Newbie Mini Mafia VIII

On April 19 2012 03:34 KharadBanar wrote:

This is that post.

I will take a different approach from willz here, because I had a very good defense post from willz to go from.
With Xatalos, I am going to try to make some comments based on his general posting style which have been made before but need to be reminded of, and again they are meant to be good advice if he is town, but something for the others to consider as to if you're actually scum. My official opinion: I haven't decided yet whether to go with Xatalos or willz here.

First off, some general remarks:
One of the biggest problems I have with your posts is that some of them come about as giant walls of text.
If you want people to trust you, they have to understand you first.
If you want people to understand you, you have to make it easy for them.
To make it easy for people to understand your posts, it would be advisable to post in a style people actually want to read.
People want to read something with colour.
People want to read something with weight.
People want to read something with a pattern.
People do not want a post which starts out decently only to devolve into a giant messy wall of text which their eyes can't follow and which is probably not all too well thought out in advance and has little to no interpunction and no paragraphs and just repeats itself over and over again and repeats itself over and over again and makes them want to stop reading at every corner because they are tired of making sense of your big sentence which grows ever longer and in the end has no real conclusion. You don't want to bury your important points inside a paragraph where no one will look twice because it's buried in between lines and lines of rambling which no one will ever get the gist of because you have preoccupied their concentration with making sure your sentence is actually grammatically correct and has all the right words in the right places to be actually still listening to what you are saying.
Not all of your posts are like that. But if you really want to make something count, it will have to look more readable than for instance your defense against HiroPro.
This has been alleviated somewhat in your recent postings, but I'm still writing about it here because I still think it is pretty damn important.

Now about the implications of this: As I have said before but not elaborated too much upon in my post about willz, scum actually wants us to not remember what they said in their posts.
This gives them the opportunity to say what they want first without you noticing it, then either cite it to hold it against you later or completely forget about it themselves and not have to worry about it.
It also makes the town think "Yes, yes, this player is actually contributing" when in actuality all of it had no real meaning*. What this says about Xatalos I'll leave as an exercise to the reader. (Hint: It doesn't automatically make him scum, which is why I still haven't decided yet.)

*INB4: If you're suddenly thinking "This man is a hypocrite! He said every post should carry meaning inside the game yet this has nothing to do with the game at all, it's just a posting style rant!", consider the following:
Making yourself heard is an important subject in a Mafia game. If this advice helps you write more understandably in the future, more people will actually read what you have to say, and more people will actually understand it. Therefore if you take the time to have read and understood this, other people will take less time to read and understand your posts, and they can respond better to what you have to say. Reading this is not a waste of your time.

Thank you for your attention. Everyone, get out there and post, and do so in a readable fashion!

Newbie Mini Mafia VIII - Page 43