Totally participating in this one.
14) Your actions should be motivated solely by this mafia, whenever possible, and not on previous mafias or other interactions. Voting in the early game may be an exception to this.
Is this rule really mandatory? Someone's behavior is a big tell regarding whether they're mafia or not, and it is custom to use previous mafias as a reference for behavior. How do you expect to enforce this?
The intent is not to disallow voting and actions based on behavior, but to avoid this particular mafia being negatively influenced by other events that should be left in the past (see multiple straight mafias in the 40s that were tainted with drama as an example). I've seen this rule implemented in other places and it tends to work well. Regardless, I recognize this is controversial, so I'll discuss with Kuro, and I'll likely consider it more of a guideline than a rule.
That phrase right there is what truly sticks; aside from the whole, 'OMG you voted on me first in the past mafia I shall do the same to thee', some players have also apparently admitted to voting on people because a) they beat them in other PvP events/tourneys/competitions, or b) incidents that occurred
outside of mafia and the forum (and even chat!). However, I personally think that if people use a player's past behavior as a model for scumtelling and rationalization (they acted one way as they were a townie in the past, and do a 180
o in their current game), I don't really know how to say no to that, because people will always come up with their own conclusions and seek patterns to figure out who's who.
I'm all down for reducing drama in all forms nonetheless. It doesn't appear to be a hard 'rule' that requires an immediate response (like how some people don't put the phrase 'Mafia' in their PMs when they want to send questions or whatnot, bleh), but guidelines are still useful, and as long as everyone reads everything that's being put down, it's a win-win overall.