Good job moderators

The qualities of the debates are getting higher. 

If I were here a year ago, based on how many trolls there are, I should be at a 1580 ranking. Because the trolls are inevitably banned, I now have a very low ranking. 

However, the toughest times train the best people. I think I will be much more sportsmanlike and skillful in the debates if I am here now than if I am here a year ago.

I had the opposite problem. A user named Ramshutu was out to get me at any given opportunity he'd vote me to lose if he could. He'd also vote things into ties (voted ties against lower rated debaters loses you some rating while unvoted ties do not). He even worked with the chief moderator to get several winning debates I had farmed deleted even though the chief moderator said I was paranoid for thinking this would happen.

On top of that, everyone else voted far less often and willingly than they do now. So what's inproved, especially thanks to lockdown forcing people indoors and online, is the enthusiasm of voters and fairness of thst element of debating. This then drives people to have more debates as they fear unvoted ties and wasted effort less.

Is the problem that you lost a source of winning?

The problem is partly that and also that you think it was easier before. It was both easier for those on the right side of corruption (oromagi, ramshutu, ragnar) and harder for those on the receiving end of it. Most of those on the receiving end of it ended up banned anyway and were themselves corrupt but I was not.

Once in a while I would wish that there were more trolls on the site so I could farm ranking. Now that I think of it, it is actually better without them because I will improve much quicker debating with worthy ones like you sir. 

I don't think DArt was corrupt, but I think DDO is anarchy. 

The Top debaters are all pretty skillful, but if one came here with trash skills and didn't develop very good skills that could pair up with top debaters until much later, their Elo doesn't reflect their skill. Since the default leaderboard is based on ranking, the higher it is, the higher it is on the leaderboard. The ones with more Elo will be more enthusiastic and the ones with less will be less enthusiastic despite he has better skill than what his ranking tells him in the ears. 

From a few days ago, I shifted my goal in this site from getting ranking to truly be good. a forced and hurried 500-meter long cardboard will quickly be slapped down while a 500-meter building is much more stable. My lost debates shall be my foundation and roots, building what I will win in the future instead of expecting single-line wins out of pure forfeit. 

Whst you're saying isn't true though. There's been more forfeiters and overly keen debaters in this covid era than ever before other than very very early on in the site. It's been the case with Type1 and Billbatard that there were HUGELY keen debaters who did mass-feed wins but what you failed to notice os that you're that debater this era. I was even that debater for a period. It happens when one spreads themselves far too thin that they can't cope with the debate-load and slowly give up on all of them as the stress overloads them.

You're the guy this era who was that and until you truly hone in your skills and stop complaining about the era, or suggesting it is particularly easier or harder than another time, you'll struggle. I play poker and it is one of the most mentally torturing games on Earth in terms of it truly being down to skill in the long run but short-term wins vs losses being misleading. I know you're not of age to play it, I'm just saying that a game like poker is truly brutal, people have gone bankrupt over how it deludes you into thinking good luck was your skill or bad luck was a bad strategy at work. It takes so much discipline, learning etc to get good at it and is an endless journey of refinement. Debating is very similar but isn't nearly as torturous in the scale of luck vs skill.