What is one reason DDO fell apart.

Author: User_2006

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#1
User_2006
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DDO used to be more glorious than the present-day DArt. How did it fall apart?

I joined in late 2017 if I remember. Most debates after this are trolls with no evidence whatsoever. Now when I go on it, it asks questions like "Should black people exist" or if not, it will be a prostitute advertisement. How did all of this happen, and what caused it?
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#2
User_2006
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I understand that it might be a no-brainer for you, but I need answers.
#3
K_Michael
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@User_2006
I would say the largest contribution is the lack of moderators. Their system is also pretty buggy. Several times I was unable to finish the debate because it got stuck on "hasn't updated yet." My cell provider wasn't listed, so I couldn't verify in order to vote. There's the infamous capitalization after commas. These little things likely meant that quality debaters went elsewhere, and the trolls that had bad grammar and spelling anyways stuck around. 
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#4
User_2006
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@K_Michael
But that is not all of it, why are there sex advertisements on the debates section?
#5
K_Michael
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@User_2006
I use an ad blocker, so no idea.
What's interesting is that ads are one of the things that DArt has always been very reluctant about, probably as a result of DDO's overuse of ads.
#6
PressF4Respect
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@User_2006
The website was bought by Juggle. They didn't care about it whatsoever, and technical issues (such as the ones mentioned by K_Michael) were never resolved. Moderation became virtually non-existent as well.

Then the trolls and spambots came.

Then the trolls and spambots came.
#7
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@User_2006
Remember the debate we had on DDO? (I think it was on birth control or something like that)

You know the weirdly formatted google doc link I posted that contained the argument?

Yeah it was because half the time, the site literally refreshes and erases the argument you type in directly.
#8
Dreadnought
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I never really had an account on DDO, but I did go deep into it's bowels that are full of junk.
#9
Barney
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@User_2006
I did some investigative work a while ago for the final update to the guide, and sad to say I kept using it long after the time of death I've given it:
This tragedy happened in large part due to debate.org's developers being outright opposed to spam suppression (even basic CAPTCHA), likely given that spam is unmistakable from real content to ad agencies.

Some may argue the site lives on as long as spam bots produce new pages, but for the human fraction of the user base, the point was debates. On July 11th 2016, an update which broke debate functionality was identified and never reverted or otherwise corrected.
As debates are the beating heart of a debate website, this is the attributed cause of death.





R.I.P. Debate.org
October 2007 - July 2016
#10
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@Barney
The saddest part is that technically speaking, DDO is still more "alive" than DART (by a long shot).

This site ranks:
#28,696
 In global internet traffic and engagement over the past 90 days
This site ranks:
#3,929,951
 In global internet traffic and engagement over the past 90 days


#11
DebateArt.com
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@PressF4Respect
Yeah, that's sad, but they had money, whereas we have 19$ of donations so we have what we have. Hopefully it will change one day.  
#12
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@User_2006
DDO used to be more glorious than the present-day DArt.
Everyone who thinks this is either toxic, long gone or delusional. DDO was a corrupt place where popularity was what moderation depended upon. Bsh1 even began to turn DARt into that but thankfully was ousted just in time.
#13
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who was bsh1 and what was up with him? 
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#14
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@PressF4Respect
Remember the debate we had on DDO? (I think it was on birth control or something like that)
Yes, you were trolling on that account, I am sure of it.

#15
TheDredPriateRoberts
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@PressF4Respect
Then the trolls and spambots came.
that's why I left

#16
Vader
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Juggle, the main owner of DDO did not invest their time into helping clean up the site, so spam bots made their way into the site and there's only so much Airmax can do as a moderator. It become so overwhelming that the site eventually got so flooded with spam it became unusable. The official death was 2018 when this site was created, but some say in 2016 is when it started dying
#17
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@User_2006
It was the enormous wave of spam that hit around mid-2018, which made it difficult to sustain forum conversations and sparked serious debate about an "exodus" elsewhere. Many of us were reluctant to do so but when another website (DART) came along that was designed to look very similar to DDO people made the change in droves. Debate.org had been on the decline well before this due to functionality slowly breaking down and waning interest among the core member base but I think everyone agrees the spam was the final nail in its coffin.
Seriously, in early 2018 DDO sustained a game of Survivor that had 9 participants, who collectively made up but a small fraction of site activity at that time. Immediately before the spam it had reasonably high forum traffic.
#18
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@User_2006
Pretty much the spam bots, which were allowed to grow as much as they did due to site owners not implementing any meaningful methods of controlling them. There have been many other things blamed for the fall of DDO as this thread demonstrates but if it was not for the spam bots (and to a lesser extent the bugs, which can also be blamed on Juggle) I honestly think DDO would be just as big or bigger now as it was when I first joined it around '15 or '16. Those other factors are outrageously small.
#19
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@User_2006
Yes, you were trolling on that account, I am sure of it.
I mean, by the time I came along (early 2019), there was pretty much nothing left to be serious about.
#20
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DDO had been in decline for years before the spam attack wiped it out. The biggest cause (other than the spam attack) was that Juggle redesigned the front page in a way that harmed your ability to see actual debates. Since almost all debates on DDO outside of those between core members ended in a forfeit, there was a lot of garbage to sift through. The old front page automatically filtered out any debate that had a forfeit.

Juggle for whatever reason got rid of this around 2014ish and there was an immediate decline in site quality and it became more of a social site that used to be a debate site 
#21
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spam bots
#22
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@User_2006
I concur with K_Michael's commentary regarding lack of moderation as well as their lack of communication. Not knowing at the time when I joined DDO they were already dead, I became easily frustrated that they would answer no questions. No wonder. 
#23
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@DebateArt.com
Oof. Start a GoFundMe.
#24
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Oof. Start a GoFundMe.
We already have Patreon and it's barely useful ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
#25
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@DebateArt.com
I mean, someone started a GoFundMe for making a potato salad and got $55,492, so...

Ya never know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
#26
TheRealNihilist
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@skittlez09
This dude:

Was the highest position on this site, basically what Virtuoso is now. Said something bad and left.



My take was that he could've apologized plus not resigned but he did.

RM if it wasn't clear is a conspiracy theorist. His head too far up is own behind to comprehend this and other flaws he has. 
#27
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@PressF4Respect
I mean, someone started a GoFundMe for making a potato salad and got $55,492, so...
I almost cried ... Potato freaking salad ...
#28
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I mean, someone started a GoFundMe for making a potato salad and got $55,492, so...
lol thats dope asf imma try n get a new me a new kitchen too 
#29
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So based off of the relative value of the potato salad and DART, I'm guessing a GoFundMe of DART would get around 10 million lol
#30
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lol

let me know how it goes bruh