Mafiascum.net

Like, just because you are bad at something doesn't mean a general rule barring your work around is a bad rule.

It just means you have been getting away with abusing a system loophole for a long time.

This trust tell update is good for the health of the game, good in general, and what the trust tell ban was originally intended to prevent in spirit.

Once again you do NOT need to fake claim every game, and can infact avoid it where possible if you like, but you cannot weaponize that you "never" fake claim.

Here's the problem with for example warning Mastina for what she was warned for and why it isn't a good solution to the valid problem that it is attempting to solve.
Let's say you have a 2016 Creature in play who consistently makes no effort as scum. He also was never personally the person to point out in games that he was not willing to put in effort as scum. He is still going to end up meta cleared, but he is going to face no consequences because he isn't personally making any claims regarding his met a.
All that this rule change does is shift the responsibility for clarifying that your alignment is clear for meta reasons to someone else, and at a sufficiently high level of mafia play and general exposure that is something that can be generally assumed to happen.

People with trust tell metas a problem on a meta level and I've seen the damage it did to Avalon, Secret Hitler, MU, and even MS to a lesser extent (this site at least while I was active was one of the few that didn't have any truly metagame defining problems with lack of range: I'm not fully up to date on anything that has happened since then outside of specific games) over time so I'm not saying that this isn't a problem worth thinking about. My problem is that this doesn't solve the problem: it just limits people benefiting from trust tell metas to either needing to stick with people who know them or being well known in general. In practice this rule change is going to target... people who claim things about their meta, and often people savvy enough to claim such things are lying about them. I've claimed infinite amounts of contradictory self meta. I have 0 capacity to actually initiate a trust tell. The problem isn't people claiming trust tells that aren't trust tells (Mastina clearly has fakeclaimed many times in the past and even a cursory familiarity with her meta reveals that), the issue is trust tells actually existing, and in most cases those players are not targeted by the trust tell rule, and it's actually very difficult to find a good answer to such a problem. The real answer is far more complicated and something that isn't something that you can solve by moderating people and throwing warnings and bans.

In post 9, lilith2013 wrote:The best option is probably not to mention the read in game unless you have non-ongoing-related reasons that you can use to support it

While you might want this to happen on principle this is a competitive game that people want to win and a very significant number of players are never going to have information about whether someone is likely to be scum or town and then not use that information, and another significant number of players lack the compartmentalization ability to actually keep that info down.

In post 76, RadiantCowbells wrote:Here's the problem with for example warning Mastina for what she was warned for and why it isn't a good solution to the valid problem that it is attempting to solve.
Let's say you have a 2016 Creature in play who consistently makes no effort as scum. He also was never personally the person to point out in games that he was not willing to put in effort as scum. He is still going to end up meta cleared, but he is going to face no consequences because he isn't personally making any claims regarding his met a.
All that this rule change does is shift the responsibility for clarifying that your alignment is clear for meta reasons to someone else, and at a sufficiently high level of mafia play and general exposure that is something that can be generally assumed to happen.

People with trust tell metas

ARE

a problem on a meta level and I've seen the damage it did to Avalon, Secret Hitler, MU, and even MS to a lesser extent (this site at least while I was active was one of the few that didn't have any truly metagame defining problems with lack of range: I'm not fully up to date on anything that has happened since then outside of specific games) over time so I'm not saying that this isn't a problem worth thinking about. My problem is that this doesn't solve the problem: it just limits people benefiting from trust tell metas to either needing to stick with people who know them or being well known in general. In practice this rule change is going to target... people who claim things about their meta, and often people savvy enough to claim such things are lying about them. I've claimed infinite amounts of contradictory self meta. I have 0 capacity to actually initiate a trust tell. The problem isn't people claiming trust tells that aren't trust tells (Mastina clearly has fakeclaimed many times in the past and even a cursory familiarity with her meta reveals that), the issue is trust tells actually existing, and in most cases those players are not targeted by the trust tell rule, and it's actually very difficult to find a good answer to such a problem. The real answer is far more complicated and something that isn't something that you can solve by moderating people and throwing warnings and bans.

In post 9, lilith2013 wrote:The best option is probably not to mention the read in game unless you have non-ongoing-related reasons that you can use to support it

While you might want this to happen on principle this is a competitive game that people want to win and a very significant number of players are never going to have information about whether someone is likely to be scum or town and then not use that information, and another significant number of players lack the compartmentalization ability to actually keep that info down.

I just think these are separate issues to be honest.

Like, the rule change doesn't fix what you're describing, I agree with you. But that doesn't mean the rule change is bad, or not fixing a current problem.

It just means there is more possible work to be done, and considerations to be had. That's all it means.

what's the problem with saying "i SR/TR this person" and then if someone asks just responding "trust tell" or "gut reaction supported by illegitimate evidence?"

In response to 73:

You don't have a policy of never fakeclaiming; it's a separate strategic decision in each game. That's fine. You just need to choose your words carefully to make sure that's clear to others.

Instead of saying "I never fakeclaim as scum" or "I believe fakeclaiming as scum is always gamethrowing", say "I have never found it advantageous to fakeclaim as scum". If you want to be extra safe, you can add "...but I might someday". That's technically more accurate, because you can't know what future games will be like and whether they will offer a situation where fakeclaiming would be beneficial. And it makes it clear that you're talking about the past and not the future.

"I have never fakeclaimed as scum" is right on the edge, and we don't like this wording, because a lot of people interpret that with an implicit "and I never will". Even if you don't mean that, you should not use this phrasing, because if people it's a trust tell it can still be compromising, even if you didn't intend it to be one.

In post 63, Nancy Drew 39 wrote:I want a mod to address my post because I still don’t see how saying you’ve never done something in a game before constitutes a trust tell. So if someone hypothetically had a prior no bussing meta as scum and truthfully states that they’ve never bussed, sure we know that they can break that meta at any poing including the hypothetical game they’re currently in if scum but how is that a trust tell?

The point we're trying to make with the rules update is that it's very context-dependent. With no other context, "I have never bussed" is fine. But there are contexts in which it could be a problem. If you say "I have never bussed" and point to dozens of scumgames and point out how you have literally never voted for a scumbuddy in any of them, then yes, this be the game that you break it. But if the pattern has been followed for dozens of games, it becomes very unlikely that this will just happen to be the game in which it is broken, and so the tell becomes extremely powerful. Over time, if the player points it out over and over, this kind of thing looks increasingly like the player in question is cultivating this tell so that they can use it as a meta lever, whether or not that's their explicit intent, even if the player believes bussing as scum is generally a bad idea.

Our primary concern ultimately isn't whether some behavior is technically a "trust tell"; it's whether we believe it harms the game. Often the reason trust tells do this is because they're an attempt to use meta to something in some sense beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than simply using meta to something. This is why framing can matter a lot, as it can be the difference between an argument for something and an attempt to prove something.

In post 64, Nancy Drew 39 wrote:

In post 9, lilith2013 wrote:The best option is probably not to mention the read in game unless you have non-ongoing-related reasons that you can use to support it

So I had an expectation of a player being able to correctly read me in part but never implicitly or explicitly stated/referenced anywhere in that game I was currently in, at least partially based off of a game that was ongoing att that we were both dead in. They asked me to back this up and I decided not to do that for obvious reasons. Is there a way I could have responded to the questions without violating game rules?

The best things to do here are either (1) not mention the read at all, or (2) come up with some in-game reasons (or reasons based on completed games) that you can use to substantiate it.

You're certainly still allowed to vote for such a read and provide whatever justification or lack thereof you want for that vote, so long as it's not obviously alluding to an ongoing game. This isn't ideal, but the reason we need to be so stringent in what counts as an ongoing game reference is that even an accidental slip that something references an ongoing game can potentially directly imply the alignments of multiple players in that game.

In post 72, Nancy Drew 39 wrote:This post specifically states that saying you’ve never faked a guilty as scum (but it could also be town) are oog but nowhere does it say it’s unnaceptable to say that so long as you don’t mention alignment.

"I have never faked a guilty" and "I have never faked a guilty as scum" can both, again context-dependently, qualify as trust tells. More than that, the former directly implies the latter - it's not important that alignment is mentioned. The former is equivalent to saying "I've never faked a guilty as scum and I've never faked a guilty as town", and claiming to have never done something as town is a non-issue, so it's really saying the same thing in terms of being a trust tell. If you have a long history of accurately following one of these statements without deviation, and/or point out the tell frequently, and/or claim that you never intend to break the tell, those are all factors that make it look more like a trust tell. But again, it's very hard to give an explicit hard line, and even if we don't think something qualifies as a "trust tell" on some technicality, it still could qualify as problematic OGI. Our goal with moderating these kinds of borderline trust tells will be to point them out without any real sanctions at first.

I feel like in the lategame of a game I am very aware of how my game has diverged from how I would play as scum and I am able to point all this out - this isn't necessarily a trust tell because I attempt the same thing in a mafia position - but I'm afraid that the trust tell update might sorta prevent me from self defending via self-meta/etc.

I'm not sure where the line is drawn because for example, a common reason I pull out is referencing actions that have occurred I claim I would never allow to happen when I am mafia - granted its a pretty complex series of events and I am telling the truth when I am town - but it's not like a simple "i wouldnt claim VT as scum" kinda deal.

In post 76, RadiantCowbells wrote:Let's say you have a 2016 Creature in play who consistently makes no effort as scum. He also was never personally the person to point out in games that he was not willing to put in effort as scum. He is still going to end up meta cleared, but he is going to face no consequences because he isn't personally making any claims regarding his met a.
All that this rule change does is shift the responsibility for clarifying that your alignment is clear for meta reasons to someone else, and at a sufficiently high level of mafia play and general exposure that is something that can be generally assumed to happen.

I think what you're describing here is sort of like a fundamental limitation underlying the genre of competitive social deception games. There's a fundamental point at which the only solution to this problem is telling the player in question to play better as scum, because them playing so poorly as scum degrades the metagame. But we don't really want to be the kind of place that places such a singular emphasis on competitiveness that we'd go so far as to officially sanction someone for playing poorly. Like LLD said, what we're trying to solve with this rule is a different kind of problem, which we believe is easier to solve than this one.

In post 81, DkKoba wrote:I feel like in the lategame of a game I am very aware of how my game has diverged from how I would play as scum and I am able to point all this out - this isn't necessarily a trust tell because I attempt the same thing in a mafia position - but I'm afraid that the trust tell update might sorta prevent me from self defending via self-meta/etc.

I'm not sure where the line is drawn because for example, a common reason I pull out is referencing actions that have occurred I claim I would never allow to happen when I am mafia - granted its a pretty complex series of events and I am telling the truth when I am town - but it's not like a simple "i wouldnt claim VT as scum" kinda deal.

What you're describing here sounds solidly fine, I think. if you're referencing specific events from the game you're in and cross-referencing your meta to justify why those events wouldn't have happened, that's fine as long as you're not pointing to a persistent specific pattern across multiple games. Another side of this is that if I'm interpreting this correctly, the way you're using the word "never" here is different from the way it's used in a typical trust tell, because you're not saying that there's some specific action you'd never engage in, you're saying that the game as a whole would never play out in a particular way.

Alright, what if someone were to hypothetically claim, “if I were scum here, I’d already have given up”. Acceptable or not?

My obvious concerns with these rule chsnges if if the cure that’s meant to fix the problem, actually winds up doing more harm than good.

Also wrt to the bussing, fakeclaiming or not faking a guilty thing, if it okay then so long as the actual playee doesn’t say it and id there an acceptable way a player can utilize self meta in any of these ways that wouldn’t be against the rules?

I agree with RC that not mention the ogi alignment read isn’t really ideal. I can understand “not allowed to explain” to be valid but why not just say, can’t explain, I don’t know how to explain it or perhaps even gut?

I would argue that if in your mind - whatever the reason is - for having a strong opinion on a player’s alignment, you should absolutely give that read. That said, you just don’t need to make it obvious that it’s an ogi read.

If I say gut, meta or whatever, I could be telling the actual truth about that or hiding an ogi read. While obviously not ideal, I would argue it’s still better to give the read and perhaps be less than honest about how you arrived at it, maybe?

If there’s a case where a read that’s claimed to be gut or some other vague reason *seems* to be an ongoing game read, will mod action ever be taken? This is my biggest concern here, is that site-wide meta shifts will punish players playing legitimately because of players going through a gray area.

The out of game info rules are definitely not in an acceptable state right now. At the moment the rule 4 also applies to normal role pm's that are not faulty, which cannot be the intent of this clause.

In post 84, Gamma Emerald wrote:If there’s a case where a read that’s claimed to be gut or some other vague reason *seems* to be an ongoing game read, will mod action ever be taken? This is my biggest concern here, is that site-wide meta shifts will punish players playing legitimately because of players going through a gray area.

I can either truthfully give the real reason for my read or I can give any possible reason that doesn’t scream ogi read, I’m assuming?

So if I’m in two games with player X and player X is playing completely different in both games, it reasonable to infer that player X isn’t the same alignment in both and that’s a valid albeit obviously not foolproof basis for making that read but you can’t publicly say that but the mod solution of not making that read at all, would be tantamount to gamethrowing.

So reasons like gut, meta etc. - pretty much anything not in game can cover that but it could only be actionable if the player giving that read only does it when it’s an ogi reaad. As long as they also do it when it’s also truthfully the reason for that read, I don’t see how it’s a problem?

Iow, saying “I’m not allowed to explain” can only mean that the read is probably ogi, especially if it’s determined that you’re currently playing 2 or more ongoing games with that player.

I still think that the updated rules may be too heavy handed. So in my experience, most players don’t tend to fake guilties for example anyway. Because unless it’s elo, they will get limmed for doing so and if they get a rep of doing that as town, they kill their future credibility by doing that, so most town players who claim guilties probably do have one or they’re possibly mistaken. As scum, you probably get elimmed for dong that outside of elo.

I'm just thinking I do remember that I've been asked if I've ever fakeclaimed or fakeclaimed a guilty at some point in a distant past game and based on the arguments implosion is making if I got asked that in a 'modern' game if I happened to be playing one I'm not sure how I'd even go about beginning to deal with that.

It's kind of amusing that I'm arguing about this because self metaing on claims is the one thing I generally preferred to NOT do in a game. It was all the other players that wanted an overexplanation of my claim to 'validate' it.

In post 76, RadiantCowbells wrote:In practice this rule change is going to target... people who claim things about their meta, and often people savvy enough to claim such things are lying about them. I've claimed infinite amounts of contradictory self meta. I have 0 capacity to actually initiate a trust tell.

While I don't feel so strongly that this will be the primary group targeted, I shared similar concerns upon seeing this rule.

A lot of my play as both alignments revolves around taking generalized meta patterns of mine (ex. strategic angling, maximizing EV) and making the argument that they apply to specific situations, thus making me town. I leave it to the town to puzzle out it doesn't hold true when I am scum, whether for circumstantial differences or intentional tradeoff. I am very eager to break these patterns if I feel the credibility is worth it, and I do so proactively, often before anyone else even figures out the pattern. I think my scum record reinforces that I go above and beyond, and will sell the farm to win without thinking twice.

I was not persuaded by the arguments that the rule as written doesn't apply to cases like mine. Perhaps it is a necessary evil, and I will have to rework my lines of argument accordingly, but I am not thrilled to see it.

As a perhaps separate and discursive concern, Mafia is fundamentally not a game suited for competitive play, with a clearly dominant strategy, and there are inherent limitations to try and adapt it as one without a weighted point system. It is natural that there are limits to punishing poor play, as RC & Implosion have already addressed. I often get frustrated that certain players do not care to fix very simple issues in their scumplay, or arguably worse, sandbag as town to shore up mediocre scumplay, but recognize the limitations of enforcement in light of the above. Simultaneously, it makes it very frustrating to see that my approach-one alignment pushing the standard for the other to new heights in circular fashion, never once sacrificing so that a future game is easier-seems to be discouraged in this manner of restricting meta, while those approaches are instead borderline encouraged.

For some concrete scum posts of mine as examples, these two posts in the recently finished Divide & Conquer are likely barred.

In contrast, under the current interpretation of the ruleset, the post where I present my argument, [merely implicitly, and falsely] claiming that an angle is something I would never take as scum, is likely allowable. I am not sold that it will remain this way with the rule as written. This is perhaps not the best example, as I actually flag the exception that makes the case false, but hopefully you get the idea.

Again, perhaps it is a necessary evil and I will simply have to relegate this dimension of play to oblivion, but it is unfortunate, given how much added depth I feel it brought to the table.

In post 88, Prism wrote:
As a perhaps separate and discursive concern, Mafia is fundamentally not a game suited for competitive play, with a clearly dominant strategy, and there are inherent limitations to try and adapt it as one without a weighted point system. It is natural that there are limits to punishing poor play, as RC & Implosion have already addressed. I often get frustrated that certain players do not care to fix very simple issues in their scumplay, or arguably worse, sandbag as town to shore up mediocre scumplay, but recognize the limitations of enforcement in light of the above. Simultaneously, it makes it very frustrating to see that my approach-one alignment pushing the standard for the other to new heights in circular fashion, never once sacrificing so that a future game is easier-seems to be discouraged in this manner of restricting meta, while those approaches are instead borderline encouraged.

I think half of the problem is that people really like to be competitive in mafia and go as far as to define themselves and the quality of their play by their win/loss record. So whenever something 'unfair' happens it's the worst thing ever and needs to be immediately fixed.

Caring about Mafia records is poisonous to the soul.

In post 85, Not Known 15 wrote:The out of game info rules are definitely not in an acceptable state right now. At the moment the rule 4 also applies to normal role pm's that are not faulty, which cannot be the intent of this clause.

Feel free to provide suggestions for how you think it can be clarified.

In post 84, Gamma Emerald wrote:If there’s a case where a read that’s claimed to be gut or some other vague reason *seems* to be an ongoing game read, will mod action ever be taken? This is my biggest concern here, is that site-wide meta shifts will punish players playing legitimately because of players going through a gray area.

The reason that I said that the best option is to not mention the read at all unless you have non-ongoing reasons to support it is for exactly this reason. What we don’t want is for everyone to start assuming that saying “gut” or giving vague reasons means that it’s an ongoing-game-related read, because once it’s universally understood as the code for “this is an ongoing game related read,” then any mention of gut or vague reasons is potentially game-impacting. If it’s obvious that an ongoing game is the reason for a vague read, then we might take action. So ideally we would just never even put ourselves in a situation where that could happen - therefore it’s safer to just not mention the read unless you have other reasons to support it.

In post 83, Nancy Drew 39 wrote:Alright, what if someone were to hypothetically claim, “if I were scum here, I’d already have given up”. Acceptable or not?

Again, it’s extremely dependent on context. If the evidence you’re using to support this statement only comes from the current game, then there’s no issue. If, however, you’re using a pattern of your behavior as scum in previous games to try to prove that you would have given up already in this game, then that becomes a trust tell. There is no “hard and fast” rule for whether a statement is a trust tell on its own because it depends on the context and history.

My obvious concerns with these rule chsnges if if the cure that’s meant to fix the problem, actually winds up doing more harm than good.

Can you explain what harm you think is being done?

Also wrt to the bussing, fakeclaiming or not faking a guilty thing, if it okay then so long as the actual playee doesn’t say it and id there an acceptable way a player can utilize self meta in any of these ways that wouldn’t be against the rules?

Well, it’s not okay to deliberately cultivate a trust tell even if you never refer to it yourself, so someone deciding “I will always make my first post about cookies if I’m town” and someone else picking up on it would still be a trust tell, even if the original poster never explicitly references it.

Our main goal with all of the OGI rules is to maintain game integrity. We think game integrity is negatively impacted if someone is able to “confirm” themselves or something that they’re saying as absolutely true beyond the realm of what should be possible within a game. Think to the level of being mod-confirmed IC. (And you can see this theme in all of the other sections of the OGI announcement, because this principle holds true for the exploiting site rules, discussion of future behavior, etc.)

So from that principle, it follows that a trust tell has to break game integrity by confirming something or someone beyond what they should have been able to do within the game. If you’re attempting to do that, then you’re in trust tell territory, or at the very least in game-impacting OGI territory. If what you’re doing/saying is confined to the current game alone, or is not attempting to confirm something you said (or you) in a way that breaks game integrity, then it isn’t OGI. So it’s okay to reference self-meta, but you need to be really careful in how you talk about it to make sure it doesn’t seem like you’re trying to confirm yourself in an out-of-game sense.

I agree with RC that not mention the ogi alignment read isn’t really ideal. I can understand “not allowed to explain” to be valid but why not just say, can’t explain, I don’t know how to explain it or perhaps even gut?

I would argue that if in your mind - whatever the reason is - for having a strong opinion on a player’s alignment, you should absolutely give that read. That said, you just don’t need to make it obvious that it’s an ogi read.

If I say gut, meta or whatever, I could be telling the actual truth about that or hiding an ogi read. While obviously not ideal, I would argue it’s still better to give the read and perhaps be less than honest about how you arrived at it, maybe?

If you can believably provide other reasons for the read, I don’t think there’s an issue. However, as I said in response to Gamma, what we don’t want is for all of a sudden “gut” or vague reasons for reads being universally assumed to mean “actually this is a read related to an ongoing game.” Once that is implicitly understood to mean “it’s an ongoing game read,” then using any of those reasons becomes potentially game-impacting. That’s why my suggestion is to use only non-ongoing-game reasons to support your reads.

In post 89, Prism wrote:For some concrete scum posts of mine as examples, these two posts in the recently finished Divide & Conquer are likely barred.

In contrast, under the current interpretation of the ruleset, the post where I present my argument, [merely implicitly, and falsely] claiming that an angle is something I would never take as scum, is likely allowable. I am not sold that it will remain this way with the rule as written. This is perhaps not the best example, as I actually flag the exception that makes the case false, but hopefully you get the idea.

Again, perhaps it is a necessary evil and I will simply have to relegate this dimension of play to oblivion, but it is unfortunate, given how much added depth I feel it brought to the table.

I just want to address these examples specifically, even though I think I've generally addressed your point with the contents of my last post.

From a glance at your linked posts, I'm not seeing anything that is trying to confirm yourself outside of the game. You've self-referenced meta as part of an argument, but it doesn't seem to be in a way that says "because I have a history of only doing X as a certain alignment, that's proof of Y in this game"; and your focus appears to be events in the current game.

I did not feel it addressed, and think the interpretation of the specific posts leaves much to be desired.

That said, I am content regardless and will drop the subject.

In post 94, lilith2013 wrote:

In post 83, Nancy Drew 39 wrote:Alright, what if someone were to hypothetically claim, “if I were scum here, I’d already have given up”. Acceptable or not?

Again, it’s extremely dependent on context. If the evidence you’re using to support this statement only comes from the current game, then there’s no issue. If, however, you’re using a pattern of your behavior as scum in previous games to try to prove that you would have given up already in this game, then that becomes a trust tell. There is no “hard and fast” rule for whether a statement is a trust tell on its own because it depends on the context and history.

My obvious concerns with these rule chsnges if if the cure that’s meant to fix the problem, actually winds up doing more harm than good.

Can you explain what harm you think is being done?

Also wrt to the bussing, fakeclaiming or not faking a guilty thing, if it okay then so long as the actual playee doesn’t say it and id there an acceptable way a player can utilize self meta in any of these ways that wouldn’t be against the rules?

Well, it’s not okay to deliberately cultivate a trust tell even if you never refer to it yourself, so someone deciding “I will always make my first post about cookies if I’m town” and someone else picking up on it would still be a trust tell, even if the original poster never explicitly references it.

Our main goal with all of the OGI rules is to maintain game integrity. We think game integrity is negatively impacted if someone is able to “confirm” themselves or something that they’re saying as absolutely true beyond the realm of what should be possible within a game. Think to the level of being mod-confirmed IC. (And you can see this theme in all of the other sections of the OGI announcement, because this principle holds true for the exploiting site rules, discussion of future behavior, etc.)

So from that principle, it follows that a trust tell has to break game integrity by confirming something or someone beyond what they should have been able to do within the game. If you’re attempting to do that, then you’re in trust tell territory, or at the very least in game-impacting OGI territory. If what you’re doing/saying is confined to the current game alone, or is not attempting to confirm something you said (or you) in a way that breaks game integrity, then it isn’t OGI. So it’s okay to reference self-meta, but you need to be really careful in how you talk about it to make sure it doesn’t seem like you’re trying to confirm yourself in an out-of-game sense.

I agree with RC that not mention the ogi alignment read isn’t really ideal. I can understand “not allowed to explain” to be valid but why not just say, can’t explain, I don’t know how to explain it or perhaps even gut?

I would argue that if in your mind - whatever the reason is - for having a strong opinion on a player’s alignment, you should absolutely give that read. That said, you just don’t need to make it obvious that it’s an ogi read.

If I say gut, meta or whatever, I could be telling the actual truth about that or hiding an ogi read. While obviously not ideal, I would argue it’s still better to give the read and perhaps be less than honest about how you arrived at it, maybe?

If you can believably provide other reasons for the read, I don’t think there’s an issue. However, as I said in response to Gamma, what we don’t want is for all of a sudden “gut” or vague reasons for reads being universally assumed to mean “actually this is a read related to an ongoing game.” Once that is implicitly understood to mean “it’s an ongoing game read,” then using any of those reasons becomes potentially game-impacting. That’s why my suggestion is to use only non-ongoing-game reasons to support your reads.

I don’t see how it could be considered a “code” unless the same user only did that wrt ongoing games but if I really think a player is scum based on ogi, how can I not give that read without game throwing?

This is exactly the kind of thing that worries me here. There needs to be a mod approved way of handling this besides not giving a read,

This is exactly the kind of thing that worries me here. There needs to be a mod approved way of handling this besides not giving a read,

Why does there need to be a work around?
Why is it ok to reference one ongoing game in another in this specific way, but not any other way?

In post 98, Micc wrote:

This is exactly the kind of thing that worries me here. There needs to be a mod approved way of handling this besides not giving a read,

Why does there need to be a work around?
Why is it ok to reference one ongoing game in another in this specific way, but not any other way?

+1

There does not need to be a mod approved way of giving a read that is based solely on content from another ongoing game because you should not be able to have that read in the first place.