Truthfully, cj, you should really read through the Rules and Noob Guide thread if you haven't already, since you seem to have some pretty serious misconceptions about how mafia works. It almost always is in town's best interest to get more information out in the open, the main exceptions being when it'd put a powerful information-gathering role at risk (i.e. cops claiming too early and dying before they can get useful results). But creating tons of wine and refusing to explain your actions is not a townie thing to do, and trying to be seen as scummy isn't a townie thing to do either. To take another stab at explaining this - if everyone in the game just said "I'm voting X", someone wound up lynched and the next day began, we'd have practically nothing to go on - with the arguable exception of dethy (which this isn't), Mafia isn't a game of pure logic, it's a game of psychology and reading people. A better plan is to have everyone list as much of their reasoning as possible when making a vote - it gives more chances for scum to slip up, and if you're a townie there's a better chance you'll be exonerated by legitimate reasoning, as opposed to having no real way to defend yourself if you wind up on multiple townie lynches.
Also, to reiterate what others have mentioned, the game isn't won by having yourself survive until the end of the game (as a townie, at least), it's won by having someone who's town survive to the end. This doesn't mean you should sacrifice yourself at the drop of a hat - after all, you're 100% sure you're town, and you're not certain of anyone else - but it also means that clamming up and being as unhelpful as possible, for fear of being seen as a powerful enough townie contributor to justify getting nightkilled, isn't going to help. After all, the worst that could happen by contributing more is that you get nightkilled instead of someone else - but if we assume they would have contributed the same regardless, it's strictly better for town than having you be contentless for fear of attracting a NK, since the average content-per-townie remains higher *and* you got to contribute all the content you did. A win-win!
Also, JSO - unlike on the rest of the forums, "lurk moar" is not the proper solution here. Lurking is bad and should be stamped out with extreme prejudice - the correct solution is "put some more thought into your posts, and don't be deliberately unhelpful and winey".
Now that I've ranted about that for a couple paragraphs, I can go back and read the thread in more detail to start actually scumhunting rather than just getting distracted by lecturing a new player on how to behave
