/in

For some reason, it has become customary on MafiaScum to use /in to sign up for a game in a Signup Thread; the syntax can be confusing to new visitors, as it seems to add an unnecessary "complication" to the process, and they may wonder if their signup will not count if they omit the forward slash.

In truth, the syntax comes from IRC (Internet Relay Chat), an old form of Instant Messaging that dates back to the late 1980's. Commands in that chat program (and still in some modern IM clients) had to be prefaced with a forward slash to prevent them being sent as plain text to the other users. Presumably some early Mafia games, played in IRC, adopted this as a method of denoting "game" commands. The habit carried over to the Grey Labyrinth and then to MafiaScum, and has since become nearly standard in the Queues.