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[sudgy]

I've been thinking about this recently.  Consider each of the following scenarios:

1. You write a script or something that compiles information from a mafia game (votes, wagons, reads, etc.)
2. You write a script or something that compiles data from multiple mafia games
3. You write a script or something that uses this data, compares it to the current game, and shows similarities and differences between current play and past play, etc.
4. You write this and it also tries to give you an educated guess as to who scum is
5. You give your program other ways to figure out the scum
6. Your program gets so good that it guesses scum right at least, say, 90% of the time

Also consider whether you are doing these things without telling anybody that you are doing so, or whether you declare that you are using these tools.

I feel like at some point this should be illegal, but I'm not quite sure where the cutoff point is.  I've seen people do the first things and I think it's perfectly legitimate, but I thought of how one would go about writing something like scenario 3 and started wondering about the legality of it.

[Haddock]

I've been thinking about this recently.  Consider each of the following scenarios:

1. You write a script or something that compiles information from a mafia game (votes, wagons, reads, etc.)
2. You write a script or something that compiles data from multiple mafia games
3. You write a script or something that uses this data, compares it to the current game, and shows similarities and differences between current play and past play, etc.
4. You write this and it also tries to give you an educated guess as to who scum is
5. You give your program other ways to figure out the scum
6. Your program gets so good that it guesses scum right at least, say, 90% of the time

Also consider whether you are doing these things without telling anybody that you are doing so, or whether you declare that you are using these tools.

I feel like at some point this should be illegal, but I'm not quite sure where the cutoff point is.  I've seen people do the first things and I think it's perfectly legitimate, but I thought of how one would go about writing something like scenario 3 and started wondering about the legality of it.

I think the cutoff is pretty clearly between 2 and 3.

If it's just data-gathering, no problem.  If it's actually attempting to analyse the data, rather than just gather and organise it for you to look at, that's a problem.

[Teproc]

6 will never happen, so this is all a moot point. I think everything listed is completely fine.

[Witherweaver]

6 will never happen, so this is all a moot point. I think everything listed is completely fine.

Vote: Teproc

obvscum.

[Haddock]

6 will never happen, so this is all a moot point. I think everything listed is completely fine.

Not sure I agree.  External assistance (even if not very good), without the knowledge of other players, definitely violates the implied social contract of game-playing.

But everything up to 2 is not external assistance, it's just automated note-taking.

[sudgy]

6 will never happen

Challenge accepted.

(just kidding)

[Teproc]

To be clear, I do think you can identify patterns that help scumhunting with this. We do this already, from memory rather than through scripts: X lurks more when he's scum, Y sheeps less when he's town, etc. So there is certainly a way that this could help you find scum... but metas evolve, and if such tools were to become particularly effective, they'd evolve even more as a means to escape that analysis, and in fact use it against town.

Really though, mafia is a game made of many things that are simply not quantifiyable, so such a tool's effectiveness would always be very limited. And again, it would only be doing something we already do, just more thoroughly... but also with less subtlety, considerably so.

[gkrieg13]

I wanted to do a bag of words machine learning approach to see if just from taking the words a certain person uses shows that they are scum. I stopped for two reasons. One, I didn't think it would work very well, because there just isn't enough data. Even for Robz, there aren't that many scum games to pull from. Two, it seemed like too much work. If I had more time, I might try it to see if anything comes of it. I would never really use it for a real game though, but I thought it would be interesting.

[Eevee]

I wanted to do a bag of words machine learning approach to see if just from taking the words a certain person uses shows that they are scum. I stopped for two reasons. One, I didn't think it would work very well, because there just isn't enough data. Even for Robz, there aren't that many scum games to pull from. Two, it seemed like too much work. If I had more time, I might try it to see if anything comes of it. I would never really use it for a real game though, but I thought it would be interesting.

I'm definitely very conscious about this.

I probably suck at it too, I think it might totally work on me.

[gkrieg13]

I wanted to do a bag of words machine learning approach to see if just from taking the words a certain person uses shows that they are scum. I stopped for two reasons. One, I didn't think it would work very well, because there just isn't enough data. Even for Robz, there aren't that many scum games to pull from. Two, it seemed like too much work. If I had more time, I might try it to see if anything comes of it. I would never really use it for a real game though, but I thought it would be interesting.

I'm definitely very conscious about this.

I probably suck at it too, I think it might totally work on me.

Well I probably would've tested it on you, because you have a lot of data.

[silverspawn]

I actually did 1, 2 and 4. But definitely not 6

[CheesyJelly]

I'm really interested in this question.  Especially given that some people have a strong cut-off point for what is acceptable.  What if it were the following:

1. You write down on paper some information from a mafia game (votes, wagons, reads, etc.)
2. You write down on paper information from multiple mafia games
3. You compare your notes to the current game, and look for similarities and differences between current play and past play, etc.
4. You use this information to try to make an educated guess as to who might be scum
5. You use other means (e.g. basic statistics or other analysis) to guess who might be scum
6. Your method gets so good that you can guess scum right at least, say, 90% of the time

To me, all of the above is perfectly acceptable.  And so I don't see why automating the process makes it illegal.  Better, of course, to be open about the fact that you use such methods, but I think the onus is on players to make the differences between their scum and town games as small as possible.

[Awaclus]

6 will never happen, so this is all a moot point. I think everything listed is completely fine.

This.

For what it's worth, I have used a calculator without telling anyone in past Mafia games. I don't see what's the difference between that and this.

[ashersky]

I think the data collection and sorting stuff is all legal to the point that it's not worth discussing.  I could envision some setups that could exclude it purposefully, but it would be for specific timing mechanics or something, I think.

On creating an AI to play the game for you -- because that's what this is, right? -- I think that would be an interesting conundrum.  It's not cheating, to get clear.  I think it damages the community, though.

Once I know this is occurring, I have to purposefully change the way I play/vote/post every game to feed false data to the robot.  That would have to include playing against your wincon, I think, as any alignment.  It could mean using random words in each post to create false positives.  And all sorts of other strategies that end up bring for the meta-game and not the actual game bring played.

It's never been against the rules to play for future games instead of the current one, bug it is frowned upon.  I think robot assistants would make it the required norm.

[Calamitas]

If you manage to do 6 you should not play forum mafia anymore and rather use your brain capacity for more useful things :-D

[Dylan32]

If you manage to do 6 you should not play forum mafia anymore and rather use your brain capacity for more useful things :-D

Be right back. Going to find some upvotes to give elsewhere haha

[MafBot]

Hope it's legal LOL

Would it, uh, be legal to use AI as means of communication and interfacing in addition to forming reads? Because I hope to be able to do that

~dev

[iguanaiguana]

Hope it's legal LOL

Would it, uh, be legal to use AI as means of communication and interfacing in addition to forming reads? Because I hope to be able to do that

~dev

You are schadd

[MafBot]

You say that with a lot of confidence...

~dev

[iguanaiguana]

I just want to clarify because I expect a lot of people think you are me.

[gkrieg13]

I just want to clarify because I expect a lot of people think you are me.

It has the voice of you.

[iguanaiguana]

I just want to clarify because I expect a lot of people think you are me.

It has the voice of you.

It's actually not me this time though and I don't know who but I think schadd because he's funny.

[MafBot]

In theory I would be able to have the bot emulate specific persons' speech patterns. But at present I'm just a person typing.

-dev

[Forum Mafia]

Alright,  let's hash this out.

[MafBot]

Alright,  let's hash this out.

You are schadd

..

does my predictive algorithm work?
~dev