jayarsea wrote:
I like to think that a random lynch is only acceptable if we have absolutely nothing to go on.
As is, we do.
I suspect you more and more, especially given your hostility after I accused you of being mafia (albeit hastily, I'm sorry), and given that I even provided an option in this poll for those super-suspicious of me. But, putting that aside for a moment, from a purely theoretical standpoint, I will employ logic:
If people do not use a random lynch strategy on some level, but rather only vote on people presented to them, then there exist a very powerful strategy for mafia: they just wait until someone randomly points someone out, or someone with a suicidal bent implicates themselves, and then select a random subset of themselves to swing votes slightly in favor of non-mafia.
The only reason people don't slip under the radar in regular mafia is because people are there in person and point out "hey that guy with the earphones on is probably mafia". But here in online forum-based mafia, unless you are looking at the player list 24-7, that isn't going to happen.
I mean, sure, people shouldn't randomly lynch if they have something to go on. But in the face of weak evidence like this (you wouldn't vote to lynch someone on a single person's testimony, would you?) unless there is an alternative, you're basically seeing ghosts in the dark while the mafia twiddle their thumbs. Sort of like if you take a thousand tests for rare diseases, some of them will come up as false positives.
In my humble opinion, if you are a townsfolk, the hierarchy of strategies is like so:
* [lynching on strong evidence]
* [random lynch]
* [lynch on weak undoctored evidence]
* [no vote]
* [lynch on weak mafia-doctored evidence or no alternatives]
In the absence of strong evidence, whether you perform a random lynch should be determined by how doctored or shifty the evidence is. The suspected ratio of mafia may also play a role in your strategies. Also see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
clarification: a "random lynch" is defined as follows: everyone who votes for "random lynch" will vote as a uniform block for the same random person