Appeal: Jazdia

[Jazdia]

First off, the login screen mentions that I was banned for gamethrowing which is just completely ridiculous as I go to great lengths to win and often devise new and creative strategies with the goal of winning, keeping detailed statistics on how those methods work. Sometimes they include bussing, but not even that often. The only report that trialbot even returned had nothing to do with gamethrowing, though recently I have taken to claiming that I am NK and going to kill a specific player with slight variations on implementation based on my role, in order to guide TP or LO to that player, or to save the player if I am TP/LO, or to guide mafia away from attacking me.

These strategies have widely varying winrates based on my role (and largely if there are consorts/escorts in the game) ranging from just over 42% to over ~85.7%, but are almost always a net positive. So if gamethrowing comes up, false gamethrowing is explicitly allowed, as is bussing.

In this specific report for which I was banned for, I was disguiser and I visited the person we killed, so I came up as sheriff when SK killed me, and I told the dead on N1 that the character was suspect. I then stated I would need to leave soon and asked them to tell a medium. The reason for this was because I knew if there was no medium there was a high probability of there being a retributionist, and the ret would be unable to rez me and would know I was disguiser, therefore if the dead real sheriff believed I left, it could lend some credibility to my argument as the retmight just think they couldn't rez because I was gone. You will note I actually did NOT leave and stayed in the game until the end to sow discord in the dead chat to help the mafia (which ultimately paid off.) Therefore, if anything, it would at MOST be fake gamethrowing which is, again, explicitly allowed even in the secret rules.

Regarding the actual single report of hatespeech, this is a specific strategy I have where I pick a specific player at the beginning of the game and emphatically proclaim my intention to kill them for the reasons stated above. I never personally insult them, I never bring up race, religion, politics, creed, favorite flavor of ice cream, or any other personal trait about the player. I emphatically declare that I am going to murder a specific player, sometimes explicitly stating that I am NK, based on my role, as you can see in the report. Again, in almost all situations this is almost always a net boost on winrate and is definitely NOT gamethrowing.

Since hatespeech doesn't exist in the official rules, I took about 20 minutes to track down that document with the rules compiled by the secret society of ToS mods. The only thing that is even close to this in my message is evading the soft filter if you count that part of my message said "fking". This is not an attempt to evade the filter and came about as a result of the original message I had (which has subsequently been modified to achieve the desired effect) being just slightly too long to fit into two lines and me needing to save a couple character, so I partially censored the curse word. I suppose that could be seen as evading the soft filter (which I honestly forgot existed because I don't play with it on.)

Additionally, the end of that rule section on hatespeech specifically states "Some swearing and insults are normal and to be expected;" while the soft filter rule itself states "repeatedly". You will note that I say the message exactly one time, which is the very definition of not repeatedly.

If this is the reason then I can easily doctor this message to not include this word as the curse word is only intended to add emphasis and is not required for the strategy to work. I have it on my Town Of Salem strategies documents and I just copy and paste it when I'm going to implement that strategy, so I can just doctor it at the source. I personally don't consider these words at all offensive and they have never triggered the "Your message has been rejected for vulgarity" message, so I never gave them a second thought.

If you would be so kind as to reverse this seemingly unwarranted ban, I would appreciate it.

Thank you.

[TrialBot]

Here are your reports:

• Hate speech/Harassment
• Spamming

[Jerme]

targetting someone for being them/their name can be deemed as harassment.

[Jazdia]

I didn't target anyone for being themselves or for their name. I pick a target at random and it didn't matter what their name was, so long as it's 5 characters or less. Nor do I bring up any personal characteristics or even imply anything about their name. It's simply the only way to identify and discuss an individual. That is the point of a name. So even if it "could be deemed" harassment, it's not what I did so it's not correct to make that implication.

Additionally, I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment; I don't see anything about that even in the rules Google doc. Going line by line, I don't see anything in the rules even remotely similar to the behavior you described, even if I had done it.

Its important this is addressed and overturned. Consistency and fairness is key.

[Jerme]

We do have consistently suspended people who want a certain person killed since the beginning of the game, sometimes even naming themselves like that.
I strongly and respectfully recommend you to drop this tactic, as it would result into this again.

[Jazdia]

I would, again, emphasize that there is no rule against that sort of behavior, published or otherwise. There are no in-game loading screen tips about it, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to suggest that it might be against the rules.

If it actually is bannable, then I'm willing to discontinue the strategy, but then the ban should be overturned and the rules must be amended to reflect this, as no reasonable person, on review of the rules, would believe they were not permitted to employ this (largely effective) strategy.

Again, its important that this be overturned because it can impact future judgements.

[Jerme]

Its already in the harassment part. The rules are worded in a broad way, in order to close loopholes that might be attempted to take.

[Jazdia]

If this is really the case, for my own education, could you spell out for me which portion of the harassment part covers this situation? I am a reasonably open-minded person, but I'm having difficulty finding exactly which section you're referring to.

I just don't see anything in there which covers this. I don't believe I exploited any loophole, nor does any section of what's written seem broad enough to address this situation, or even come close to addressing it.

If you believe that my assessment of the rules is in error, I would encourage you to clarify exactly which portion of the rules I violated and how, otherwise it's highly likely that I will do so again due to not understanding why this is a violation.

[Jerme]

The rules are worded quite broad as you can see. Its in the not mentioned examples (as its says not limited to).
Don't you consider it harassment to be targetted by someone (repeatedly) for being in the game, instead because of a hunch, a read or info?

[Jazdia]

I absolutely don't think it's harassment to do what I did. Keep in mind, any attention I appear to point towards the random target, whoever it might be, is a deception. It's a way of manipulating the actions of the mafia and NK without necessarily knowing who they are. This is not targeting an individual, it's often protecting them. It is similar to the strategy of claiming to be serial killer or WW on a later night and claiming you're going to kill a specific person, falsely or otherwise. It's not harassment, it's a way of manipulating the actions of others for the benefit of your team.

If one can employ the allowed strategy of aggressively demanding that people claim their roles (even without evidence or hunches) as a way of gaining information and influencing the town or other teams, then you certainly are allowed to use methods like this to manipulate the efforts of other teams and gain information. It's quite common to see people (including myself) aggressively demand a specific player or two claim and voting them to the stand when they refuse to. This particular strategy is somewhat less random in that it's specifically tailored to work for my team even if you don't know exactly who they are and it has a substantial positive effect when used properly.

I notice that in your question you specified "targeted by someone (repeatedly) for being in the game." This is one thing that you DON'T ever see me do; Target a player randomly and repeatedly across the entire game. It's used as a tactic to draw out information and manipulate the actions of teams, and then when it no longer serves it's purpose (usually after a single night) then it's dropped and not brought up again. More often than not it ends up with me working WITH the person mentioned and confirming one or the other of us.

I've used it successfully across scores of games with a widely positive effect and other players have widely understood the effect, after the fact, and the reasons I employed it. I've had multiple people tell me (and go through the chat logs of all my games if you need proof) that my strategies brought a smile to their face and were incredible. I've had people from the other teams, people that I defeated, telling me GG and that this was one of the most creative and effective strategies they have seen, and congratulating me specifically.

I realize that people here may feel the need to defend the actions that were taken by the system and I realize that this is because you guys are often flooded with appeals from people who ran around making racial slurs about specific races of people or calling for violence in real life against other players and then showing up here and claiming they are innocent or that, despite not learning their lesson in three temporary bans, they now understand. I understand that harassment hurts the game for everyone but I also understand that this is what the "not limited to" clause is about. It's there to target people who are trying to attack and hurt people and to generally make the game a worse place. It's not there to stifle innovation of strategy or to stop good natured fun or information gathering in the game. I don't know about you personally, but if this were taken to an actual vote of all the players of ToS or the population at large, I would bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets, that a hundred times out of a hundred, the community would overwhelmingly support my position. I'm bringing interesting and fun strategies to the game, and that's part of what makes the game fun and prevents it from dying. This is a clause that is so open-ended that it could be used to classify literally anything as harassment and I don't think it's right to use it to stamp out something that generally helps the game rather than hurts it.

[Jerme]

I do see your side of the coin, about chosing a random target and trying to get something from them. I do hope you see our side, that this strategy of yours kicks in way too early ("targetting" a player beginning from the name selection). This might make make the player (and us) think you had it our for them, instead of this being a strategy that plays out. I have seen some TP baits where its said "[playername] dies tonight!" and then protecting the announced person. That selection is more random than chosing a name "[player] dies" and then going against them since day 1. Targetting names that contain position instead of names are the only only kind of targetting names that do seem random.
I saw that tactic once (someone named themselves "Shooting [number]" and I happened to be that one. After confirming myself to them (they used Vig scrolls afaik), we worked together and won. Do you think, that you could use that way in the future, instead of hardtargetting a name, as this might result in getting missinterpretated?

[Jazdia]

It's funny you should mention TP using that strategy, because TP and Lookout are the three roles that this strategy has the highest success on. ( #1: LO, #2: BG, #3: Doctor). I actually don't often employ this strategy with TK or medium anymore because of the sub-par success rates and inability to personally capitalize on the effect.

I 100% agree with you that I could make it *appear* more random (GuyWhoKillsSeven), but the fact that a name also appears random and contributes dramatically to its success. I used to use a number. While the sample size for this comparison is low, over a year ago I compared the effects of using the number versus using a name over 40 games. In only seven out of 20 of the games using a number did I see the desired behavior from the enemy teams, while when using a name I saw the desired behavior in 16/20 of the games. Sample sizes are low, but we're talking a success rate of 35% compared to a success rate of 80%. (Success rate over two nights, not winrate, town games only). It dramatically reduces the effectiveness of the strategy to use a number. This was when I switched from using number to name.

Additionally, making it *appear* a bit more random doesn't make it actually more random, because it is already completely random.

I appreciate your willingness to see my side of the argument, I really do. I just am afraid that I'm not certain that I particularly agree that the timing of a strategy is relevant. After all, if threatening a random player with no evidence breaks the rules on turn 1 then, all other things being equal, threatening a random player with no evidence on turn 100 does as well. For example, I often claim to be vigi (sometimes when I'm not vigi) and tell random people I'm going to kill them if they don't claim a role out loud. I often do this on day 1. Is it targeting to do this because I randomly went after a person on day 1? If this is the case, why did the developers even put in a day 1 chat session if using it to begin playing the game is too early? I'm allowed to claim jailor on day 1, people are allowed to reveal as mayor on day 1, people can claim a role on day 1, but they can't threaten until day 2? It just seems so arbitrary.

The entire point of the game centers on targeting people, forcing them to divulge information, constructing a picture of what the role list is and who occupies those roles, and then acting on it to secure a win.

Do you think my position is that unreasonable? I'm not trying to waste your time or be stubborn; I'm trying to see your side of the coin, as you put it, but I just can't get there in this situation.
I realize that misinterpretation may happen (The fact that I'm here shows that misinterpretation is possible) and it may take a little bit of extra reading of the game logs and examining what happened to determine, but that's no different than someone fake gamethrowing in order to win(which is explicitly allowed). While it may initially appear to be gamethrowing, and one may have to do some reading and investigation to realize it, it becomes obvious that it wasn't actually gamethrowing and served to help their team. Keep in mind this is one mistaken guilty report over hundreds of games using this strategy over multiple years, and around year of specifically using names.

I am trying to be as reasonable as possible and I appreciate that you are doing the same, but I really do think this is one of the rare situations in which a mistake was made and a ban was actually the wrong call.

[Jerme]

I apologize, I beleive I haven't made myself clear. Threatening someone d1 is not fully harassment, unless its a hsitory of having the same person threatened. In the context of your report, where you went against that one player since name select, it appeared more targetted, which is what led us to the decision of the guilty verdict. The appearance of the randomness prevents that a neutral party, who reads the report (=jurors/judges/mods) and casts a judgement/verdict, to think its you targetting a certain player out of spite. We do have such things happened in the past.

Your position is not unreasonable, and I believe some of your arguments/thoughts were based on a missunderstanding of what I tried to convey (but apparently failed).

[Jazdia]

Now I understand what you were trying to say. Well I can assure you that I have no idea who that particular player is, they were selected completely at random, I don't have any reason to believe they were in a previous or later game, at least not with that name, nor do I even attempt to track such things.

I suppose what I could do to make it more apparent to the neutral third party, if this were to ever come up again, would be to explicitly state (after the fact) that I picked the person at random.

Given that it was a misunderstanding on the part of the neutral third party, can I expect that this will be overturned now?

[Meandrina]

If this is really the case, for my own education, could you spell out for me which portion of the harassment part covers this situation? I am a reasonably open-minded person, but I'm having difficulty finding exactly which section you're referring to.

I just don't see anything in there which covers this. I don't believe I exploited any loophole, nor does any section of what's written seem broad enough to address this situation, or even come close to addressing it.

If you believe that my assessment of the rules is in error, I would encourage you to clarify exactly which portion of the rules I violated and how, otherwise it's highly likely that I will do so again due to not understanding why this is a violation.

Just what you say on Day 1 crosses the line in my eyes. There is no reason to be threatening like that and including things like "using a rusty spike through their lungs," "their screams will haunt the dreams of their children". You cannot threaten to kill someone in a way that cannot be done in game and furthermore, you cannot including their family members.

[Jazdia]

Hello,

Not to be contrary, but I wouldn't say there's no reason. There is a very good reason and that is is to draw a lot of attention to the threat immediately and thus influence the behavior of the other team(s). It's incredibly effective.

As for threatening to kill someone in a way that's not in the game, a spike to the lungs is literally the exact way that the serial killer kills his victims in ToS. Like it's literally in the image of the sk (holding the spike), and in the written description of the sk, he sticks it into their chest. Besides, it makes little sense to be allowed to say I'm going to shoot the guy (vigilante), burn the guy (arsonist), behead the guy (jailor), hang the guy (everyone), poison the guy(poisoner), haunt the guy (jester), eviscerate the guy (werewolf), crush his legs (trapper), slash with a sword (crusader), stab with a knife (ambusher), or crush them (juggernaut) but I can't say I will kill them with a spike (like the Vampire Hunter and SK.) It's again incredibly arbitrary.

Also I don't threaten their family members, nor do I threaten the player at all. It's a threat by one ToS character towards another ToS character. It never is, nor has ever, been a threat towards the player. Additionally, as I said before, this is a strategy that I have been using for literally years now, and never had a single person complain until now.

The rules don't even hint at this, even in the secret google doc of rules that you find, and this strategy has been used with hundreds of other players with no complaints until now. I really don't see how this is going too far. Like literally, if this is defined as going too far, then literally almost anything interesting would be. If you are playing a video game about murder and killing, and you're honestly offended because someone threatened to kill your character, then you really need to unplug and do some serious self-reflection.

[Jerme]

The Serial Killer stabd their targets with a knife, not with a rusty spike afaik.

[Jazdia]

Even if the SK "knifes" them and doesn't "spike" them (despite the two being synonyms (see: google.com, "define: knife"), and the sk puts a slightly different shape of pointy object through their imaginary lungs, the Vampire Hunter kills his targets with a spike, so killing people with a spike is in the game and it makes little sense to prohibit killing by spike while you're okay to talk about killing in any of the other 20 methods in the game.

Either way, this entire argument is just sidetracking us, because claiming you can't threaten to kill someone's character in a manner not represented in the game is:
1) Not even remotely implied in the rules, either the rules published by BMG or the secret rules document that isn't published but is used by trial judges.
2) A rather silly position to take in general, even if it were in the secret rules doc.

Meandrina, I do appreciate you taking the time to review this, but even in your own post you give your opinion by saying things "cross the line in your eyes". While I am pleased that you are being candid about this being an opinion and it could appear different in the eyes of others, I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me exactly what the "line" is that this crosses and why this line isn't even hinted at in any of the rules. If I take you at your word and assume it has to do with the type of violence the imaginary characters face or the imaginary emotional repercussions of their imaginary family members, then this just raises more questions than it answers.

Basically the only conclusions I can draw from what your wrote are:
WITH A RUSTY SPIKE THROUGH THE LUNGS -- Bannable
WITH A SHARP KNIFE THROUGH THE LUNGS -- A-OK

THEIR SCREAMS WILL HAUNT THE DREAMS OF THEIR CHILDREN -- Bannable
THEIR SCREAMS WILL HAUNT THE DREAMS OF THEIR NEIGHBORS -- A-OK

We're getting into a level of incredible mental gymnastics to justify a call that should have never been made in the first place. When you start placing arbitrary, unwritten, rules on which specific, slightly different, sorts of imaginary violence can be threatened to imaginary video game sprite characters and which imaginary characters are allowed to be emotionally affected by said violence, you get into a place where it appears as if you're desperately clinging to any possible strand of justification for not admitting an error was made and the ban was a bad call.

I'm not saying that's what's going on as I can't read your minds, I'm just saying that it appears that way from an outside perspective. I don't think you can blame me for thinking this either. After all, in this entire discussion, which has been going on for something like a week now, nobody has demonstrated which written or unwritten rule I violated short of a catch all "not limited to" which doesn't really even address my contention that this was not a violation and simply implies that it's not harassment per any of the written definitions.

Do you believe my position is unreasonable?

[Jerme]

Please keep in mind that the way how you worded the sentences did make it seems like you meant it outside of the game, instead of inside, thus it was over the line, as far as I can tell. I believe the one that got labelled as "A-OK" would also ne questionable to sa the least.

[Jazdia]

I appreciate your directness. I have to say that I think interpreting this as a death threat to another player rather than the character is truly silly. Both because it's not beyond what was implemented in the game and secondly because it was very clearly directed towards the character and not the human being sitting at the other computer (who I would have no way of knowing who they were.)

I feel like this is a way of interpreting things which is detrimental to the game overall.
I will accept the judgement (though I don't agree with it) but I will be taking a few actions as a result of this.

First off, I want to thank you all for the time you put into this thread. I know you are all people who are doing this for free, on your own time, and that you have no obligation to do so. I want to thank you for taking the time to do that and for the effort you put into Town of Salem, even if in this particular case I disagree with you. I've been in your shoes and I know you guys have to deal with some of the worst stuff here so your contribution can't be overstated and I want you do know I do understand where you're coming from, even if I disagree.

Secondly, while it may accomplish very little in the way of change, I will be reaching out to BMG to share my thoughts on this issue. I don't necessarily think they will be any more receptive to my point of view than you have been, and that's ok. I do this because the game has brought me a lot of enjoyment and I feel it's a way that I can at least offer my perspective in a way that may be helpful in making meaningful change in the way rules are handled and enforced, rather than just throwing up my hands and walking away.

Lastly, despite my ban being over, I will be quitting ToS.

Now you may come back with a remark along the lines of "Well we didn't want your kind here anyway if you're coming up with strategies like this." That's fair enough, but the simple reality is that I've been playing Town of Salem for something like four years now, with countless thousands of games, recruited 60+ people to the game, and I have created a large number of successful strategies that I have seen propagated through the community. This is part of what brings life to the game and the community.

There are, of course, many people who contribute to the game in this way besides myself and I'm not under any sort of self-aggrandizing delusion that me leaving is going to do any harm to the game (nor would I be so petty were it the case.). I just feel that, if this is the direction the game is taking in terms of rules, then it's very likely not the community for me anymore. I need to feel like I have some level of liberty to explore various strategies without worrying that some random person is going to swoop in and get one of my accounts banned over something as silly as this. I'm disappointed by this, but all good things must end I suppose and it was great while it lasted, so I'm grateful for that.

Again, I'd like to thank you all for your time and I hope that, in the future, you consider what I've said in your dealings with other people who are in the trial system.