My main concern was with the voting functionality would be restored
Can you explain what you mean by this?
Simply that, after I've voted on a debate, the site no longer presents me with the option to vote (for obvious reasons). I was just making sure that when someone's vote is removed, the functionality that let them vote in the first place is returns(e.g. the vote button for them to click).
a vote is only bad if there is indication that the person didn't read the debate, is trolling, is voting for some reason other than the debate itself or any other questionable practice
33 days later
principle and practice are two very different beast!
one of the fundamental problems with DDO and DART is the lack of voting on debates
The problem with this analysis is that you would essentially be endorsing allowing the mods to apply different standards to different votes. Drafterman ardently objects to moderator discretion, yet you're suggesting that moderation should use its discretion to make exceptions to the voting policy when it is clear that the debaters have read and comprehended the debate. That (a) puts moderation between a rock and a hard place, (b) leads to unequal voting policy enforcement, and (c) opens spaces for the appearance of moderator favoritism. I cannot agree that such use of discretion is wise.
Besides, your argument here kind of misses the point. The vote itself should demonstrate comprehension of the debate, and not the arguments in the comments. It is the former that is being examined, the later comes after the examination, and may not always even occur.
Finally, whether the mods know that a voter read and understood the debate is no replacement for weighing analysis. Let me repeat: "Suppose, for a moment, that I read an entire debate about whether vaccines should be compulsory, and I decided to cast a non-troll vote. Suppose I voted based on one argument made in the first round, which was never discussed again in the debate and which had little to do with the topic at hand. In such a case, a voter is cherry-picking rather than weighing, and that's problematic for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that such a voting style fails to appreciate the debate as a whole."
Your logic here proceeds from a mistaken paradigm. A tied debate, in theory, only injures the debater who ought to have one; yet, it injures them less than if they had unjustly lost. An unjust loss, therefore, is worse than a tied debate. While voting moderation is not about policing votes to ensure the "correct" decision, it does establish minimum standards of acceptability for votes in order to minimize unjust losses, given that better voting practices likely leads to better voting decisions. The notion, then, that non-voting is the ill we should be attempting most stridently to avoid is incorrect; rather, bad voting is the ill we should be attempting most stridently to avoid, because it inflicts the greatest injury. If maximizing votes is the goal, should voters be able to vote a particular way for any reason whatsoever?
What I would be endorsing is allowing mods to apply different standards in determining whether a vote violates the rules
Rock and a hard place comes with the job of being a mod. No matter what you do, you're going to piss somebody off and there will always be suspicions that you are corrupt and/or doing people favors...What really puts one between a rock and a hard place is the decision to continue doing debates while simultaneously having the ability to delete votes.
Any egregious mod action should be appealable to a mod/admin of higher rank
If the arguments in the comment section are indicative of the debate having been read and comprehended, what exactly is the issue here?
Is it your position that no mod action ought to be taken against Type1's vote because his RFD was "valid?"
Scenario A) You pour 5 10k character rounds of your life into a debate and lose after a great and wide range of feedback/voting/discussion/interest from the voters/readers or Scenario B) You pour 5 10k character rounds of your life into a debate and see a tie as a result of not a single soul voting/reading.
How does that differ from whatI understood your position to be?
It certainly does come with the territory, but I think itis worth calling attention to the various demands and interests I am having tobalance, so that the reasoning of moderation can be better understood.Moreover, I never adjudicate or remove votes on debates I participate in; thosevote reports are always handed off to another moderator.
Your response does nothing to address my specific concern:your suggestion leads to unequal voting policy enforcement.
First, your analysis fails to address the concern thatcomments on voting logic often come only after a vote has been moderated. Thismeans that voters who don't comment extensively in the comments will bedisadvantaged relative to ones who do, and that doesn't seem fair to me.
Second, moderators cannot be expected to read the debate inits entirety or the comments in their entirety in order to adjudicate the vote.In order to determine whether a debater really understood a debate, entire conversations might need to be read, adding greatly to the practical burden of moderation.
Third, the comments are not the vote, unless the RFD was posted in the comments. It is the text of the vote which is up for moderation under the voting policy, and so it is not appropriate for the mods to make judgments external to the vote itself in determining the vote's sufficiency.Comments outside of the vote don't make the vote sufficient; only the content of the vote can make the vote sufficient.
This is a bogus scenario because you build in positive presuppositions which may or may not be the case . . .
I agree with what you’re saying. On DDO there was a way to opt out of the voting requirements and also to opt in to more stringent requirements. I think that ought to be an option here.
