Agreed with everything Rat said. Especially the part about OMGUS, that applies to a lot of the metagame here. The DL does it too much. Don't be high and mighty, you make mistakes as a townie and other townies jumping on them and lynching you is just them playing well. The solution is not to discourage them from lynching you, but to stop making mistakes - because every mistake you make is one scum can benefit from (and not always in the way you'd expect, which is the whole point of why you shouldn't necessarily lash back at people attacking you.)
Case in point, Touhou. We scum actually had a list in scumchat saying "Don't attack these people, they will OMGUS you" and exploited it heavily. Part of the reason why I attacked Hal was that I was expecting to die (and welcoming it, thanks to my power) and wanted to stir up Hal vs Tonfa again. Residue from that contributed strongly to our win on the last day. I also made a much longer run than I should have in Phoenix Wright by playing on it.
Do go after mistakes and lynch poor play. Adopting an attitude of "Well that rant/whatever looked genuine" is an open invitation for scum to fake stuff, and they can fake it well. The earlygame is a better time to get it out of the way than the lategame.
I disagree with Rat about prejudice on your scumbuddies. Earlygame prejudice and staying away from people later revealed to be scum has been the bane of many a would-be scum winner in lategame.
Look at what people *don't* say as well as what they do. In Touhou, I let Gate, El Cid and Rat (especially El Cid) off the hook for scummy behavior multiple times. Of course, this can be hard to read, but if you can pick up on it it's one of the best tells.
Watch for role tells as well. Cop is the easiest to find. I pegged QR as cop in Touhou from the instant Tom flipped as a liar, because of how hard yet logically she pushed him and her argument with Andrew. Her vehemence about how the cop shouldn't counterclaim was, ironically, tantamount to a counterclaim itself - if you were looking for it.
