Instigator / Pro
Ehyeh's avatar
4
Ehyeh
1487
rating
31
debates
35.48%
won
Topic
#3543

DART Voting requirements are excessive

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
6
Better sources
2
4
Better legibility
1
2
Better conduct
1
2

After 2 votes and with 10 points ahead, the winner is...

Novice_II
Tags
Politics
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
2
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One month
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
Novice_II's avatar
14
Novice_II
1890
rating
98
debates
93.37%
won
Description

Why do you require 100 forum posts? When you require 100 forum posts to vote, you are now limited to only 5 people capable of voting at any given time on the site. Then they must find a debate interesting enough to read in order to vote. You're now in a situation where many debates receive no votes, which means you're not going to get as many returning new users as you would if voting was easier. Does this look like a viable business model to you? If mods do this because of people on alts, well why not make it so mods can take down peoples votes?

DART also has the issue of when you open up a debate, you have to wait for someone to accept it before you can give an argument. This leads to a level of uncertainty when you accept a debate, as you don't fully know if they will do a switcheroo on you and argue something else, or if the title is vague, or if the description is vague, you withhold accepting simply because of the ambiguity of what you may be arguing against, leading to fewer debates happening. Does this seem viable to you? This problem is so bad, I often feel compelled to put my argument in the DESCRIPTION. This is why there is only 10 active debaters at one time, literally more dead than DDO. Not to mention only 3 people can vote.

Round 1
Ehyeh's avatar
Ehyeh
Pro
#1
Why does DART suck?
Since I've already established my argument in the description, i will simply copy and paste it here for you to respond to it. When you require 100 forum posts to vote, you are now limited to only 5 people capable of voting at any given time on the site. Then they must find a debate interesting enough to read in order to vote. You're now in a situation where many debates receive no votes, which means you're not going to get as many returning new users as you would if voting was easier. Does this look like a viable business model to you? If mods do this because of people on alts, well why not make it so mods can take down peoples votes?

DART also has the issue of when you open up a debate, you have to wait for someone to accept it before you can give an argument. This leads to a level of uncertainty when you accept a debate, as you don't fully know if they will do a switcheroo on you and argue something else, or if the title is vague, or if the description is vague, you withhold accepting simply because of the ambiguity of what you may be arguing against, leading to fewer debates happening. Does this seem viable to you? This problem is so bad, I often feel compelled to put my argument in the DESCRIPTION. This is why there is only 10 active debaters at one time, literally more dead than DDO. Not to mention only 3 people can vote.
Novice_II's avatar
Novice_II
Con
#2
Resolved: DART Voting requirements are excessive.

Burden of proof
  • Pro bears the entire burden of proof to showcase that "DART Voting requirements are excessive." 

Voting 
  • Firstly, the pro has not established a standard for what qualifies as excessive. What is the correct amount of requirements, and what would be too little? These are obviously questions with no ontological or epistemological grounding. If pro is unable to create this depiction we will simply be floating in a vacuum of relativism which on its own provides no specific issue to me, but necessitates that pro has not met his full burden of proof. 
  • The DART voting requirements are sufficient and non-excessive for the following reasons. 
      1. They ensure that voters are people who have shown to contribute positively to the website.
      2. It protects against multi-account voting. Users have been banned in the past for multi-accounting to vote for themselves or to cast multiple votes for the same person. Having such requirements strongly protects against this. 
      3. They make the server better by providing blocks against site trolls. 
      4. It allows people to get acclimated to the server regulations, general atmosphere, and voting systems before they can vote.
  • DART is not just making any random internet forum, but they wish to build a quality platform off a specific set of values. Voting is not something just anyone should do. People who have shown themselves to be engaging community members and/or debaters having the ability to vote show that the site is organizationally adhering to a standard of quality over quantity. 

Issues with voting
  • Out of the last 50 finished debates, only 4 went unvoted upon, amounting to a rate of 92% voted debates. Of the 4 debates that go unvoted, I notice a pattern of lack of outreach. This shows the site clearly does not have a voting problem as debates can attain votes through vote requests. 
When you require 100 forum posts to vote, you are now limited to only 5 people capable of voting at any given time on the site.
  • This is only one option. You can also vote if you "complete at least two rated debates which are eligible for moderation," according to the site voting policy. Also do you have any evidence that only 5 people vote?
DART also has the issue of when you open up a debate, you have to wait for someone to accept it before you can give an argument. 
  • How exactly is that an issue? In a debate, do you give your entire argument before you have an opponent? No. 
Then they must find a debate interesting enough to read in order to vote.
  • This would exist even if the site had absolutely no requirements. Everyone will tend to vote on debates they have shown interest in. 
  • Having a democratic voting system that allows people to choose interest and doesn't force people will yield more votes in the future. Would you do a job you aren't interested in? 

Debate uncertainty
  • This section is irrelevant to the resolution, we are debating whether or not "DART Voting requirements are excessive." I will address some points of it regardless but the entire section can be disregarded in voting. 
This leads to a level of uncertainty when you accept a debate, as you don't fully know if they will do a switcheroo on you and argue something else
  • If this is the case where someone just argues a completely different topic than stated in the resolution then they will be punished accordingly by voters. 
Or if the title is vague, or if the description is vague, you withhold accepting simply because of the ambiguity of what you may be arguing against
  • There isn't any issue with this. Vague descriptions can, and most often do. affect the instigator of the debate because they make the scope of the topic they are debating larger and less specific leading to a greater burden being placed on them, and an advantage to the contender. If this is something that's personal to you, you can also ask the instigator to clarify certain aspects of the debate before you accept. 
leading to fewer debates happening. 
  • This doesn't seem like a statement of logic. The slight ambiguity of different debate propositions is something that has existed since day one of the creations of the site so what are you comparing to establish "less," debates are happening. 
This is why there is only 10 active debaters at one time
  • Evidence required.
    • Just looking at the first two pages of the debate listing says otherwise. 
literally more dead than DDO. 
  • Evidence required.
    • This is self evidently untrue as debate.org is a dead website. What can be more dead than a dead website? 
Not to mention only 3 people can vote.
  • Evidence required.
    • Con concludes that pro has inserted a series of unsubstantiated claims. 

Round 2
Ehyeh's avatar
Ehyeh
Pro
#3
What qualifies as excessive
I would define voting to be unnecessarily difficult if two criteria are left unchecked:


  •  Debates get no votes
  •  if most of the user base can not vote. We're in a situation where it's mostly only the MODS who can and do regularly vote. When only three active users and the mods routinely vote, we have a situation of voting for those they're closer to or always voting for positions they held before reading the debate. Such as, if you're anti-abortion, you're significantly more likely to keep believing the person who is arguing the side you agree with to win the debate. Low sampling for voter count leads to more uncertainty on average about who should have won the debate. Leading to more wrong verdicts on average.
  1. They ensure that voters are people who have shown to contribute positively to the website.
  2. It protects against multi-account voting. Users have been banned in the past for multi-accounting to vote for themselves or to cast multiple votes for the same person. Having such requirements strongly protects against this. 
  3. They make the server better by providing blocks against site trolls. 
  4. It allows people to get acclimated to the server regulations, general atmosphere, and voting systems before they can vote.
1. I believe point 1 is nullified based on my round one argument. Just have the mods delete votes that are from people on alts or clearly troll votes.

2. Point two is also nullified by the idea that if mods could simply delete votes, we wouldn't have to deal with the "100 forum post" nonsense.

3. Point three is the same as points one and two.

4. When you decide to vote, they already give you a manual, which you can read to get a general understanding of how voting should happen. I don't see why I should need to understand "the general atmosphere" of the site, and not just the general atmosphere of voting regulations and standards to vote. What even is the general atmosphere? That sounds ridiculously subjective. I cannot imagine how you can define it. Now you also have to demonstrate how this general atmosphere relates to voting and why it matters.

  • This is only one option. You can also vote if you "complete at least two rated debates which are eligible for moderation," according to the site voting policy. Also do you have any evidence that only 5 people vote?
I do have evidence only 5 people vote. Simply go through the history of debates which have happened on this site. Most debates get 1-5 votes max. Anything more than this is an anomaly. 
  • How exactly is that an issue? In a debate, do you give your entire argument before you have an opponent? No. 
This is an issue. For the reasons I presented in the previous round, you seem to have conveniently not brought up my arguments for why it is an issue and opted to not even comment on why I said it is an issue and made a red herring argument. You later do address my argument, but not where it should have been. At least on this site, you should give your argument before someone accepts to debate you. How do you tell someone "hey, let's debate" and he goes, "what are we debating?" and you say, "we're debating the right to housing" and then you say "sure" and he starts rambling about the right to private housing. I didn't accept your debate to argue about that. If you're in DM's, it's very easy to clear up these misunderstandings. But it would just make it that much easier if you could do it with your first argument too. 


  • This would exist even if the site had absolutely no requirements. Everyone will tend to vote on debates they have shown interest in. 
It would be far less of a problem.

  • This section is irrelevant to the resolution, we are debating whether or not "DART Voting requirements are excessive." I will address some points of it regardless but the entire section can be disregarded in voting. 
Here you perfectly demonstrate the problem with not being mandated to create your first argument when you open a debate. Now all you have to do is go off the title. Creating strawman arguments about what the opener of the debate intended to argue. I wanted to debate more than just the voting, I cant put more in the title without it looking ridiculous. You could easily have chosen to completely ignore this argument of mine, and you would lose nothing in the eyes of voters as it isn't in the title. I commend you for arguing against it despite this. 

  • If this is the case where someone just argues a completely different topic than stated in the resolution then they will be punished accordingly by voters. 
It still denies accuracy, as you've clearly demonstrated. At the very least, it should be optional.

  • There isn't any issue with this. Vague descriptions can, and most often do. affect the instigator of the debate because they make the scope of the topic they are debating larger and less specific leading to a greater burden being placed on them, and an advantage to the contender. If this is something that's personal to you, you can also ask the instigator to clarify certain aspects of the debate before you accept. 
sloppy half-measures. It is an issue, as I've experienced it. If you haven't, well, lucky you. It just means your debate topics aren't very broad. Just make it at the minimum optional to start with an argument so people don't have to fiddle around in DM's or in the comments asking to clarify things in the description as much.

  • This doesn't seem like a statement of logic. The slight ambiguity of different debate propositions is something that has existed since day one of the creations of the site so what are you comparing to establish "less," debates are happening. 
An argument for futility. Of course, errors and misunderstandings will happen. Just a little less will happen if someone can give both a description and give their first round argument together. This is how it happened with DOO, and I think having it as an option hurts no one. You don't have to do it if you want to keep it more vague, illusive, and made of straw.

  • Just looking at the first two pages of the debate listing says otherwise. 
5 vote.

literally more dead than DDO
Clearly hyperbole.
Novice_II's avatar
Novice_II
Con
#4
  • Pro conceded the debate in the comments due to what seemed to have been a misunderstanding of the voting policy
I forfeit this debate. I just unlocked voting without needing 100 forum posts. LOL so clearly i misinterpreted the rules, that's embarrassing.
  • Regardless this is a good topic that should continue to be discussed.