Lurking

When a player is intentionally quiet during a game's Day, or misses their Night Choice, they are said to be lurking. The term most often applies to voluntary absence, but players who unintentionally find themselves absent over a sufficient length of time without first notifying the game moderator and other players are also often accused of lurking (even though they are more accurately flaking).

Although frowned upon by other players because it slows down the Day, gives other players fewer posts to analyze, and decreases the information gained during the Night phase, lurking can be helpful at times to both Pro-Town and Scum players. For example, a Doctor or Cop may lurk during a Day phase in order to observe the behavior of others and not draw attention to themselves to be killed by the Scum at Night. Alternatively, Scum may wish to "lie low" if they see their position as precarious, and wait for some other player to make logical fallacies or show weakness that can be capitalized on in order to direct suspicion elsewhere.

Active Lurking

A subset of lurking is the so-called "active lurking", where a player posts in the thread but without making any contribution to the progress of the game. Their posts may be minimal in length, off-topic, or merely parroting what other players have already said.

Prodding Lurkers

Moderators should be careful not to prod Scum more often than they do Pro-Town players. In addition, giving players the option to confirm their presence by PM rather than an in-thread post has traditionally been considered fair to those who are intentionally lurking. A new moderator standard may be developing; see this thread.