A wise man once said, "Even scum can have RL excuses". The fact of the matter is that the first post I linked to is nothing but a recap, which is not at all useful for anything and fits the reporter style to a T.
The "wise man" argument is really invalid because, guess what? So does Town. Being at school isn't an inherently scummy attitude.
Methinks you misunderstand the point of the saying. School, like any other real life issue, is a legitimate excuse for both town and scum. As such, it is not an excuse for a poor post, as it can be used by either side.
And no, I really didn't say much on it. I can't and won't really excuse it. Surprisingly I don't really find it something lynch-worthy myself─would it have been fine if I hadn't posted at all? I often wonder whether I should or shouldn't communicate, and if the answer to the previous question is "Yes", then that seals that deal for me.
You're wandering into both False Dichotomy and Appeal to Emotion territory here. My answer is that you should NOT not post at all, but you should
also not post posts that are opinionless summaries doubling as placeholders.
In this instance, yes, I believe it would have been better to not post at all if the
only other alterrnative was to post what you did. (Again, false dichotomy, but that can be ignored for the purposes of this hypothetical situation.) If you absolutely must post to maintain a presence in the thread while you work your way toward time where you can actually focus, stuff like
this is better (in my opinion: there are others that would disagree, most notably those who prefer no excuse for absence is made at all) because you don't look like you're trying to look like you're contributing without actually doing so. If that makes sense.
I can't be sure of anything in a game where manipulation and deceit reign highly. The only person I can trust is myself, so I'm quite sorry if I cannot be certain of "HE'S SCUM" or "HE'S TOWN". Even if I did solidly place my stances in such a manner I could still change them quickly and easily - after all, the game is deceit and trickery.
You
could but it would be a hell of a lot harder to do so without looking really bad. It is better to solidly commit to an opinion not because you genuinely think what you're saying is true, but because it allows others to get a better read on you and form their own opinions accordingly. If you're flip-flopping all over the place you're going to stick out like a sore thumb (because if you're town you have no reason to do this).
Solid ideas don't mean jack shit if something suddenly changes and you find yourself second-guessing yourself.
Most reasonable people will give leeway for opinion-switching based on drastic changes (such as a cop claim with a scum report in hand).
I explicitly called him "notScum" - I don't want to panic monger, but Rat promised no 3rd Party at less than 14. That makes me think that 14 and higher yields a 3rd party, and complete apathy to yes or no nailing scum could indicate a third party.
You miss the point again. Your assessment of Cid started off as a negative one and ended as a positive one, and I have a very hard time seeing the bridge connecting those two sentiments in the rest of that paragraph. It's like you forgot what your opinion of Cid was halfway through. (Either that or you were somehow leaning TP on Cid, and I find it very hard to believe that anyone could make that call on Day 1.)
His immediate assault on DreadThomas with disregard for other cases. Everyone's arguing about Xanth and Alex goes, "I think Xanth's completely Town, come lynch Tom!" That's... one-track to me.
Not what I was asking. "His one-track approach is pretty..."...what? Townish? Scummy? Clever? Crazy? Gassy? Use an adjective instead of an ellipsis. "It makes me wonder" and "I'm not sure what makes me dislike it" are not terribly helpful. Sure, you say you dislike it, but you say it in such a fashion that's easily brushed off as nothing later at your convenience.
Yep. I state the obvious. I do this. Guilty as charged. It is indeed not an actual opinion, but I'm not even going to contest that - if you want to lynch me for that, I'm not even going to bother defending because that's such a trivial thing to me that I disregard it as being worth a dime.
I pointed it out because you included it in your "here look at my opinions!" section when it was not an opinion.
Because I hadn't counted the votes, primarily, and because I also wanted to spend some time on Excal who I also suspect of scumminess. And yes, it is important to lynch Tom to clear up the matter lest it chases us for the rest of the game, or until Scum offs either of them, or someone clears Alex or whatever.
Then why not simply go back, count the votes and vote for Tom when you see it's safe? Or, if you're not sure, vote for no one? (I was even nice enough to point out in the post before yours that Tom was at L-2! :V) Do you not realize why "We need to lynch Tom! *Excal vote*" looks bad?