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Barney

*Moderator*

A member since

5
9
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Total posts: 3,465

Posted in:
Virt's Mafia [Night 1]
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@David
@Discipulus_Didicit
With it confirmed Discipulus is not a replacement for Water...

We're all hungry, but we don't need to turn on each other when there's an outsider we can feast upon.

VTL Discipulus_Didicit
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Posted in:
Virt's Mafia [Night 1]
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@David
@Discipulus_Didicit
Is Discipulus a replacement for someone? Or is he fair game to lunch without any risk nor consequence for town?
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Virt's Mafia [Night 1]
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@PressF4Respect
Are we a town of cannibals?
According to iPhone autocorrect, yes.
Praise to Siri and her infinite wisdom!
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Posted in:
Virt's Mafia [Night 1]
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@PressF4Respect
Should we lunch or no-lunch this DP?
What are the pros and cons of it? I mean besides my calculation that there's only an 18% chance that any random player is scum.

Also regarding the typo... Are we a town of cannibals?
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Posted in:
Virt's Mafia [Night 1]
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@warren42
Those who have suggested killing anyone: Ragnar, Drafter, Supa, Press.

I of course was serious. Granted, the last game I played (and only forum game) had a lot of MIA scum.

For easy reference (and later for someone more experienced to turn into a town/scum chart)
ACTIVE
6. SupaDudz
2. PressF4Respect
7. Lunatic
11. Greyparrot
9. Drafterman
4. Ragnar
1. Speedrace
5. ILikePie5
10. oromagi
3. Warren42
***************
8. WaterPhoenix
INACTIVE
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Posted in:
Virt's Mafia [Night 1]
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@Lunatic
@Greyparrot
I just found a treasure trove of information! http://style.org/unladenswallow/

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Posted in:
Virt's Mafia [Night 1]
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@Lunatic
What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
African or European?
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Posted in:
Virt's Mafia [Night 1]
your basically suggesting lynching the last person to get on and notice the dp is up
Correct.
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Posted in:
Virt's Mafia [Night 1]
So unless anyone has a better idea, I thought through an easy and fair way to determine whom to VTL today.

ACTIVE
6. SupaDudz
2. PressF4Respect  -Strawberry
7. Lunatic                 -Chocolate
11. Greyparrot         -vanilla
9. Drafterman          -Jim Halpert
4. Ragnar
***************
1. Speedrace
3. Warren42
5. ILikePie5
8. WaterPhoenix
10. oromagi
INACTIVE

When the list reaches only 1 below the divider, we simply VTL that person. Granted this only gives an estimated 18% chance of catching a scum.
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Virt's Mafia [Night 1]
This will be my third game of Mafia. I do however own Secret Hitler, so I am not a complete noob.

The first game I played was over Google Hangouts. I think I was some type of vigilante, and was forced to role call in the first day, and immediately lynched.
The second game I played was here in the forums. It was the MCU Heroes one, in which everyone had special roles.
This will be my third game.

I'm slightly confused how we are supposed to identify the scum, without special roles. I mean do we just roll the dice and lynch at random?

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Forum Restructuring
Changes have begun. They will not happen all at once. Please bear with us through this minor transition.
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People should not be allowed to make personal attacks on mods
As a reminder, there is a COC Revisions thread up right now.

There are also existing limits on how much abuse can be directed at us, outlined in the extended policies...
Section B: Conduct Towards Administration

Subsection B1: The Chief and Deputy Moderators and Site Owner

  1. Conduct violations against the Chief Moderator, Deputy Moderator, and the Site Owner will not be enforced, barring certain exceptions
  2. Exceptions to PA.A1.SB.SbB1.PI are limited to:
    1. Plausible, repeated, or serious threats
    2. Hacking or attempted hacking
    3. Staff Impersonation
    4. Doxxing or attempted doxxing
    5. Life- or health-threatening cyberbullying
    6. Violating the privacy of PMs not related to issues of moderation

Subsection B2: Other Moderators and Administrators

  1. Conduct violations against those moderators and administrators not covered by PA.A1.SB.SbB1.PI will not be enforced, barring certain exceptions
  2. Exceptions to PA.A1.SB.SbB1.PII are limited to:
    1. Threats
    2. Hacking or attempted hacking
    3. Staff Impersonation
    4. Doxxing or attempted doxxing
    5. Particularly serious personal attacks not related to their moderation duties
    6. Patterns of unceasing personal attacks not related to their moderation duties
    7. Life- or health-threatening cyberbullying
    8. Violating the privacy of PMs not related to issues of moderation

I bolded two important ones. Granted Virt, Mike, and I, are not subject that that level of protection. Still, I will remind people of the Impersonation clause, which applies to all of us, and to which the form of that impersonation has not been defined in this medium.
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Forum Restructuring
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@oromagi
Well stated.

I don't mind doing just a bit more information gathering (I'm a curious person), even while I think the current draft is essentially good to go.

Granted, I don't expect the very first time refinements are done to equal perfection (as we get more users, the needs will slowly change anyway). Worst case scenario with a dedicated Current Events forum, it doesn't go anywhere, and we ask Mike to delete it.

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Forum Restructuring
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@Nemiroff
You suggested the addition of a current events forum. It's come under a little criticism. Would you mind pointing me to the site you mentioned it was popular on, so that I can get a feel for how it fit into their forum design? ... It might be something that can just be folded into the description of the main social hub.
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Is morality objective or subjective?
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@PGA2.0
The timing was coincidental.
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Posted in:
Is morality objective or subjective?
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@PGA2.0
@PressF4Respect
My attention was called specifically to this thread, but please don't make a big thing about that.

You can expect to see that reminder or another like it more often. I assume people want to see that moderators take their reports seriously, and without deleting or otherwise censoring posts, it's a gentle way to encourage course correction for increased civility.

And yes, users are still talked to privately.
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Happy Thanksgiving
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@Dr.Franklin
Thanks, same to you.

Also, Dr. Tank sounds like a boss level from a video game, and I mean that in the best of ways.
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Posted in:
People should not be allowed to make personal attacks on mods
🤣🤣🤣

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Forum Restructuring
Unless more suggestions come in soon, here is what I am planning to suggest to Mike. I don't know the structural limits, but if archive can be a sub-forum accessed from within the Site Management forum, that's where it will end up (as opposed to second to last place on the normal listing).

  1. DART Site Management 
    DebateArt.com administrative matters, rules, refinements, and more.
  2. DART Community Hub
    For the users and by the users, this is the main social hub.
  3. Artistic Expression
    Community generated art, music, writing, etc.
  4. Current Events
    News and various micro events of the day.
  5. Entertainment Industry
    Movies, TV, music, celebrities, etc.
  6. Mafia Hub
    Mafia and other forum games.
  7. Gaming
    Video gaming and related technicality, plus any discussion of board games, etc.
  8. Philosophy
    Epistemology, Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, and Aesthetics.
  9. Religion
    Spirituality, faith, and religious concepts.
  10. Science and Nature
    The natural world and the systematic study thereof.
  11. Society
    Politics, History, Economics, etc.
  12. Sports
    Needing to shoot a 3-pointer while screaming Kobe? This is the forum for you. Just don't airball!
  13. Archive
    Primarily for outmoded administrative threads.
  14. Miscellaneous
    Everything not covered within the other categories...
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Posted in:
Is morality objective or subjective?
***
General reminder, you may critique someone, without jumping immediately into personal attacks.
-Ragnar, deputy moderator
***
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Posted in:
Star Wars -- Rey and Snokes
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@LordLuke
The writing for Rey is bad enough, that I used her as an example in the Kritik guide. https://tiny.cc/Kritik

Snoke... He was just a plot device instead of a character. 
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56th Aniversity of the biggest cover up in AMERICAN HISTORY
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@Imabench
Candidate Estes Kefauver won 80% of the primaries and 60% of the popular vote in the primaries, but because this was when most states still had state bosses order delegates to support particular candidates, the nomination went to Hubert Humphrey instead
<br>
Holy shit!
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Forum Description
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@EtrnlVw
I've tentatively updated the draft to:
Religion
Spirituality, faith, and religious concepts.

It can of course be changed again (maybe not to renaming the whole forum Purgatory...).

And yeah, divinity does feel a bit cheesy.
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Debate Voting Thread (FORMER)
This is a pretty straight forward, but educational in a fun way, and only 5,000 characters per argument!



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Virt's Mafia Game
/in

Note: This will be my third game (second on the forums), so still a noob.
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Forum Description
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@disgusted
From inside that thread, posts #13 and #14 have answers for you. Ergo, not undefined.

I am not insisting the word be in the description, I merely showed one sample of something more inclusive than the current. I admit that I dislike the word "church" in the current description, due to how varied religions are, and how few of them call their places of worship churches (not even all branches of Abrahamism). Similarly, I would probably object to any specific holy days being in it.
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Forum Description
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@disgusted
Spirituality is an undefined and undefinable word, ergo meaningless.
It's in most dictionaries, so quite easy to define.
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Posted in:
Who believes in an afterlife?
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@BrotherDThomas
In this case, no one tagged any posts for moderator attention. I stepped in to mildly correct the baiting of users not involved in a thread, so as to try to prevent a problem in future (one which the other thread you linked, suggests is recurrent).

If feeling the need to tag someone to get their opinion on a thread, please just ask them without calling them names. As an example:
@Bob
What do you think of this topic?


As opposed to:
@Bob
...Just look at the Satanic "Bob" as an example of FAKE Christian Pretzels!
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How to get people to vote
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@oromagi
I was recently trying to put my finger on that term. Foregone conclusions. Thanks!

I remain hopeful we'll get some auto loss features in the future, but in the mean time, I think that would be a good category for the COC revisions, to lump a few things together (hopefully including No Contest debates).
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How to get people to vote
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@oromagi
You don't want to see some of the frequent votes before we added BoP requirements to vote a tie...
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Is the Prime Directive Just?
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@Jeff_Goldblum
I fully agree with this:
For the Archons episode, I just figured Kirk was creating a loophole for the sake of the plot. I never took Kirk's (frequent) circumventions of the Prime Directive seriously, at least not in any philosophical sense.


I got to say, I strongly dislike that the new movies turning the Prime Directive into a joke.

Similarly, I love The Orville actually exploring issues of what happens to a culture when the Prime Directive is violated.
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Posted in:
Who believes in an afterlife?
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@ethang5
@BrotherDThomas
Note: No posts here were reported, I merely chanced upon this thread and am offering some advise to keep things from escalating in future similar situations.


Brother,
If you feel the need to call someone's attention to a thread, please be civil about it. Certainly don't do it solely to bring up past or ongoing disputes. As a reminder from the COC:
d. Cross-Thread Contamination
Cross-thread contamination is when a user brings up disputes elsewhere on the site up in an unrelated thread for the purpose of harassing, mocking, or insulting another member. Treat every new exchange with a member with as much of a "clean slate" as possible.

You can also reference Satanists, Satanic People, or Satanic Christians,  without specifically naming another member who is not even involved in said thread.
Note: This is not an endorsement of said references.


Ethang,
You can block him. It would remind him of your disinterest in interacting with him, every time he attempts to tag you. While this would not prevent him from mentioning you, it would change it would change the context further into a dis-favorable direction for him (adding weight to any future reports you may need to make).
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Forum Description
As you all know, there's currently some work being done on forum restructuring and consolidation [1]. I am hoping for some feedback...

Currently the description for the religion forum reads:
Topics related to church and religion

I've tentatively written an update of:
Discussions of divinity, faith, spirituality, etc.

The final text for it is up to you. Ideally it should serve as a friendly welcome and introduction to the forum.

One example is the Sports forum is being updated to:
Needing to shoot a 3-pointer while screaming Kobe? This is the forum for you. Just don't airball!

  1. https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/3064/forum-restructuring
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COC Revisions
A few changes (as opposed to just reordering) I would like to make:
  1. Change Spelling and Grammar to Presentation & Structure, which would still include S&G as factors in it, but would allow walls of text and other offenses to legibility be penalized when compared against well organized easy to follow cases. ... Come to think of it, another decent name change would just be Legibility.
  2. Add a special case for No Contest debates, as basically another full forfeiture or concession. A recent example: https://www.debateart.com/debates/1366/this-site-is-elitist-bullshandt
  3. While I know this can be interpreted to be covered under votevombs via the "a vote cast without regard for the content of the debate" clause, but it could do with being expanded and possibly separated from vote bombs for clarity... A vote should not ignore major categorical areas to fluff up the side which favors their bias. Here's a hypothetical: If I vote on an abortion debate in favor of the pro-choice advocate, and the pro-life advocate has a dozen good .gov and .edu sources vs. none from the pro-choice side; if I do not give sources against the side to which I'm favoring, my vote should be removed. Granted, were it flipped around and the side I'm favoring had all those sources, I would say the extra points should be fully at my discretion.
  4. This isn't important, but right now we call every non-moderated debate type a troll debate... Maybe we should just call them non-moderated?
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Forum Restructuring
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@David
an archived section would be good to make it clear which threads are active and which ones are old
I went back and forth on the idea, and if it doesn't work out it can always be re-merged later.

Out of curiosity, do you have any thoughts on the requested Current Events forum? I am pondering if such should just be included as a role within the community hub.
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Forum Restructuring
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@David
How do you feel about adding an "archive" forum where we move all old moderation topics to? 
I would not be opposed. However, I think unpinned and locked items naturally floating to the back would organically handle that within the Site Management forum.
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How to get people to vote
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@ethang5
One feature suggestion I've made, and will probably make again, is the option on voting to give less than full argument points (on debates I'm in, I would be fine if people say gave conduct to the other side to lessen arguments if they want to give credit to the non-winning side... I might end up suggesting this as a special rule). So I'm there with you on wanting to try new things.


What do you think the problems with weighted voting would be?
One that immediately comes to mind, is peoples addiction to complaining. They would cry at someone else having given the other side one more point than them, not all votes are equal, blah blah blah... And yeah, me actively using the 7 point system, has caused such complaints before (back on DDO at least, I remember someone giving their side arguments, sources, and I think conduct; so as to outweigh me voting arguments and sources; when of course the side they were voting for offered no sources, nor challenges to sources). Heck I remember times when people would complain for being voted against on sources, when they offered none, so they thought they were immune to the comparison against their absence.

Another problem I do foresee is increased complaints over fakers, in addition to complaints like... Ragnar's not a liberal, he's a progressive, his vote should do this instead... The alternative being things like it should give double points for favoring a communist argument, or other (usually but not exclusively) dumb things.

Another problem is people play devil's advocate (I highly suggest it to understand the other side's argument in depth). So the case of "A vote by a conservative for a conservative gets the conservative debater one vote point." Wouldn't always make sense, when the conservative debater is arguing against a conservative viewpoint (such as in favor of the Due Process clause...), or a liberal argument a conservative viewpoint (such as in favor of the 2nd amendment)... So basically any time someone is arguing generally in defense of the US constitution, they are going to offend people who are generally classified as the same political leaning.
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Posted in:
Forum Restructuring
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@David
I like the breaking up of the site management and dart community, though I think the site management should be the top forum. 
That came about very early in the discussions, due to the ever growing need for more pinned topics. And yup, the admin forum is now on top.
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Forum Restructuring
Current Draft (updated at 21:40 PST 11/21):
  1. DART Site Management 
    DebateArt.com administrative matters, rules, refinements, and more.
  2. DART Community Hub
    For the users and by the users, this is the main social hub.
  3. Artistic Expression
    Community generated art, music, writing, etc.
  4. Current Events
    News and various micro events of the day.
  5. Entertainment Industry
    Discussions of Movies, TV, music, celebrities, etc.
  6. Mafia Hub
    Mafia and other forum games.
  7. Gaming
    Video gaming and related technicality, plus any discussion of board games, etc.
  8. Philosophy
    The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence.
  9. Religion
    Discussions of divinity, faith, spirituality, etc.
  10. Science and Nature
    The natural world and the systematic study thereof.
  11. Society
    Politics, History, Economics, etc.
  12. Sports
    Needing to shoot a 3-pointer while screaming Kobe? This is the forum for you. Just don't airball!
  13. Miscellaneous
    Everything not covered within the other categories...

The second line of each is the description, as seen in the current listing. I would prefer if active users from each forum write the final ones, with the main goal of attracting users. And yup, I admit to not caring for the current "Topics" descriptions, to which them being topics is self evident after the first couple.

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How to get people to vote
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@ethang5
Ctrl+] increases the indent, allowing tiers:
Like
this

So back at DDO, an indicator of fraudulent votes was the changed opinion option on votes. It was not even worth any points, but people would occasionally try to sway it to make the person they were voting for look better (there were also people who made legit use of it). I vaguely remember someone who voted in favor of every pro-life argument (no matter how laughably weak, even forfeits... religious debates suffered similarly with a couple Muslim vote alliances doing likewise), insisting their opinion was changed from pro-choice each time.

Anyway, your ideas have some merit, especially on political debates (not that all debates are political). ... One way it could be tested would be special debate rules posted in the description in a few debates. You would technically use the seven-point system, but have people vote with S&G and Conduct in the place of everything else (S&G for victory, and Conduct as a bonus point for the political ideology of the voter not matching whom they're favoring).

Generally us moderators do not enforce special rules, but I personally would be fine with guarding the experiment via deleting any votes which award more than 2 points (but leaving all which follow that system alone).
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Posted in:
How to get people to vote
A voting league is another measure that could encourage more voting.
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Posted in:
Is Water Racist?
Pretty sure it's highly racist. Do you have any idea how many Vikings it killed? Attempted genocide against a people for their culture! 🤣
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Posted in:
Explain Invalid value format
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@DebateArt.com
@Stephen
No one seen God
That topic should be fine...


@mike,
Any thoughts?

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Forum Restructuring
Here's the latest draft, with descriptions as the second line of each entry.
  1. DART Community Hub
    Topics related to the greater DebateArt.com user base.
  2. DART Site Management
    Topics related to DebateArt.com administration.
  3. Artistic Expression
    Community generated art, music, writing, etc.
  4. Current Events
    News and various micro events of the day.
  5. Entertainment Industry
    Discussions of Movies, TV, music, celebrities, etc.
  6. Mafia Hub
    Mafia and other forum games.
  7. Gaming
    Video gaming and related technicality, plus any discussion of board games, etc.
  8. Philosophy
    The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence.
  9. Religion
    Discussions of divinity, faith, spirituality, etc.
  10. Science and Nature
    The natural world and the systematic study thereof.
  11. Society
    Politics, History, Economics, etc.
  12. Sports
    Need to throw a Molotov Cocktail while shouting "Bortles!"? This forum is for you.
  13. Miscellaneous
    Everything not covered within the other categories...
The above descriptions are generally informational placeholders. I would prefer if active users from each forum write the final ones, with the main goal of attracting users. And yup, I admit to not caring for the current "Topics" descriptions, to which topics is self evident after the first couple.

And yes, other changes and suggestions are still open for discussion.

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How to get people to vote
Should there be a mandatory requirement for people to vote let's say every 3 days?
Nice sentiment, but it would never fly. I've seen users cite political reasons as why they do not vote, and there are likely a host of other reasons why some users simply don't. I would love if everyone (well, almost everyone) voted, but I can still respect their choice not to.


the character minimum should be 100 or something like that.
The character limit is low (I assume) due to how many debates are FF or concessions.


What encourages people to vote?
Depression. If my life were worse, I would vote way more often.

Okay that was nonconstructive... I don't think I would want to manually track it, but I imagine the next voting thread could handle a bit of a pay-it-forward system (the simple encouragement to vote for a debate or two above where yours is listed). I am also considering deleting stuff as it expires within the next thread (thus the first page is always relevant ... problem being, that this is busy work, which might be wholly needless without causing any uptick in voting).
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how bad can you fuck up your phone
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I am certainly not being vehement
Just what do you think that word means?
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Posted in:
Forum Restructuring
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@ethang5
DebateArt.com (Community Hub)
Dart Community Hub
Validate the "Dart" lingo

DebateArt.com (Site Management)
Dart Site Management
I'm not someone invested in either abbreviation (DA, DART, or Dart), so I'll try Dart or DART in the next draft to give any voices of opposition a chance. Plus as you said, validating shared language is a net benefit to ease communication long term.


Games (Mafia and other forum games)
Mafia Art or Mafia Nation
We both know mafia will dominate the thread anyway.
Very true. We can always have the description state similar games may be played there.


Games (video gaming, board games)
Games

I'm not tied to any, i just think too similar forum names will enable confusion.
I'm leaning toward the general title of Gaming for this. And yeah, people get confused so damned easily.

...

Oh side issue: It was brought to my attention that another user feels that you feel ignored by me in this thread. If there's any truth to this, say the word, and we can discuss how I can correct my wayward behavior.
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Forum Restructuring
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@Nemiroff
I think a current events section is good as well. Rather then discussing broad political issues, they discuss micro events of the day. This section was very popular on a previous platform i was on.
I'm intrigued by this. I think I'll put it into the next draft, to ensure near maximum feedback potential.

Also going into the next one are descriptions, since I feel we're near the end of the which forums should exist phase.
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how bad can you fuck up your phone
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@Discipulus_Didicit
This thread title/OP had none of those things except very light profanity (less than there was in the post which I summoned you here with).
And note that it is unchanged.
It's not unchanged though.
Contextually, I was referring to your post which you view as more extreme.


Excessive trolling, spam, fighting words, given his related comments possibly adult content...
And I say again that the thread title and OP are none of those things. Not even remotely. If I am starting to sound like a broken record then perhaps it is because something is broken.
Your opinion is noted. That you vehemently insist his actions in no way resembled any of those offenses, does not leave much room for us to discuss anything.
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Strict?
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@Dr.Franklin
...but he made it clear that he has no intention to follow the rules in the future. 
How so?
The string of alt accounts, and continued baseless vile insults launched via them.

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