On Earth The Sun Actually Rises In The West And Sets In The East
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 4 votes and with 2 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 10,000
- Voting period
- Two weeks
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
*Rules*
1. The definitions below are agreed to by accepting the debate.
2. All votes *must* have thorough reasons for voting.
3. Moderators *must* remove inadequate votes that a) fail to address the majority of resolution-impacting points made by both debaters, b) are lies about debater performance, or c) are vendetta votes/overtly biased.
4. Death23 and his related accounts may not vote on or participate in this debate.
------
*Full Resolution*
On earth, the sun actually rises in the west and sets in the east.
Pro
Has 3 rounds each with a 10,000 character limit + 3 days to post.
Pro also has the BoP to show that on earth, the sun actually rises in the west and sets in the east.
Con
Has 3 rounds each with a 10,000 character limit + 3 days to post.
Con also has to negate Pro's claims in order to cast enough doubt on the resolution.
------
*Definitions*
on - physically in contact with and supported by.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/on
earth - the third planet from the sun in the solar system, orbiting between Venus and Mars at an average distance of 149.6 million km from the sun, on which we live.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/earth
sun - the star around which the earth orbits.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sun
actually - as the truth or facts of a situation; really.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/actually
rises - appears above the horizon (to an observer).
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/rise
west - denoting the western part of a specified area.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/west
sets - appears to move toward and below the horizon (to an observer).
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/set
east - denoting the eastern part of a specified area.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/east
Axial TiltSome planets, such as Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter, have axes that are almost completely perpendicular, or straight up-and-down.Earth's axis is not perpendicular. It has an axial tilt, or obliquity. Axial tilt is the angle between the planet's rotational axis and its orbital axis. A planet's orbital axis is perpendicular to to the ecliptic or orbital plane, the thin disk surrounding the sun and extending to the edge of the solar system.Earth's axial tilt (also known as the obliquity of the ecliptic) is about 23.5 degrees. Due to this axial tilt, the sun shines on different latitudes at different angles throughout the year. This causes the seasons.Uranus has the largest axial tilt in the solar system. Its axis is tilted about 98 degrees, so its north pole is nearly on its equator. Astronomers suspect that this extreme tilt was caused by a collision with an Earth-sized planet billions of years ago, soon after Uranus formed.Axial PrecessionEarth's axis appears stable, but it actually wobbles very slowly, like a spinning top. It takes Earth's axis about 26,000 years to complete a circular "wobble." This wobble is called axial precession.Earth’s axis helps determine the North Star, and axial precession helps change it. Currently, for instance, Earth's axis points toward a star called Polaris. Polaris, which gets its name because it is almost directly above the North Pole, is the current North Star.Polaris will not always be the North Star, however. The Earth's axis is slowly wobbling away from Polaris. In another 13,000 years, it will point toward the new North Star, a star called Vega.
Chronometers Changed the GameThe pendulum clock was developed during the 17th century. However, these clocks were not sufficiently accurate to be used at sea to determine longitude and for scientific time measurement in the 18th century.In 1764, the chronometer was invented. Chronometers measured time accurately in spite of motion or varying conditions, and became popular instruments among many merchant mariners during the 19th century.Clocks Based on the SunEven after the chronometer many towns and cities set clocks based on sunsets and sunrises. Dawn and dusk occur at different times, but time differences between distant locations were barely noticeable before the 19th century because of long travel times and the lack of long-distance communications.The use of local solar time became increasingly awkward as railways and telecommunications improved. Time zones were, therefore, a compromise, relaxing the complex geographic dependence while still allowing local time to be approximate with mean solar time.
GPS Shows Different MeridianSince everyone is running around with their own GPS tracker or mobile phones with GPS capability, a visit to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London may have become a slightly disappointing affair for some. The observatory is home to the Airy Transit Circle, a telescope designed by George Biddell Airy in the 19th century, which marks the location of the prime meridian, the line running along 0° of longitude, where the Earth's western and eastern hemispheres meet.However, if you follow your GPS device to 0° longitude, you will end up a good distance away from the famous line marking the meridian in the observatory's Meridian Courtyard. So, have they been luring tourists to the wrong place for decades?Not Wrong, Just DifferentYes and no. It is true that the meridian that runs through the observatory has lost its status as the world's sole reference point for longitude. Navigation systems such as the GPS now use the IERS Reference Meridian (IRM), which runs about 334 feet (102 meters) east of the observatory.However, although the world is now using an updated version, the location of the prime meridian is not wrong as such—it's just a different kind of meridian. It is defined by the location of the telescope, which was originally used to measure the passage of certain stars to feed data into an astronomical coordinate system, which, in its day, served as the basis for global navigation and timekeeping. Since the location of this original prime meridian is defined by the location of the telescope, it cannot be wrong: it is always where the telescope is.Arbitrary LocationTo understand how there can be two different prime meridians, both being in the correct location for their purposes, it's important to bear in mind that meridians and longitudes are a human invention, so there is essentially no right or wrong way to place them. While latitudes are defined by the Earth's shape and movement—the poles at 90° latitude are where the Earth's axis meets the Earth's surface and the equator at 0° latitude marks the middle point between the poles—there is no natural reason for any longitude to be used as the prime meridian.At the International Meridian Conference in 1884, with multiple candidates to choose from, that honor was bestowed upon the longitude of the Airy Transit Circle in Greenwich. Apart from serving as a navigational reference point, the local mean time at the Greenwich Meridian now also served as the basis for the global time standard, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), before being replaced by UTC in the 1960s.
"I will not only decimate your case, but I'll further chip away until all that's left is regret for daring to troll a masterful debater as myself."
"Debate properly or concede don't even attempt to make a joke of me..."
"The first thing I'm going to do is..."
"...point out that the 'West'...is in fact closer to being east of the 'East'"
"Now, there's no direct flights from the east of Asia to west of USA"
"I'm stating facts, so what we find is [flights] stop over at Middle East"
"What's quite undeniable is that Asia is, without a doubt, indeed, East of the Americas if we want to be exact."
"We can say North vs South dichotomy is less relative than West and East"
"You will see that 'Eastern Hemisphere' and 'Western Hemisphere' are purely invented by us, humans, as a social construct."
"All that aside, Pro will find that 'actually' the sun sets on the west just as much as it rises on [the west] and sets in the east just as much as rises on it."
I love to debate truisms that seem false...false falsisms I guess they're called?I also love that scientific concepts can be looked at differently.
Imagine a tiny version of yourself standing in the middle of the wooden disk. And imagine that the outside rim of the disk represents your horizon. On Summer Solstice, you would see the Sun rise on your "horizon" at the eastern point of the longest track. It would follow the track high in your sky, and eventually set on the western horizon. It would be up for about 17 "hours", thus making summertime days long and warm. On the Winter Solstice, you would observe the Sun rising at the western end of the smallest track. It wouldn't rise high in the sky, and would be up for only about 6 or 7 hours, making your days short on daylight and cold. At the Spring and the Fall equinoxes, the Sun would rise at the east end of the middle track and set at the west end. Your days would be exactly half daylight and half nighttime and you would experience typical warm/cool spring and fall climates.
The Sun, the Moon, the planets, and the stars all rise in the east and set in the west. And that's because Earth spins -- toward the east.For a moment, let us ignore Earth's orbit around the Sun (as well as the Sun's and solar system's revolution around the center of the Galaxy, and even the Galaxy's journey through the universe). For the moment, let us just think about one motion - - Earth's spin (or rotation) on its axis.Earth rotates or spins toward the east, and that's why the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars all rise in the east and make their way westward across the sky. Suppose you are facing east - the planet carries you eastward as it turns, so whatever lies beyond that eastern horizon eventually comes up over the horizon and you see it!
"You will see that 'Eastern Hemisphere' and 'Western Hemisphere' are purely invented by us, humans, as a social construct...I am willing to play along with Pro's social construct...I am going to prove what we did to make the socially constructed West and East operate...Pro will find that 'actually' the sun sets on the west just as much as it rises on it."
"I say that if you are on the Western Hemisphere, the sun both rises and sets for you"
"The Japanese observe sunsets...Asia is, without a doubt, indeed, East of the Americas."
"if you are on the socially constructed Eastern Hemisphere, [the sun both rises and sets for you]."
"The rising and setting are defined as visual to the Horizon in the debate description."
- Pro has to prove that the sun actually rises on 'the west' and actually sets on 'the east' on Earth. There is no 'East' or 'West' on Earth in absolute poles or hemispheres beyond social construct meaning it is not 'actual' at all. Thus, the only forms of west and east are either relative to your current position or socially constructed ones that hold the Greenwich Median as their centre and which timezones revolve around.
- In the definitions that the debate description has (which are the only ones sacred to the debate if a later one conflicts them since both debaters agreed to the description, not to later content) says that the West is the 'Western part of a designated area' and East is the 'Eastern part of a designated area'. Thus, following from 1, we see that every day in the socially constructed West and East, the Sun actually rises first and foremost to the Earth/world in the East (due to socially constructed timezones and world spinning anti-clockwise around itself AND ALSO anticlockwise around the sun according to NASA as previously shown, if you need a source for both here: https://www.spaceacademy.net.au/library/notes/anticlok.htm, https://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/StarFAQ1.htm#q26) and that the Sun actually sets on Earth/world on the West due to the exact same reasoning as why it rises on the East.
- If one then points at me, Con, and says 'hold up, they don't actually count as there is no actual East or West on Earth other than relative to your position' then I win further as I point out the definition of 'set' and 'rise' are such that no matter where you are, the Sun rises on your East and sets on your West but that the resolution is what Pro has to uphold as absolutely correct and not incorrect.
- The Western Hemisphere is both east of and west of the Eastern Hemisphere which alone decimates Pro's case as Con wins if the Earth has no true West or East.
This was not even a debate, it was more “who could provide the best definition for things.” Pro brings up a point, then Con argues that east doesn’t have to be west or something because it’s a social construct, and then pro just goes with that and it ends up as debating what’s north east south and west. Arguments to Pro because he actually made a valid point before it descended into semantic nonsense.
Sources go to Con. Con was providing sources like NASA and other reliable organizations while pro seemed to copy and paste his search history. S&G are tied.
Both debaters had poor conduct but since Pro kept calling out Con for “childish Chest puffing” and “Gish gallop,” this category goes to Con.
This was the worst troll debate in the history of bad troll debates. It's obvious Pro set up the resolution and definitions as a trap in hopes for an easy win. This is proven in round 2 when Pro said: "Or you could just man up and admit that you were had by an alluring and unexpected resolution." and "You were already made a joke of by having to defend the idea that the Japanese don't observe sunsets or that Californians somehow miss out on sunrises, plus I think you end up making the case that longitudinal coordinates don't exist, or something equally stupid, and this further makes a joke of you." Conduct thus goes to con.
Now onto arguments. I didn't find pro's twist of the definitions to be all that compelling. Pro's entire argument rests on the idea that people on the eastern hemisphere observe sunsets and people on the western hemisphere observe sunrises. I'm not convinced at all by this semantics.
Con jumps in on round 1 and argues east and west are relative terms and the hemispheres are social construct but blunders when he states "All that aside, Pro will find that 'actually' the sun sets on the west just as much as it rises on [the west] and sets in the east just as much as rises on it."
The resolution is "on the earth the sun actually rises in the west and sets in the east."
The resolution states nothing about whether or not the inverse can be true or not. Con thus drops and concedes a major part of the resolution.
One of the biggest holes in pro's construct of the debate is that he fails to define the word in. Con should have immediately pounced on this word and define it as "expressing the situation of something that is or appears to be enclosed or surrounded by something else."
If con would have argued that from an observer in Tokyo the sun appears to rise in the East, then he would have had a solid case. Because con fails to do this, he loses the argument.
Conduct to con: This debate was an exercise in semantic f**kwittery, it was presented as a reasonable debate, and as such it appears pro deliberately set up through the use of definitions and the specific rules to be excessively unfair to whoever accepts the debate. As such, this warrants a loss of conduct points. Bad form pro.
Arguments to pro. The individual definitions pro set up initially in the debate, almost tender the debate proposition tautology. Pro proves the locations are in the east and west, and by the chosen definitions, observers see the sun rise there. At this point pros arguments are merely reinforcing that tautology - there’s not a lot more to pros position other than arguing that Japan is in the east and LA is in the west. Pro establishes that with his sources and literally did not need to do anything else to establish the premise.
If con attempted to mount a poor defense primaril by haggling over whether calling. Japan and la as east and west - but as pro showed they are accepted as east and west by the definitions - he’s proven his contention.
Literally the ONLY way con could have won on arguments here, is if he had argued the definition of “in”, and attempted to argue that while the sun rises FOR observers in the east/west, the “in” refers to the direction of observation - which is always east/west. As con does not do that. He loses.
This was a horrible debate, and pro should feel bad about himself. If I could have awarded -5 conduct points I would have.
This had to be one of the overall "worst" debates I've read on this site. It wasn't amusing in the way you expect a troll debate to be, but although the instigator claimed it was a serious debate, it eventually collapsed into chaos more so than any other debate I've seen.
Spelling and Grammar: Tie.
There wasn't anything to write home about in this category.
Conduct: Bad all around... But a tie.
Before casting this vote, I asked a moderator if behavior in the comments section could be used to justify conduct points in voting. I was told usually not, so that made it more difficult to render a verdict on this category. Since Pro insulted me and tried to influence my vote in the comments, that alone would have tipped this category to Pro. But if the comments don't count, then this category falls to a tie based on what happened in the actual debate. Con accused Pro of trolling during his arguments in the first and last rounds. Pro retaliated by insulting Con repeatedly in round 2, as well as repeatedly claiming that Con forfeited even when he explicitly stated that he did not. It was poor all around.
Convincing Arguments; Tie.
Pro opened his argument by claiming that the widely accepted scientific fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west is a "false falseism" (which would be a double negative that seems to negate itself). He then built a very brief argument that the rising and setting of the sun has a different perspective depending on if one is located in the Eastern or Western Hemisphere. If I'm understanding his obscure argument correctly, he seems to be inferring that the Sun sets in the "west" in the Western hemisphere because you would be facing in the direction of the Eastern hemisphere when watching it set, and the other way around for the Eastern hemisphere. Basically, the argument is clever wordplay based on the location of the hemispheres.
Con's rebuttal was to point out that the Eastern and Western hemispheres are social constructs. Unlike the Northern and Southern hemispheres which are based on the objective scientific fact that the earth has northern and southern magnetic poles. If the socially constructed hemispheres are ignored and we notice that the rising and setting of the sun are based on the rotation of the earth on it's axis, then we know that the sun will always rise and set in the same direction without regard for where one is located. As such, any argument based on the rising and setting of the sun which requires consideration of hemisphere must be scientifically irrelevant.
Beyond these initial opening arguments, everything else just became a mess as Pro repeatedly insisted that Con had forfeited and Con was forced to repeatedly deny this. Nothing else meaningful ever got accomplished. Ultimately, I feel this category must remain a tie because although Con gave an effective rebuttal of Pro's initial argument, the initial argument was really just wordplay to begin with and it wasn't really clear what was being argued at all. I think a tie may even be generous here.
Sources: Con.
This is the only category where points to one side are clearly warranted.
Pro both began and ended his argument with sources. However, it was never clear what those sources were meant to accomplish. Pro repeatedly used the examples of Los Angles and Tokyo, so in the first round he linked to a Google page showing the time of sunrise and sunset in those locations. However this debate wasn't about what time the sun rises or sets, but what direction these events take place in. The Google page Pro linked to says nothing about direction and thus fails to support his argument.
Conversely, when Con made any argument, he would provide a source (and often quote from that source) which explicitly said the same thing as the argument he was making. For example, when Con states that the Eastern and Western hemispheres are social constructs, he both links to and quotes from a source which says exactly that. As such, his sources clearly served the purpose of adding veracity to his argument, which cannot be said of the sources provided by Pro.
I have already been threatened with having this review removed if I voted against Pro in any way. However, before casting this vote I consulted with the moderators and received one on one coaching regarding how to ensure a vote meets all the requirements outlined in the rules. I cast this vote confident that it is compliant with the rules and welcome anyone who feels otherwise to report it and see what response the moderators provide.
Dude I am not an idiot, I thought it through before accepting. You all can run around calling me a suicidal hero if you want. I genuinely won this if you understand how I shifted all the semantics back onto Pro and force his BoP to remain unmet.
Yes. A tequila sunrise is actually yellow and is actually red.
To win arguments you had to exclude pros position, none of your arguments excluded anything he said: in the same way arguing a tequila sunrise is yellow does not necessarily preclude it from also being red.
Perhaps I missed that part.
Anyway, based on the way you guys are discussing this, I'm actually starting to think I gave Pro TOO MUCH credit, if anything. I tried to interpret his argument from a common sense standpoint and attempted to find some way, no matter how remote, that his argument could make sense. I reasoned that if I were standing on the beach in Los Angles and looking at the sunset, I would be physically facing the direction west, but would also be looking across the sea to where the Eastern hemisphere is located, thus causing the sun to be "setting" in the "East" in this unique scenario. I assumed that was why he used coastal cities along the Pacific Ocean as his examples, as opposed to giving places like Denver or Moscow that are inland.
But if what you guys are saying is true, and his whole scheme revolved around the context of the word "in" is used, then that is even more of a play on words than I was interpreting. In that case, I can definitely see where he was "trolling" with this debate, by giving it a seemingly impossible title which seemed easy to beat, even though he planned to steamroll his opponent with a goofy argument based on nothing but wordplay. That would be a trap at best or trolling at worst.
If that is the case, then I guess RM did everyone a favor by throwing himself on this grenade for the rest of us. Pro was probably hoping some poor noob would accept this debate and have no idea what to do.
Do you know what the word 'actually' means?
You didn’t prove anything to the exclusion of pros contention
Your whole argument is like tying to say a Tequila sunrise isn’t red because it’s yellow.
And I proved that 'actually' the Sun sets in the 'west' due to the absolutely identically valid timezone construct based precisely on that.
You didn’t prove east and west don’t exist.
You proved they were social constructs: That at best they were not objective definitions. Because of that, pros argument that LA is in the west is still true - LA is in the west where west is a social constuct.
I did that in R2.
I really liked your argument about the Hemispheres being social constructs, because I probably would not have thought of that myself and it was a clever way to throw a monkey wrench into Pro's argument.
I do wish that you had also taken the more "brute force" approach of simply finding a scientific source that says "the sun always rises in the East and sets in the West" and made that the centerpiece. If combined with the clever response about the Hemispheres, I honestly would have voted for that argument as unbearably correct.
I proved there was no east or west on Earth and defeated him via that.
his case was actually stronger than what you're making out, but you are right he worded it so terribly that his trap backfired and on top of that I liquidated what east and west on earth even mean defeating his trap altogether.
His argument was that the sun, literally sets on the west horizon while you're on the east of the earth every day while you're there. It also rises everyday on the east horizon of the west of the Earth if you're situated there.
Do not feel bad about your vote, I still won by defeating his very basis of there being an East or West of Earth at all as well as pointing out that if we take that into account the sun ACTUALLY rises on Earth on the socially constructed east of it and vice versa for setting and this is the reason the equally socially constructed timezones are what they are.
I'm waiting on one final point of clarification from a moderator before I vote on this, but I suspect that this fiasco isn't going to end well for anyone.
ok, ok, ok...geez
You are not allowed to alter people's votes like this. This is violating my rights as a debater.
Imagine you're Pro in a debate about whether or not humans can fly.
If you define flying as moving long distances in the air and we end up having a debate about whether or not humans can do this, it would be irrelevant for Con to point out that humans don't fly in the scientific sense, i.e. they don't manipulate air resistance with an appendage to travel distance through the air. Flying in an airplane, though satisfies the definition of flying and humans do that all of the time.
Now imagine that Con, in the humans flying debate, said that "Humans can fly in the conceptual sense, not the objective, scientific sense."
If you don't see this as a concession, you don't understand how to apply definitions to a debate.
By Con OVERTLY affirming the resolution, you must vote Pro here.
It's the same thing.
Stop.
I already addressed that social constructs or conceptual hemispheres are still DENOTED TO BE EASTERN AND WESTERN, scientific or not.
Raltar, please look at the AGREED TO DEFINITIONS of east and west.
As long as they are DENOTED to be eastern and western, conceptually or not, they satisfy east and west.
Con also conceded that people denote these areas to be eastern and western.
Raltar, DO ANY OF THE DEFINITIONS MENTION ANYTHING ABOUT SCIENTIFIC OR OBJECTIVE EAST AND WEST?
If not, you're being a dishonest voter by allowing him that point.
Please read the definitions if you want to be an effective voter.
I'm not saying hes right, or that I agree with him. And the debate isn't over yet anyway, so anyone could still win at this point. I just don't think being contradictory and confusing is the same thing as conceding. And stooping to his level and counter attacking him with insults isn't going to make the situation better.
But let me put it to you this way;
You think the voters are dishonest and will vote for whomever they like, rather than who was actually the better debater.
You think the mods are dishonest and they won't remove dishonest votes.
So you plan to fix the problem by reminding everyone how dishonest they are and threatening to have the (supposedly dishonest) mods act on your behalf.
That just doesn't make sense to me, and I don't think it is a very good debate strategy.
The statement is contradictory. It does one thing as much as it does the other thing, but the two things can't both be true at the same. That makes no sense, if taken only on the context you provide.
However, if taken in the larger context of the debate as a whole, we know he also pointed out that Eastern and Western hemispheres are social constructs based on the way humans have chosen to draw maps. Meaning that they don't really exist from a scientific standpoint. But from a scientific standpoint the Earth does have two magnetic poles (North and South) and the earth rotates on it's axis along these poles. And since the Earth always rotates the same direction, the sun will always appear to "rise" from the same direction regardless of which socially constructed hemisphere an observer happens to be physically located in. This was his rebuttal of your arguments made in round one, where you attempted to draw a distinction between how the sun "rises" in the Eastern versus Western hemispheres.
In other words, what he is trying to say in a very confusing and round about way, is that this whole argument is a bunch of irrelevant word-play which cannot change how the universe actually functions. I don't accept that as a concession, just a complex way of saying this entire discussion never made any sense to begin with, and still doesn't.
"When I say that if you are on the Western Hemisphere, the sun both rises and sets for you everyday and that if you are on the Eastern Hemisphere, the sun does the same."
I mean COME ON!!!
Don't start off on a dishonest note.
Um, he said that the sun rises in the west as much as it sets on it and it sets in the east as much as it rises on it.
This affirms the resolution, nearly word for word.
I have to say that I haven't seen a major problem with the moderation on this site so far. There are a few users who deserve a good smack upside the head, but the mods seem alright.
You can see from some of the comments below that I've had a few of my own votes removed and I didn't object because I actually agreed those votes weren't very good. So I went back and made better ones after they got taken down.
I wasn't ever one of the users of DDO (because when I signed up there, I saw everyone was moving here), so I don't know what drama may have taken place way back when, so I have to give this place a clean slate until I have reason to do otherwise.
And now we are talking about a second concession? I still never saw the first one...
Mods here are better than mods on DDO by far. Cannot compare this to fucking airmax and whiteflame. I don't even hate whiteflame at all, issue is just a matter of integrity.
This site is a spillover site from DDO, on which I have the same name and a very extensive record.
Throughout my time on that debate site, which is nearly identical to this platform, I had so many dishonest voters vote me down, that I have to be very particular about everything in my debates. You can't count on mods to actually remove votes that are dishonest, so I put all of that in the rules and re-mentioned it to voters.
I mean, this debate has been conceded twice now by my opponent and I'll still have to battle off some dishonest voter.
And Magic, now that I think of it, what exactly did you mean when you claimed "that dishonest people try to vote others down" on this site?
From what I can see, you have only participated in one prior debate which ended in a tie because neither you or your opponent provided any arguments. So who has ever voted you down?
Cool beans :)
Thanks.
Some of those votes I changed admittedly weren't very good and I actually wanted to redo them anyway after learning more about how the site works. From here on out, my votes are likely to be fairly detailed.
I already have a feeling that this debate will provide me with plenty of material to comment on.
Also, glad to see you went back and revised some of your other RFDs. Without commenting on their sufficiency per the rules, I can say that they were improved.
Violating the rules of the debate is typically grounds for conduct points, so if they used the letter "e," maybe it would be acceptable to award conduct in such a situation (so long as the violation was unfair or excessively rude). It might even be grounds for argument points if their opponent made some kind of theory argument on the rules violation, though that would be a stretch. But if the rule was something like "voters may only vote for Pro" it would immediately be disregarded by vote moderation.
Thanks. Good to know.
I personally understand if one debater politely asks for certain considerations as part of the debate. But the rules some people tack on get pretty outrageous.
I foresee a situation not unlike a certain episode of 'The Simpsons' where a person was challenged to make an argument without using the letter 'e' in the argument.
Currently, we will take the rules of the debate into consideration, but ultimately, we only enforce the actual rules. This is something that is under review.
Answer is they genuinely take it into strong consideration. If you say X can't vote that's almost always taken into consideration due to it being what the Contender agrees to when accepting the debate.
I don't mind that Pro's playing dirty, I am a master of balancing dirty play with rule-enforcing goody two-shoes stance. You can't outplay me, ever, you can only hope to get lucky in that enough voters 'feel' I am too wrong.
Hey mods, this debate actually brings up something I want to know about the rules (and which I can't find in the posted rules).
When someone creates a debate with "special rules" of their own creation, are those rules enforceable?
For example, if someone creates a rule that says "Moderators *must* remove votes that [X]" will a moderator actually remove votes that do whatever the statement says, or will moderators only enforce the *ACTUAL* rules which normally apply on all debates?
I haven't seen a concession yet, despite your claim.
No one threatened voters, it's just that dishonest people try to vote others down and they would clearly ignore a concession. So I tend to remind.
Con accuses Pro of trolling. Pro rebuts by threatening voters. "Bold" strategies in play here to say the least. Was this a debate to see who could lose the "conduct" vote?