks and it does similarly apply to the lynchee vote, where they wouldn't want to rock the boat by voting for a leftfield candidate or two. Admittedly, that means everyone on the committee has to go with the flow unless they have decent arguments as to why we shouldn't, but still. I'll sleep on it, methinks...

One message from your post that I do very much agree with, though, is your anti-lurking agenda. Seriously, people. Post, gogdammit! If you don't post, there's nothing for us to base opinions of you on. If you're town, then you're really not helping, because you're practically giving the scum an even greater majority than they've got already. If you're scum, then... well if you don't show up then that's actually pretty splendid, so you keep doing that, alright?

Oh, one last thing; I'm not a big fan of the whole three-way tie thing. Just saying.

Vote: more_people

I've made my stance on him decidedly clear before, and it's taken me far too long to type this up (damned iPad keyboard with its hilarious autocomplete that I keep thinking I should turn off but never get round to doing). As it happens, more_people himself has just ninja'ed me (that's an indicator of how long this has taken!), with a nice, insightful, totally-not-a-sheeple post. Lovely. So, um, what do you actually think about a-wan's plan, more_people? Is it good? Why might it be bad? If you answer those questions, then you will be generating content. And do you know what's so good about content? It helps the game flow and, as it happens, your side win. It's obviously time I stopped posting because I'm getting snarky again and that's never a good thing...

[more_people]

. So, um, what do you actually think about a-wan's plan, more_people? Is it good? Why might it be bad?

I have already stated that we shouldn't plan anything, but if we hae to come up with a plan, than a-wan's plan is good. Hence, the list of nominees. A reason why I think it might be bad is that the people we nominate might be scum who are playing as good town, as you have said.
Am I generating enough content for you to want me lynched? Cause I know that you are generating enough content for me to want to lynch you.

[a-wan]

Sruixan, I know the plan is flawed in that it can still be manipulated by scum, but I can't think of one that can't be manipulated by scum and this one seems to reduce their manipulation the most. I'm still open to other ideas. I'd like to move forward with this one though, because it will get people voting and generating content (or at least it's supposed to). If people decide there's a better plan, then we can scrap this and go ahead with the better plan at any time. Worst case is that we at least have the content generated by this. Best case is we come up with a way to reduce scum's influence as much as possible. Even if they still manage to sneak one scum player onto the committee, at least then they'd have less influence than they do now.

[weiyaoli]

Sorry for disappearing for a while, back now.

I think a-wan's plan makes sense, it at least stands to give us the most information I think at this point even if it fails and results in a townie lynch. My three towniest players are:

a-wan, Dr Ug and Sruxian.

I hesitated to put Dr Ug and left out NAR because I find it difficult to get a read on them. Like that FBI game, I thought he was pretty "townie" until he voted for a weird reason like D3 or something. NAR his playstyle is very difficult for me to read, since it seems he always does these weird plans whether he is town or scum.

[a-wan]

So we have about 6 days left. I can see that 24 hours for choosing the selection committee isn't going to be enough time for everyone to get a vote in (though, I don't know why people are lurking so much). So let's say a total of two days for that, so we'll have 5 days left. It shouldn't be a problem for the three people who are selected to make one post in 24 hours, so 1 more day to lock in scum candidates. Then we'll have 4 days for people to actually vote on the lynch.

So everyone take another day or so to put forward names. If people are afraid of revealing too much of their hand right now, well, I guess that tells us at least as much as who your towny votes are, doesn't it?

[jayhsu]

*Sruixan.

Based on my previous list, which I don't believe has changed.

Selection Committee: Sruixan, Dr Ug, A-wan.

Maybe it should be more people, but let me think on that.

[Sruixan]

It's irking me somewhat that when asked to pick scum, people seem to be tending towards the people who are lurking more and not posting as much content and then, when the same people are asked to pick town, they're choosing the peeps who are posting and saying the most. I'm pretty such I've pointed out how being talkative does not make one a guaranteed townie, and if memory serves I haven't been the only one to raise this concern (it was e_e, I think?). On the other hand, I've struggled for a little while on who else there actually is who I would deem safe and I run into the same sort of problem, just dressed up a bit differently. The next couple of people on the towie side of the list in my analysis earlier were softchews, webby, Chandani, e_e and Misnomer. e_e and Chandani have one proper post, Misnomer has two. webby's done analysis and has generally been quite reasonable, softchews has been thinking for himself which is a quality I find mostly townie, but would I trust either of them enough to put them on my top three townie list? Hmph. Probably not. But then again I particularly paranoid to the point where I'm having a hard time justifying putting anybody on the list, if you haven't already twigged...

a-wan is right, however; it seems impossible to stop the mafia from manipulating any system we have (to the point where I did have to sit there for a moment and remember why we even have introduced a system in the first place at all, but that's because a free-for-all voting system is even more manipulable by the scum because they can bounce around various candidates until they find the scummiest townie that they agree on to get lynched and they don't have to get a majority to do so) so I suppose this one is at least set up in such a way that we not only get the benefits of bandwagon analysis, we also get to give three seemingly townie figures a very good once-over if things go pear-shaped.

I'll mull over my townie nominations for a little longer, if you don't mind. I've been meaning to get round to having a look at the logistics of the NK and whether or not there is something to be had for withholding (I'm not sure there is, but I do strongly believe that townie-on-townie kills are our worst enemy, so there's a contradiction in my mind there I have to puzzle out) so I'm just going to say it aloud in an attempt to make me do it somewhen.

[Not A Raptor]

I consider it to be an interesting idea. If this idea goes forward, I'd like these people to be on the committee: Sruixan (because of an almost compulsive drive to conjure reasons to abandon assumptions), e_e (to force some content generation), and Dr Ug (because of a momentary townie appearance that will either be confirmed or washed away by the burden of office, plus... people have brought up him acting as a scumdar jammer to them. I'd say that he hides behind theory and sheer analysis. It doesn't leave much room for him giving impressions.)

That said, you're still asking the majority to pick players. If any of the scum managed to look that good to the town, they'd put that/those person/people in, and the plan would be instaruined.

[a-wan]

Here's the problem, as I see it. It would be really great if we could town come up with the plan or who we should vote for, etc. But if we knew who town was, then we wouldn't need any other information. So basically, we need a way to get decisions into town's hands so we can reduce scum's influence on the outcome.

So how do we make decisions? We could all just follow one towny person, but even though someone may look towny, there's a good chance that we'd be putting the game in scum's hands. And if that towny person ended up being obviously scum based on the outcome, we've only got strong information on that one person and everyone else only gives us what information they choose to volunteer, so then we just all NK that one person?

So we've got to have some sort of voting system, but that leaves us with scum having the most control over everything. Seems like there will always be someone who is suspicious of any plan that the majority supports.

Which is why this plan has a better chance of succeeding than others. Explicitly:

1. Lurkers are more likely to be scum. Sorry, but it's true. Can you pull the trigger on someone tonight when you have basically zero information on them when you know that the worst thing we can do in this game is NK town? A scum lurker may only even vote if not voting means scum gets lynched. By limiting some aspect of the decision-making process to active players, we automatically increase town's influence.

2. Even if, for whatever strange reason, the lurkers are all town, everyone still has to pick reasonably towny players or they're essentially begging us to NK them tonight, so scum is basically forced to put townies on their lists.

3. Even if scum manages to sneak scum onto the selection committee, those scum on the selection committee are a) scum's towniest and therefore most valuable members and b) going to be under increased scrutiny from everyone. Chances are good that they will either put together a decent list of players to vote on, or they will make a mistake and we'll be able to NK the towniest scum and have an easier time thereafter.

4. Even if the locked in people to vote on end up having one or two townies on the list, we'll be able to see who people are reluctant to vote for. If you see that someone should obviously be getting more votes and they're not, then you've got information on both the voters and the vote getters that you wouldn't have if we had three town or three scum. In fact, in some ways we might actually be worse off with three scum to vote for than if we have a mix of scum and town. Remember, our path to victory lies in properly choosing our NKs more than getting scum lynched.

5. Even if we end up not doing this plan, it at least has three voting stages, which are three chances for scum to make a mistake so that we know who to target. This is the most important part of the plan, and it cannot be ruined by scum no matter what they do. At the very least, they'll be on record as not wanting this plan.

As I said, I'm happy to go for another plan, but at this point the best plan for scum is no discussion and no plan. Keep us confused and hope that we kill each other. If you have a better plan, please propose it. I want to use the best plan out there. If you don't have a better plan, then all of town should be doing their best to make the best plan available work.

[Elvish Pillager]

Effective immediately, cellery replaces Hausdog.

[Chandani]

I need to be replaced
I can't do mafia right now, and I don't know if I can in the future. Sorry guys.

[Elvish Pillager]

Effective immediately, Ibarra replaces Chandani.

I have now run out of replacements, so anyone further who drops will have to be modkilled.

[Ibarra]

/confirm and going to read those walls of text

[jayhsu]

Just train of thoughts on scumhunting committee:

-Why not four, or five? I think we can all agree that there are at least 4 scum, and most likely 5 or 6. This would be similar to providing a town list. Each time a townie is confirmed killed, we could decrement the number.
I can't really rationalize good arguments for or against this idea. I think it would probably be better to make clear, each day, who your town list is, and that seems to be one of the few benefits of this plan. I think scum could manipulate it pretty easily, but that might become clear too? Hm.... I'm not sure. I think of it this way: force scum to reveal who they believe to be towniest, and we're likely to get at least 2 or 3 town onto that scumhunting committee. With fewer members, I think it would be easier for scum to make excuses if they picked the wrong team.

Other thoughts:
-Still not sure how we will coordinate our NKs. At this point, I think my suggestion to withhold NKs is incorrect, I had forgotten about the possibility of double-hitting scum. Does anyone have any new ideas for this? I assume we will all just try to hit one of our top 3 candidates.

[Ibarra]

So I skimmed through the posts. Will hopefully do a proper analysis later on.

Regarding the selection committee:
I believe that would be a great way to be able to actually lynch scum.
Theory-wise, in order for scum to properly blend in, they should also be ready to bus teammates.
At the moment I would select, Dr. Ug for good content, a-wan for proposing the guidelines we follow for this, and Not A Raptor for that good analysis earlier.

Selection Committee Votals as of Now.
Dr. Ug - a-wan, more_people, weiyaoli, jayhsu, Not A Raptor, Ibarra
Sruixan - a-wan, weiyaoli, jayhsu, Not A Raptor
a-wan - more_people, weiyaoli, jayhsu, Ibarra
Not A Raptor - a-wan, more_people, Ibarra
existential_elevator - Not A Raptor

[Sruixan]

Woah, I don't get the chance to read this thread for 48+ hours and there are 4 decent posts (not counting the replacement malarkey) whilst I'm away? I'll concede that it's somewhat hypocritical of me to say that given that I vanished without a trace, but I'm a wee bit more concerned with how on earth I got away with it...

Speaking of activity, allow me to point out the following:

People who have posted in the past 120 hours:
Ibarra, jayhsu, a-wan, Not A Raptor, Sruixan, weiyaoli, more_people, webby

People up for selection committee nomination:
Dr Ug, Sruixan, a-wan, Not A Raptor, existential_elevator

Best case scenario: most of the townies are posting, knowing that that is the best thing they can do at the moment to help them win and this is getting them noticed for what they are, thus they are getting onto the committee. The scum are mostly absent, or adopting a lurking strategy. Pretty great, then.

Worst case scenario: I am the only townie posting.

More likely worse case scenario that doesn't involve me writhing on the floor recontemplating my stance on humanity: a handful have scum have realised that because there is so much inactivity, by continuing to post they can increase their standing with the town and attempt to play the system we're trying to implement to their side's advantage.

In a more comprehensible manner, I'm worried that with half the players silent, the distribution is more uneven than it was already. However, there is also the possibility that the town have a larger proportion of the active playerbase than they have of it in its entirety, which could possibly be a good thing. I'm not sure a smaller hub of participating peeps has an adverse affect on the choosing of the selection committee; as a clear trend has appeared with the votes of six players, I somehow doubt the consensus would change overall. Once we reach the voting stage, though, it might become problematic, since a majority lynch will be nigh-impossible and we'll be back to dealing with what the system was supposed to solve in the first place; scum lynching town with plurality.

Perhaps, though, fewer voters might help; if vote-switching before the deadline extends the deadline, scum are going to be rather cautious when it comes to getting someone lynched. Even then, with eight active players and three lynch targets, three votes could get a townie killed, be it through a tied vote (townies are killed first in tie situations) or if one vote is not cast, by accident or on purpose. I don't know if I'm just waffling on about something inconsequential here, but it did just pop into my head so I figured I oughta get it down in pixels...

Right, anyways, enough of that drivel; the selection committee. Approaching this so late, I'm not entirely sure what to do. I was kind of hoping we'd get a substantial vote going for someone other than Dr Ug, a-wan, NaR or myself, but bar e_e no-one else has gotten a mention. e_e was on my list of people I was wiling to accept (to be frank said list included everybody bar Lorenz and more_people - just see the list in my old analysis post and shove jayhsu up a level on the grounds of benefit of the doubt), but I can't help but notice that my intent to go Dr Ug, a-wan, NaR would force me and NaR into a tie for the final slot, courtesy of Ibarra's vote. If I were paranoid, I'd call that deliberate. As it happens, I am paranoid, but still. As much as I'd like to be representative on the panel (I am the only person I know for sure to be town, after all), there was a reason why we agreed to disallow self-voting and playing the system to that end seems awfully unscrupulous and besides, I'm more than happy to accept NaR, Dr Ug and a-wan (that's my ballot, by the way) since their aura of towniness means they either are town and this should remain unbiased or they're faking it and thus we might see some cracks in their play under the spotlight. My only concern is Dr Ug's current absence, really.

[softchews]

Hey, sorry for my not posting, I had a sudden impromptu few day trip across the country without internet access. Back now though, and just trying to understand everything written. ok, here goes my take on some of it.
this selection committee idea: very split on this. I mean, if there is a townie majority on this, then we are all well and good and may hopefully get scum to vote from. However, if say the one scum waits and watches to see if any of the townie committee members accidentally votes townies into the lynch list and then backs them up, then it has kinda bypassed all the defences and appears to be townie oriented. However, it does give us a lot to go on to decide ourselves who is scum, so we can use that in our NK moves. This is nothing new, I believe it has all been brought up by other critiques. However, I don't see it being as flexible as the plan we were sorta using before was. I mean, with that one, we could decide to stop trying to lynch one person and swap to another if they started acting really scummy, but people couldn't just pull a vote change out of the hat, making it protected from the scum in a way. Committee plan would work much better if scum were a minority not a majority, since they would have much more trouble getting onto the list and we could be much more certain in our choices, but since they are a majority and well disguised for the most part (I know I don't have a majority of the players down as definite scum in my mind yet) I am wary of it. If I have made any mistakes or gotten anything wrong in this, can you point it out because I was having some trouble getting my head around all the possible meanings/reasons/subversions of the system and may have overthought it slightly. However, since the deadline is drawing closer I shall give a list for the committee places (I am purposely not including a-wan this time since its his idea and I just want to be sure of it) and a vote for one of the existing 3 being voted for at the moment under the old system in case this new system doesn't come into play this hour.

Committee choices: Sruixan (for good honest content IMO), NaR (mostly for... The Post and its very good analysis, and a general towniness from the whole sum of content) and e_e (my 'I want to see more about you and you look the least scummy out of that list' choice(is this a good enough reason to pick?)).

Vote: more_people

This vote has been a while coming for me, but it was in the reply to Sruixan's vote which seemed unreasonably sharp and defensive, rather then a thought out defence against the vote which is what I would expect in a game like this. This on top of scum-like behaviour earlier (defending scummy thoughts from people and the likes) makes me vote this way. However, if this committee comes into full play and stuff, and I agree with its choices, I shall happily change vote (or if m_p suddenly no longer tops my scum list, although I thought that change factor would be more obvious).
Has this made any sense? I should stop playing this only after midnight.

[webby]

Well I've been using my mafia time on other games because not much has been happening here. Here's a post to say that I'm around and also because it's about time we started getting towards a lynch target, with three days to go before deadline - often when these things are rushed, it's easy to hop on a bandwagon with the justification 'there was no other option', or it's easier to justify not voting at all.

I'm going to assume that anyone not voting at deadline (assuming we don't reach a majority) is scum.

I like the idea of the selection committee, because it is clearly better to have things decided by three people, who may or may not be a scum majority, than it is to have it decided by everyone, which clearly is a scum majority.

Having said that, I don't want a-wan being one of these three people when it was his plan.

So I'm going to nominate softchews, weiyaoli and Dr Ug. If Dr Ug fails to reappear, replace with NAR or Ibarra. These are the people I said were towniest before, plus Ibarra, who has only one post so far, so he's my 'I'd like to hear more from' pick. The post itself was decent.

Reading back, I see that these aren't popular choices. I didn't think my analysis was that far off everyone else's? :S

[Elvish Pillager]

Votals:

jayhsu: 1 (weiyaoli)
Lorenz: 1 (webby)
more_people: 3 (Not A Raptor, Sruixan, softchews)

[a-wan]

The votes on the committee so far are:

Dr. Ug (8) - a-wan, more_people, weiyaoli, jayhsu, Not A Raptor, Ibarra, Sruixan, weiyaoli
Sruixan (5) - a-wan, weiyaoli, jayhsu, Not A Raptor, softchews
a-wan (5) - more_people, weiyaoli, jayhsu, Ibarra, Sruixan
Not A Raptor (5) - a-wan, more_people, Ibarra, Sruixan, softchews
existential_elevator (2) - Not A Raptor, softchews
softchews (1) - webby
weiyaoli (1) - webby

9 out of 15 people have voted, and we're running out of time, so we should move forward soon. There is a currently a tie, so we can either make the selection committee a group of 4 people or we can wait for one more person to vote, since that person would probably break the tie. Obviously, I feel better about any committee that I'm on, but since the other three members are my top three, I'm okay either way.