I would like to request the removal of the Mafia Section (in the Forum Games section) and the removal of all its threads, except for the most recent game, which should be merged into Forum Games.

I do this with a heavy heart. For a long time, the Mafia section was my place for activity, even more than SSF2 forums. Battling against the unknown informed, hiding of the uninformed majority, creating puzzles and thinking of every single possibility to find the truth, or to hide it forever.

But now that little game is dead. Inactivity has killed the majority, leaving a few to survive pretty much unharmed. It not only has broken the game, it has broken the chances of people wanting to join it, and for veterans to try it once again.

Since there's little to no activity there anymore (and the latest game hitting an all-time low in that), it's pretty obvious there's no reason for Mafia to have a whole subsection.

VOTE: Mafia Section.
With 6 or more votes (or votes from admins/moderators), the voted will be lynched and removed.
There's no deadline.

Lynch: Mafia Section

lets see what happens in the night phase :(

This was discussed briefly in the MG Mafia skype group, but I think we should hold off on deleting the forum until we're sure that the cause of the decline in activity isn't due to poor handling of games. Active mod, and more concise groups may help the activity of the section.

So I heard that you all are discussing the future of MG Mafia, so I'll chime in to offer what little help I can give anymore.

Remember the glory days of the revival of MG Mafia? After 10, where we had a sparkingly active series of games leading from 11 all the way up to about 15-ish? What I see from those games were that people were on fire(for we were all still fairly young players then), and anything stupid that happened was brushed off, people were all learning together and things were fine, for the most part. Although some games were fairly inactive(mine was hard to deal with at times, and I think SSBMafia was as well), the overall spirit of the community was still kept up really high and everyone laughed mistakes off, for the most part. I believe this was because of the new players that came into 11(namely, TOWK and myself), and the nature of the game certainly helped as well, as Opens generally start play much easier than Closed setups.

And as the mafia section began to have less and less people come in, fatigue and tiredness set in: you could see it in the openings, where there wasn't enough content being created because everyone knew each other. It was part of the reason why I wanted to quit(and did quite once, only to return for a very short amount of time), and when I did play I didn't have the heart to defend myself like I used to. Then with the whole fiasco involving 17 DJ quit, and the best players of MG Mafia began to have other things to do with their lives: Believeblood quit after 15, Tid, Crabby, 135, 194 and Brik became significantly busier and could only play part-time at best, while I took a hiatus from playing.

The point of this long and drawn-out story is this: we need new blood. Why aren't people coming to the mafia section right now? I see three possible reasons for why it's so:
1)Perhaps there are less people coming to MG in general and staying for long amounts of time. Seems unlikely to me, since we do have a LOT of people still in the SSF2 section.
2)Mafia section appears to be elitist. I can understand that it may seen to be intimidating, for I remember feeling the same emotions myself when I first joined: luckily, I had lurked on MS for some time beforehand. Maybe it's because Mafia is an intellectual game, and if you don't know what you're doing you could easily be shot down easily and lynched before you get a chance to defend yourself.
3)Games are stretching out too long. This is more a problem of fatigue than mod skill, imo: the last new mod we've seen was from MG Mafia 17, which was Lightning, who has since not hosted anything else. Everyone else(which is 194, TOWK, myself/DJ and Brik) has modded at least once before, if not more. As much as I love mafia and all, I want to see people try new things, people to step up and make changes.

Where is the future? It lies in the new players. And how are we going to get those?

...

There is the tricky bit. Removing the section might work to attract new players, but it's a risk and might not work at all. Making games small opens while keeping everything else the same would just mean that the same players sign up for them very quickly, and may help in the short-term but won't change the long-term problem of fatigue, even if the games are shorter. My suggestion is to run 7P-ish opens in the forum with 3 spots open only to newbies(anyone between 0-1 games of experience), 3 to anyone who is willing to play and 1 to a very experienced player, to help out. Advertise this across the forum, in the news, even, and place emphasis that about half of the game will be new players. Meanwhile, experienced players can run their own small games, and then as people begin to make the step up, games will steadily get larger again.

TL;DR-The problem of inactivity is that everyone who is playing/modding is tired. To get new players, I humbly suggest we advertise mafia in the news, decrease game size, and have more attention towards newbies. Removing the section is too risky.

If it helps, I'll try to play in future games. I've gotten better than I used to be.

don't remove the section

Like I've been saying for a while, you just need to host smaller games. 5-7 person games finish before people get bored and mass replacements are needed. If a replacement is needed, there are usually plenty of options because every active person isn't already in the game. That's all that needs to happen, really.

Ouch Terra 0/10 no mention of me.

Anyway, I'm really conflicted on this. It's so inactive that it's frustrating, but at the same time it's one of the only reasons I'm on these forums nowadays. I truly do want this section to stay, and I might be able to attempt at modding for a game or so if we need those. I just hope we can bring it back.

*sigh* EVEN IN HERE IT'S INACTIVE. COME ON GUYS.

We already said what we needed to. The future is on our hands.

Open, small setups are our next goal

Well, since this is sorted out.