Voting categories

Arguments - 3 points

Sources - 2 points

Spelling and Grammer - 1 pt

Conduct - 1 pt

I think there should be a 5th category: Forfeited rounds and it's worth 1 to 2 points.

This is different from conduct because conduct should refer to ad hommein attacks.  Forfeited rounds would be seperate.  If both debaters finish all their rounds, it's a tie in this category.  If someone forfeits a round, this could have been due to lack of time, so they shouldn't lose a conduct point; people aren't future predictors.  Instead, they lose the points in Forfeited rounds.

Thoughts?

You might be interested.

If you lose arguments to someone who forfeited a Round, it's your fault not theirs.

It beats me why forfeiting is seen as bad conduct when you're making life easier for your opponent.

I also don't want people forfeiting rounds, so there should be a deterrence for forfeiting, but it should be separate from conduct.

I have consistently argued that any forfeit should result in automatic loss- no more args or voting just “other guy is Winner.”   Almost every contest I can think of works this way.  

And offence, but if that's not an appeal to popplum I don't know what it is - its a bad idea - because - unlike in real life stuff - forfeiting here is just not publishing an argument in time - that's not actually "forfeiting" - and it also has nothing to do with who won the debate. It feels like a cop-out to just make an autolose feature like that - its not accounting for a lot of stuff

Let's note that when debateart.com selects a debate for kudos in the sidebar under the heading QUALITY DEBATE one of the essential criteria is "no forfeits."  That is, by the standards of this site, no debate can be a quality debate with even one forfeit.    As the rule currently stands, Cicero himself could write 5 rounds of the most compelling shit ever written but if his opponent dodges the final round, this site would not recognize his work as QUALITY DEBATE.  Auto-loss won't fix that problem but it will set the standard to a degree that debaters who regularly default will fall in the rankings while debaters who always make some minimal effort rise.  The forfeiter has deprived the forfeited of at least that opportunity for glory. Depriving the forfeiter of any chance of a win holds us all to a higher standard and offers the advantage of  a proportional reply.

A couple of things, no time for a comprehensive reply (not like you actually ever respond to me more than once so frankly I don't feel the care to do so) - generally - you are forgetting the numerous examples of times when one of the debaters simply does not have access, or the mental fortitude to show up to a debate at a time, but are winning the actual argument. The mere fact that someone forfeits IS NOT evidence that that person lost the debate.

The reason why online debating is superior to in person debating is SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE you have more wiggle room - we should want to AVOID these things -if a lawyer doesn't show up to court, does that mean that case should automatically be ruled to the other side? Regardless of who is actually on the side of the truth? Because if that's your view then you care more about decorum than you do truth, and I can't respect that kind of thing. 

Don't take that personally.  I'm sure you can see that  most of the back and forth in forums does nothing to advance the argument.  I'm not thinking of specifics when I say that most of what happens after the first page on most of these forums is mere repetition, non-sequitur, and/or ad hom.  If I feel like some argument I've made has been successfully countered and I have an effective response and the conversation has stayed on topic and I have time to write, then I often will respond. But  I feel no compulsion to be the last one to speak and assign no advantage in argument to those many DARTers who clearly suffer from that itch.

I wouldn't call it an itch necessarily, I would call it being your priorities in regards to your position. Most times I take a response as a response to something I've said, and even if I know that I'm right (if I believe that I'm right) that doesn't mean I'll stop responding, I care more about convincing people in general than having the self-satisfaction of being right - if that was why I did stuff, I wouldn't even bother to post. 

If I dodged court by saying that I didn't have the mental fortitude to attend, I don't think that would go very well. Though I believe that a blanket of rule of forfeit = auto loss is too harsh (what if I broke both my arms and couldn't type, or I was admitted to hospital for cancer), but saying"I don't have the mental fortitude to continue", that would not be valid. 

Um... if a lawyer can't show up because they can't adequately argue for their client? That's DEFINITELY something that should go through 

Then they lose. Automatically. 

Not showing up to court case is FF not single-round Forfeit. There's actually no equivalent to court at all.

A better example would be staying silent during some but not all questions in a debate where it's a question-from-host style thing.