The Syndicate

insertnamehere wrote:I'm getting crucified in the thread, because some people are idiotically thinking that I'm Media. We need to stop worrying about the Media role. My role, at least was heavily changed from it's original.

S~V~S wrote: And as far as i am concerned, an Indy is a baddie Lite.

S~V~S, I really thought that you would know better then that. That's the most stupid thing I've read in the whole thread. In fact, it's so stupid, it's really making me question your allegiances. Usual smart S~V~S would never say something like that. Once again, why are we focusing so much on Media? You know, instead of BOB, or the actual Baddies! Me being framed for an unimportant indie role, and that all of a sudden making me Public Enemy No. 1 is weirding me out. Someone wants to shift focus from BOB, or the Baddies, and a lot of other people are happy to oblige.

DharmaHelper wrote:Anybody feel like, I dunno, moving on?

insertnamehere wrote:

Bullzeye wrote:

insertnamehere wrote:

Bullzeye wrote:
Prove it. Show us this difference, pick a player and blow our minds.

Why would I tell you guys the tells for a certain player in this game, that player could then avoid those words or phrases, and then his data will be inaccurate.

Why wouldn't you want to show that your system works?

I want to, but I want to do it without giving information to possible baddies in the thread, so they can break it.

insertnamehere wrote:

Bullzeye wrote:
Prove it. Show us this difference, pick a player and blow our minds.

Why would I tell you guys the tells for a certain player in this game, that player could then avoid those words or phrases, and then his data will be inaccurate.

insertnamehere wrote:

Bullzeye wrote:

insertnamehere wrote:

Dom wrote: You "scanned" it?
What exactly does that mean?

I have been working on this for about a year. The Piano was the first website I scanned. I scanned it before it went down. I saved the comments of only certain people that were on The Syndicate, assuming they would be playing in this game. I only have copies of the comments of certain people in certain games of mafia.


Isn't the program already irrelevant if you told us about it at all? What if some people get nervous and screw up their civvie posting style? What if some people get nervous on the baddies, and they don't post normally either?
If this program really exists, have fun with it.

The reason I told everyone is because one person with a list in this game is completely useless. What was I supposed to do? Vote for the person at the top of the list without revealing why? Nobody else would vote for him, and he'd still be in the game. Once again, I am looking for subconscious tells.

So you made this software purely for the sake of this game, and started a year ago? Seems like a lot of time for something that will get on average 6 weeks use (assuming you're alive at the end). Also in my experience 'subconscious tells' tend to be physical things like someone twitching, touching something, itching body parts, eye movements, voice changes. None of this is conveyed through text. Do you have a source for the idea that subconscious actions can be picked up on over the internet? Normally people are very conscious of what they type. Typing is something you have to make a conscious choice to do. It can be influenced or inhibited if you're carrying out another language-based task at the same time but I don't think you're looking for people accidentally writing song lyrics or their shopping lists.

I agree in principle that there are behaviours that people show more when bad than good or vice versa, but these tend to be things that other players pick up on if they know them well.

This is supposed to be the big game on this site for this year, why not try it out here? There are such a thing as subconscious tells in writing, especially in games like this. There was a difference between the most used words by someone when they were good, and when they were bad, so I think I'm right on this one.

insertnamehere wrote:

Dom wrote: You "scanned" it?
What exactly does that mean?

I have been working on this for about a year. The Piano was the first website I scanned. I scanned it before it went down. I saved the comments of only certain people that were on The Syndicate, assuming they would be playing in this game. I only have copies of the comments of certain people in certain games of mafia.


Isn't the program already irrelevant if you told us about it at all? What if some people get nervous and screw up their civvie posting style? What if some people get nervous on the baddies, and they don't post normally either?
If this program really exists, have fun with it.

The reason I told everyone is because one person with a list in this game is completely useless. What was I supposed to do? Vote for the person at the top of the list without revealing why? Nobody else would vote for him, and he'd still be in the game. Once again, I am looking for subconscious tells.

Mongoose wrote:

juliets wrote: Lizzy, I really don't understand you wanting to follow Inh's vote. What did you think of the information Nevinera provided - and I think Dom provided some too - regarding why a program such as Inh is describing is highly unlikely?

It makes me feel very squirrely about them. Lizzy's smart though and doesn't defend her teammates too easily. I have no idea why she'd want to blindly follow that vote.

If we think "Sherlock" could be Media, should we come up with a nickname for him to avoid powering up any Mr. Popularity mechanics? If that is indeed him.

Dom wrote:

insertnamehere wrote:

Nevinera wrote:Don't you see? It's a *proprietary trade secret*. If he revealed his code, well then *anybody* would be able to tell who's bad.

That would be tragic for the civ team of course. Clearly he's being civic-minded.

No, then the baddies could remake it, find out what their tells are, and avoid those words or phrases, making the Program irrelevant.

Isn't the program already irrelevant if you told us about it at all? What if some people get nervous and screw up their civvie posting style? What if some people get nervous on the baddies, and they don't post normally either?
If this program really exists, have fun with it.

insertnamehere wrote:

Nevinera wrote:Don't you see? It's a *proprietary trade secret*. If he revealed his code, well then *anybody* would be able to tell who's bad.

That would be tragic for the civ team of course. Clearly he's being civic-minded.

No, then the baddies could remake it, find out what their tells are, and avoid those words or phrases, making the Program irrelevant.

A Person wrote:

insertnamehere wrote:

Nevinera wrote:Don't you see? It's a *proprietary trade secret*. If he revealed his code, well then *anybody* would be able to tell who's bad.

That would be tragic for the civ team of course. Clearly he's being civic-minded.

No, then the baddies could remake it, find out what their tells are, and avoid those words or phrases, making the Program irrelevant.

If I were a baddie I'd start having my teammates write each others posts, thereby making the program inaccurate.

Nevinera wrote:I'm fairly confident that he doesn't even have such a tool and is just generating cover for future assertions and theories.
Even the task of scraping N different forums for data is a fairly complex one that one wouldn't just *do*.
That's why I asked for code and a list of libraries.

Challenge: if you have already scraped all that data into a db or files of some kind, it would be *trivial* for you to answer this question:
What are the top 20 words I've used in all threads on both boards I have played on under this name with length greater than 6?

insertnamehere wrote: If I tell you what the tells are for each person, the baddies will just specifically avoid those words, making the Program irrelevant. I also don't want to divulge the rankings, because if I'm completely 100% correct, I could be NK'd. I will divulge who is at the top each week, if you want to vote for that person, you can. Or you cannot. It's your decision.

thellama73 wrote:I hesitate to say anything, for fear of being accused of baddie motives, but I don't like the idea of using a computer to play the game for us. It seems to defeat the purpose of the game to substitute a machine for our ability to read people.

I don't like it. I don't like it one bit.

insertnamehere wrote:

Bullzeye wrote:

insertnamehere wrote:So, let me preface this by saying that I am by no means, an expert at coding. This was the first really big program that I've decided to make. It could work, it could not, I'm going to try and see.

I've created a program that goes into every poster's game history, specifically games where they were bad, and sees what their top phrases or words are. It then contrasts those with the top words or phrases from a persons post history when they were good. It then eliminates the words that were on both lists, leaving us with that person's tells. After that, it goes into this thread, and sees how many times someone uses words or phrases identified as tells. The higher that number is, the more likely chance you are to be bad. This was a bitch to make, and it's something I've worked on for a long time, a bit of a pet project if you will.

Now, of course, because of the limited sample size, the program is more likely to be incorrect these first few days, but, as more and more people post, I know more and more about their role.

To summarize, I'm the NSA now, bitches.

The idea behind this sounds pretty interesting but I'm just not sure it'll work in practice. Can you think of anyone who specifically uses different words and phrases when bad or civ? It's more the attitudes and tones behind a post that change in my opinion.

Of course, attitudes and tones count for a lot, but everybody subconsciously has tells, and a lot of baddies like to fly under the radar, and not offend anybody. This is a way of finding those people.

insertnamehere wrote:So, let me preface this by saying that I am by no means, an expert at coding. This was the first really big program that I've decided to make. It could work, it could not, I'm going to try and see.

I've created a program that goes into every poster's game history, specifically games where they were bad, and sees what their top phrases or words are. It then contrasts those with the top words or phrases from a persons post history when they were good. It then eliminates the words that were on both lists, leaving us with that person's tells. After that, it goes into this thread, and sees how many times someone uses words or phrases identified as tells. The higher that number is, the more likely chance you are to be bad. This was a bitch to make, and it's something I've worked on for a long time, a bit of a pet project if you will.

Now, of course, because of the limited sample size, the program is more likely to be incorrect these first few days, but, as more and more people post, I know more and more about their role.

To summarize, I'm the NSA now, bitches.

Elohcin wrote:

thellama73 wrote:I was pretty much destroyed by Plasmids in Bioshock (or I was about to be before I was killed) so I happy to forego them this game.

Now comes that horrible part of the game where I have to start thinking about a lynch..

I was too afraid to take any in Bioshock...if I remember correctly.

insertnamehere wrote:

Vompatti wrote:

Mongoose wrote:Vomps, tell us about your vote, son.

I don't want to talk about it.

Ah, the Vompatti strategy. Vote randomly, and explain nothing.

Mongoose wrote:Omg omg omg, I totally forgot about 'B is for Baddie'. Who came up with that Tango Malarkey, was it Logan?

Epignosis wrote:I wish I could say my best venture was in Bioshock, where as a Big Daddy, I wound up recruited by a civilian. Like a dumbass, I told my entire team this fact. Realizing my stupidity, I said that I had PMed the host and that I would rejoin the team in Point Prometheus. And then I helped wipe out nearly my entire team in one Night. And then I got recruited again. I think I would have made it to the end had I not been traveling and wound up having to vote early in a fucking McDonald's. I chose poorly and got lynched that day.

So my best performance was my first here on The Syndicate. In Avant 2 I was The Sinister Exaggerator. I increased my team's voting power and mimicked MP's writing style to have my falsehoods presented seamlessly in the Host posts.

In sum, I lied, lied, lied my way to victory.

But don't worry.

You can trust me this time.

Mongoose wrote:I was not mentioned in the night post, so I assume I was off in the corner wackily telling ghost stories or pushing snacks on everyone.