Need opinions for potential concession feature!

Mike wanted me to create this topic so that people can see the idea and discuss concerns.

My proposition is to add a feature that allows the user to concede a debate and give an insta-win to the user they are arguing against. This could potentially save a lot of time and energy for many, (especially voters) and cut down on full forfeit debates.

What do you guys think?

It would need to be done carefully to avoid accidents, with possibly a time window before it takes effect; during which it can be reversed.

Question is, how many people are actually going to use it?

I mean, people who forfeit usually do so through inactivity, not concessions.

It's lose-lose. Those are easy votes for vote-garnering medal hunters and such. Those getting the win will want the win late as possible unless their opponent is a usually strong one (but then why are they conceding) the reasoning behind it is rating gain vs loss buffering.

Sort of what I was thinking. At least an "are you sure?" pop-up.

yes

Decent point, but I think that people know they won't finish the debate before they become inactive. A concession button would be used I think.

Sorry I don't get what you're saying, can you explain this a bit? 

As for the vote medal thing, in my personal opinion, making people put more effort into achieving voting medals is a GOOD thing (it increases the value).

If you are very active in debating and understand how and when Rating is calculated, you'd know that you gain more and lose less by consistently having your 'sure wins' happen as late as possible and risky outcomes happen as early as possible. I know that my Rating here is average, but that's because of both having people out to vote against me at any given opportunity as well as frequent phases of laziness and abandoning debates in bursts to deal with shit IRL.

If you actually analyse me when I try, I understand 'mass-debating' (funny name, I know) more than any other user here. 

The reason you want sure wins to happen as late as possible and risky outcomes to come as fast as possible is because against good opponents, you want to have the outcome hit you before the outcomes with weakers opponents occur (because you gain more and lose less while your Rating has taken hits but gain less and lose more when your Rating is on a 'high').

Of course, if you truly look deeper I am wrong in the times where everyone is preying on the same 'easy win' victim. In these times, you want to all compete to finish the debates ASAP as the Rating of the opponent is decaying fast and that outweighs any stalling benefit.

To be clear, unlike Elo on DDO, Rating on DART is permanent post-mortem of the debate's voting period, this is why it matters.

Thanks for the explanation! Those are some fair points, I can see concession as bad thing if you are winning a debate. However, it will also come in handy for those on the wrong end of the stick if they can make a concession quickly. I also think that since this is a universal change, and most people both win and lose debates regularly, the ratings will not necessarily be less balanced, but instead more valuable as they are harder to attain. 

I think it is a good idea. I mean, if all it takes is for one person to vote and decide on a debate, might as well. It is not like votes are a measure of veracity anyway. Of course, I think it would be better to do away with debate wins and losses all together, because the desire to "win" a debate acts as an incentive to stick to one's guns even after realizing one's position is flawed.

But since I doubt anyone would be down for that idea(especially those who see gaming the stats as their entertainment), I think voting periods should have a greater minimum length.