Klaze's Use of Moderator Powers to Gain Tactical Advantage in Mafia

Couple key points here:

  1. By the Official Rules, day lasts until the host closes the thread. Days don't end when you hit hammer (by current rules). Players don't decide when days or games are over. (We can change this if people want - will discuss later. But these are the current rules.)
  2. Ending days early/locking threads DOES create advantages for Scum. Discussion is always town-sided, especially around EOD.
  3. As a general principle, it's a huge conflict of interest for a moderator who is an active player in a game to be taking moderator actions in that game thread.
  4. Klaze's decision to lock threads 3 days in a row this game created real advantages for himself as a mafia player. This is perhaps the most blatant misuse of moderator powers we've seen in mafia so far.

Exploring what those advantages could be:
Day 1: Day doesn't officially end until Roragok shows up and ends it (by our current rules). Klaze locking the thread locked people out from posting during the window between hammer and Roragok entering to end day. I may have planned to post something right before EOD which would have influenced night actions that night. I might have even posted "Klaze is scum btw" right before I died n1. That's completely within the rules and Klaze was cheating by denying me the opportunity to do so.
Day 2: Whenever he claimed Doc. Klaze locking the thread was the clearest violation here - real doc could immediately claim and the game could react to klaze's fake. This would be within the rules Roragok has laid out. Klaze locking the thread clearly altered the course of the game there.

If you are still not sure whether this is over the line/conflict of interest, ask yourself: Did Klaze gain any in-game advantage by exercising his power as moderator in this thread?

He almost certainly did. The thread locks had real effect on the course of the game and they were clearly a conflict of interest and should never have been allowed to continue.

To boil it down, simply:

  1. An active player in a mafia game can never act as moderator on that mafia thread without it being a conflict of interest
  2. Player's don't make hosting decisions about active game threads. Hosts do.
  3. Klaze's actions in the recent game had very real effect on that game and are a pretty clear-cut case of moderator powers being used to gain advantages in a mafia game.
  • Locking the thread wasn’t consistent with the game’s rules
  • Further discussions at EOD are town-favored and within game rules
  • An active player can’t be making choices about locking threads because it impacts the game

IF you guys would like to amend the rules such that days DO end and threads DO lock on hammer, here is what I would suggest:

Mafiabot counts lynch votes every time a lynch is added
When it finds a majority, it locks the thread

I have halfway-written this function but it didn’t work last night so we’d have to look into it further

Regardless, the bottom line is that Klaze is cheating and his actions raise some serious questions about what you guys are even doing with moderation on this website

This is like the 9th person in a row that has been unceremoniously promoted to moderator with no guidelines for what to do, no outlined plan for the subforum or expectations for what is supposed to happen

Before any of this happened I was going to suggest Klaze might be a pretty good choice - I am concerned at this point that is not an issue of the people being appointed, but of the way they are appointed and the systems you have in place for moderation.

What are you even expecting Klaze to do as moderator? Are you hoping for him to clear flags (hide posts and ban users) and move threads? That seems like a total waste of time. What is he supposed to do in Mafia? He can’t lock threads if he’s an active player in the thread; that’s for hosts and not players to decide. We could have people guiding the direction and improvement of Mafia, but you have to put systems in place and make plans and shit for this. Has anybody done any of that? I see Roragok doing it - but then he abandons it because he doesn’t want to enforce anything - and if he’s already doing it why appoint moderators

Basically: What the fuck are you doing and why are you doing it

End the revolving door of random users being given elevated privileges to fuck with people for no reason and being given access to everyone’s personal info

Pretty soon half of the website will know everyone’s first + last names, locations, and email addresses because we just randomly appoint moderators and then remove them with seemingly no reasoning on either end

Figure out what you want from mafia and put the systems in place.

And act against Klaze for cheating. That shit was untenable.

Roragok has said earlier that he wishes for everyone to stop posting as soon as hammer has hit and that the thread should be locked.

  1. Do you think you gained a tactical advantage by locking the thread at the time that you did
  2. Do you think the threads would have been locked if you had not been moderator
  1. I am not sure and did not consider that when locking the thread

  2. Perhaps not as quickly, but it doesn't matter. It is strictly against the rules to post after the day ends.

Day doesn’t end until the host says it ends

It should be obvious to you why players do not have the ability to make these decisions about when day ends

It should also be obvious to you that more discussion at EOD is clearly town-sided and you gained real advantages by locking the threads when you did.

Just wondering, what do you think this means?

It means: After hammer is reached, no FUCKING TALKING. It does not mean: Feel free to talk until someone locks the thread (making it technically impossible to post which means outlining it as if it were a problem would make no sense)

He’s clearly talking about after the host ends the day

I don’t know how you can quote from the same thread as the quote from the OP and think that means that players can decide that day is over

Really epic guys hahahaha awesome

“Let’s pretend to have an argument to troll the forum” - (Klaze and Wintermute in teamspeak)

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Locking the thread after hammer has been reached, which has previously been requested by the host and has regularly been done in other games is totally cheating and out of line, you got me.

Do you not see how

  1. It’s a conflict of interest for you, a player, to decide when day is over
  2. It creates potential issues because only the host really has access to the info to decide that
  3. You gained real advantages in that game by locking when you did
  • I do not decide when the day is over, the day is over when hammer is reached. Not when the host logs on and decides to close the thread/end the day. This has been stated numerous times by Roragok

  • The issues it may create has nothing to do with me - I am just following the rules and would do so in any game regardless of my personal interest

  • If I gained advantages by simply employing the rules, then that is out of my control. I would still follow the rules if it caused me disadvantages.

No you did not follow the rules

It’s a clear violation and misuse of moderator powers

Stop reality distorting just accept when you’ve done something retarded and do better next time

Ultimately this is not your fault but dan’s and roragok’s for not putting a clear-cut system in place for what the fuck you are supposed to do

Fuck off. The only rule is not posting epok’s twitch name.

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