After reading through all of the defenses and thinking things over a bit, I've come to the same conclusion that I originally had. I really, really don't like seeing no-lynch as a serious suggestion.

As F-T said, lynching is the only power that townies have as a group, and it's one of the very foundations of the game. Barring an extremely good vigilante, if we don't lynch, we won't win. If we don't have any evidence or any good targets, we should either dig deeper and try harder to find something, or we should lynch someone at random.

I've seen your arguments against random lynches, Isaac, and I must disagree with your conclusion. A random lynch is better than no lynch. It's true, as you say, that there is no skill or strategy involved if the lynch is truly random, but at least by trusting in pure dumb luck we still have a chance to win. If we vote to no-lynch, we're giving up. We'd be giving up at least on the day, and if we did it more often we'd be giving up on the game.

So there we have it. Even if you are a hero, trying for a no-lynch is a scummy thing to do. I think you should be lynched on principle, just for that.

And I think you will be, unless you can put forth a strong argument against someone else.