Just a couple of notes on past meta:
There are always a certain number of joke posts on D1, which is why I hate it so much. Since it's roughly the same group of players each time we've exhausted most topics of conversation that can be discussed D1, so what tends to happen is people joke around until one of the jokes borders on something accusable, then someone will accuse that person semi-seriously and hope that the defence/attack on them sparks some real discussion and gives some real information. I find it rarely does until very late in the phase. I'm somewhat disappointed that my attempt to start some real discussion has not really taken off.
Bussing is a pretty bad strategy in general and usually I would say that it's unlikely that mafia would bus, but there's been a fad of it in the past few games after Maniac and Guak managed to pull it off with incredible success.
Making vote trackers is not alignment indicative - WardenDresden used the trust gained from making one of these to hide himself as mafia in I believe M4? Since then it's been mostly me making these trackers, with some occasions where two trackers would be going at once to confirm the reliability of each (this is a very good practice and IMO someone else should start one up this game).
Re: Vigilante shot
@Ghug - Firstly, I do not think that narrowing the pool of suspects is the Vigilante's main purpose. If he is able to shoot an anti-town role (as Thucy did in M1 and tv did in M8), he's been far more useful than he has if he shoots two town lurkers.
Additionally, I do not believe shooting lurkers is even that helpful:
Going from memory, mafia lurkers in past games have been:
M1: y2kjbk
M2: DoubleCapitals (Modkilled), pjmansfield99
M3: pjmansfield99
M4: None
M5: ALEXTREME, tvrocks, y2kjbk
M6: DeathLlama, Chaqa (arguable)
M7: goldfinger (arguable)
M8: y2kjbk
One thing that you'll find in common with all of these players (except DoubleCapitals and DeathLlama) is that they were not noticably lurking on D1. Sure, they weren't posting constantly and accusing people, but they posted enough that they were not tagged as lurkers by most people. I think this is something mafia do - quite often there is at least one lurker, but they will post enough so that they aren't targeted by a lurker-shooting Vig, since the meta on this site is for the Vigilante to shoot a lurker on N1.
I also believe that, over time, enough information comes out of most lurkers to have a decent read on them regardless. It should be noted that despite the lurking of 3 of the 4 mafia members in M5, I managed to pin 2 of the lurkers as mafia and I had the other one down as the Serial Killer. When you have someone who doesn't post at all (DoubleCapitals in M2, DeathLlama in M6), it can be very hard to get an opinion on them, but that's why you apply pressure to them in lynches - you can force them to talk, and then you can get information out of them. Shooting players N1 simply because they are noticably lurking is not helpful to the town at all.
@OB & ND - I think we seriously need to drop this 'Don't talk about PRs at all, ever' attitude that's come up over the past few games. It has a good idea behind it (we need to protect the PR from being discovered through how his actions correlate to his opinion on certain subjects), but it's been taken far too far, to the extent where any conversation about PRs quickly gets shut down. It's literally the only controversial subject we can discuss on D1 now.
Your argument makes sense - the vigilante needs to be aware that some people contributing will be mafia, so he needs to consider the merit of the arguments themselves very carefully, and will certainly need to keep in mind that he may need to provide an opposing opinion to the one he actually has, but it's not worth throwing the conversation topic out completely over that, since it's the best thing we have D1.
@DeathLlama - Why exactly does the Vig being the only town directed kill mean he has to shoot on N1? It's certainly an argument against discussing the issue at all (which OB stated, and I have replied to above), but the fact that it's the only town directed kill supports him saving the shot for when there is a worse ratio of town:mafia, and the mafia are having more impact in the lynches. It also makes his kills very valuable, which also means that he shouldn't be wasting them on people he does not have proper reads on.
@HR, Thd, Wje, Bra - I'd be interested to hear your responses to the points that Ghug, OB and DL made, rather than just responding to my post and dropping the subject. Getting a debate/argument going requires people to be responding to one another and countering each others' arguments.
I'd specifically be interested to hear people's thoughts on OB's point, that we should not discuss the Vigilante shot because it's our only town directed kill. That argument is actually better than the initial one because it doesn't have a chance to compromise our Vig.
Everyone who hasn't responded to my initial post yet, I'd still be interested in hearing your thoughts.
Re: What's actually happened today:
I have said before that I intensely dislike D1 because the joke posts/initial arguments give very little information. However, I'm going to try and analyse it anyhow (1 is strong read, 3 is weak):
DeathLlama - Town 3. I believe mafia members are a lot more careful when posting stuff than town, because they have to try to make themselves appear to be town; townies don't (usually) care about that so they just write whatever comes into their head. DL is being very sporadic with his posting, which looks to me like he is just typing whatever is on his mind.
wjessop: Town 3 for the same reason as above; he's posting in bursts, which suggests writing as he is thinking.
Chaqa: Mafia 3. He always lurks through D1 as mafia, and he's doing this now. I'd like to hear more from you Chaqa - specifically, what you think of the Vigilante discussion.
OB_Gyn: Town 3. While I disagree with him on discussing the Vigilante, I think that his response to the discussion is town-like, attempting to protect the PRs. I think if mafia had a chance to try to affect what the Vig would do, they would take it, not try to shut the discussion down.
ND: Town 3 for the same reason as OB.
Uclabb: Undecided. He lurked like this last game too and was town, so I would not say that's a good reason for him to be mafia. Still, I'd very much appreciate you talking a bit more, Uclabb - specifically, I'd like to hear your response to my argument about vig shots.
LittleItaly: Town 3. Without the ability to take into account meta, analysing D1 is even harder than it already is, but I think I'd put LI as town here. He came in immediately with some townreads with very little reasoning - normally, I'd have this as a scumtell, but it was in a relatively substantial post, so he was evidently thinking about what he was writing. I do not think that a mafia member would post so little evidence for their reads if they are using longer, more noticable posts.
If a player is not on the list above it means I have no read on them, either because they are lurking and I have no meta information to tell me what that might mean, or because they haven't done anything noticable/have done exactly the same thing they do every game.
With that, ##vote Chaqa.
Army movements.
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