How do you tell honest-mistake answers from mafia-coverup answers? Hope that the mafia give obviously flawed reasons?
What's the boundary between "panicky" and "not panicky"? Wouldn't it logically depend on the personality of the actual player? Isn't all of this making it so subjective as to be almost useless?
On telling honest-mistake answers from mafia-coverup answers: A major part of this is determining whether the answer makes sense for the specific player as town. That, however, is only part of the process. Observing the player's behaviour before and after the answer, and how it works with the answer (and, for that matter, all other answers they give, and the activities around them in the game), is another part.
To be quite honest, you're not going to catch the scum very often with just a single question. Scum gets caught through accumulation of evidence. Accumulation of oddities and of discrepancies. Scumtells are mostly behaviours noted to be worth investigating.
On the panicky/not panicky boundary: You are correct that it depends on the personality of the actual player. Everything does. Pretty much everything in Mafia depends on the context of the game, the actions within the game, the roles available in the game (perhaps the player is a cop?), and the players in the game.
On subjectivity: Subjective, in this case, does not mean useless. It means context, at the personal level and the game level, must be kept in mind and used in investigation.
RangerCado: Perhaps. Game Threshold is not the right place for this sort of discussion, and I'd rather not flood the Banter thread. I shall at least try to keep this a calm and respectful discussion.