Thok's First Law

Thok's First Law is a calculation developed by Thok to explain the presence of long modding queues. In particularly, it explains why modifying the queue structure will not reduce wait time for modding.

Thok's First Law

Unless people play on average 10 games at a time, the modding queue will tend to get larger.

Explanation

The idea behind this law is a simple comparison between the number of people who want to mod games and the number of people who want to play in those games. According to this poll roughly 85% of Mafiascum wishes to mod a game at any time, independent of previous modding experience. Such games require on average around 12 players per game.

Therefore, to fulfill this demand, each player must play in 85%*12=10.2 games at a given time. If the actual number of games is smaller, the length of the modding queues will increase. Given that most players play significantly less than 10 games at a time, the modding queues will tend to increase in length proportional to the number of active participants on mafiascum.

Some further discussion (and possible ideas for refinements) can be found in this thread