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In future I suggest a discussion thread for every major point of change to COC, to optimize new wording prior to proposed changes...
1. Plan B & Plan E.
They're kind of a mixed bag, like forum posts are not a substitute for debating (literally just one debate, as opposed to a game of Mafia); and I love the competency review option (I had previously suggested an automated review with a standardized sample debate).
2. Abstain.
A little swearing doesn't bother me, but I don't need bloody cuss words to make a point either.
3. Yes
If mods are suggesting a change to arguments, it's probably the standard they want to enforce.
4. Yes.
5. Yes
6. Yes
As I pointed out the other day, explaining what is meant by excessive has been much needed on these. ... And to be a nitpicker, I still think the requirement of listing each time someone did not violate conduct is a waste of everyone's time.
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For viewing clarity, the current vs the new COC lines are as follow:
S&G Old:
To sufficiently ground awarding S&G points, a voter must start by giving specific references to the mistakes made by the debater(s). More importantly though, these spelling and/or grammatical mistakes need to be excessive. A good rule of thumb is that if the spelling or grammar render the arguments incoherent or incomprehensible, the coherent side is awarded these points. While this can be somewhat subjective, it should be clear from the vote why a given argument is difficult to read, and not just how many errors a given side has made. There must be some comparative analysis between both debaters’ S&G.
S&G New:
In order to award spelling and grammar (S&G) points, a voter must explicitly, and in the text of their RFD, perform the following tasks: (a) give specific examples of S&G errors, (b) explain how these errors were excessive, and (c) compare each debater's S&G from the debate. S&G errors are considered excessive when they render arguments incoherent or incomprehensible." A "no" vote would retain the current voting standards for spelling and grammar points.
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Conduct Old:
To sufficiently ground awarding conduct points, the voter must provide specific references to the instances of poor conduct in their vote. There are two additional necessary criteria for conduct points to be sufficiently grounded. One debater must have been excessively rude, profane, or unfair, or broke the debate rules, or forfeited one or more rounds in the debate without reasonable and given cause. There must be some comparatively analysis between both debaters’ conduct. The second pertains specifically to awarding conduct solely for forfeited rounds. If this is the case, then the voter must also explain arguments, unless the debate is forfeited by half or more of its rounds. Then and only then would a vote that awards only conduct points be acceptable.
Conduct New:
In order to award conduct points, a voter must explicitly, and in the text of their RFD, perform the following tasks: (a) provide specific references to instances of poor conduct which occurred in the debate, (b) demonstrate how this poor conduct was either excessive, unfair, or in violation of mutually agreed upon rules of conduct pertaining to the text of the debate, and (c) compare each debater's conduct from the debate. Misconduct is excessive when it is extremely frequent and/or when it causes the debate to become incoherent or extremely toxic. In the case of awarding conduct points solely on the basis of forfeits, there is an exception to these steps: a debater may award conduct points for forfeited rounds, but only if one debater forfeited half or more of their rounds or if the voter also awards argument points (or explains their decision not to award argument points in a manner which meets the argument points voting standards)." A "no" vote would retain the current voting standards for conduct points.
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@David
In addition to my previous suggestion (make people take an automated voting test), what about adding an extra state to the process map? The extra state would be before the current final one, giving admins a few days of voting lockout before any debate goes to the finished final state.
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@bsh1
comparative analysis is indispensable
I disagree given that the comparative behavior is usually strongly implied by the lack of noted violations (note: everyone already does this with forfeits). To give an example from Virtuoso, there seems no need to list times the non-penalized person abstained from saying "Oh come off it you soddy pillock" to the other, or on one of your debates all the times you did not violate the agreed upon debate rules and lie.
I also don't think poor conduct needs to distract the voter to warrant punishment.
My suggestion for a minimum standard of distracting, is mainly due to clarity. I believe excessive is too open to interpretation, and risks conduct penalties for not being nice enough when refuting arguments. Diverting someone's attention to non-issues like what a #$%^ someone is, while also wasting the time of all readers, pulls us out of the flow of the arguments (akin to movie breaking the suspension of disbelief). Refuting an argument, even if you could have been more civil to spare their feelings, is a natural part of the debate.
Granted, what distracts one person is different from one distracts another. But I am confident any good current conduct violation vote, had the attention of the voter pulled away from arguments (pretty much guaranteed once they're quoting something other than arguments they found annoying).
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Not as short as I would have liked, but an easy one...
As a bonus, it contains one of the worst attempts to shift the resolution, I have ever seen!
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A few more very minor suggestions:
- Separate this into two threads. One for technical aspects, another for societal (rules and such).
- On the COC, under Voting Policies conduct, there's a typo. The word "comparatively" should be replaced with "comparative"
- Regarding conduct: I believe the comparative analysis is rarely needed (when one person is polite, and the other a raving lunatic, it does not feel relevant to mention how nice one was), and that the comment section activity should count (at least in extreme cases, such as blatant voter harassment; or trying to extend the debate with personal insults after it's ended).
What the conduct policy currently says:
To sufficiently ground awarding conduct points, the voter must provide specific references to the instances of poor conduct in their vote. There are two additional necessary criteria for conduct points to be sufficiently grounded. One debater must have been excessively rude, profane, or unfair, or broke the debate rules, or forfeited one or more rounds in the debate without reasonable and given cause. There must be some comparatively analysis between both debaters’ conduct. The second pertains specifically to awarding conduct solely for forfeited rounds. If this is the case, then the voter must also explain arguments, unless the debate is forfeited by half or more of its rounds. Then and only then would a vote that awards only conduct points be acceptable.
Here's what I would have it say (I do not expect this to be implemented, but it might help a future revision):
To award conduct, one debater must have committed violations to sportsmanship which outright distracted the voter from debate arguments; to which the voter needs to reference at least the worst offense (if both had severe infractions, a comparative analysis is required to show why one was a magnitude worse). Examples of inexcusable conduct:
- Plagiarism
- Excessive profanity
- Repeated or grotesque Ad Hominem attacks
- Trying to use the comment section to cheat
- Forfeited rounds (if less than half, arguments must also be weighted)
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I suggest a multiple choice test to enable voting privileges. This could use an extremely short fake debate, to highlight certain rules...
While more complex, the types of voting could be separated. Such as argument point only debates (or even just argument point only votes), requiring lower standard than categorical voting.
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@Smithereens
I assume that theory depends upon a perfect audience to grade it, and more compelling being objective instead of subjective?
The thing I really wish we knew, was if indeed the winner lost any of their original believers.
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This is taken from how some live debates are handled, specifically from an article Tejretics shared.
The way I envision it working is as follows:
Judges cast ballots only reflecting the strength of their opinion before and after the debate (plus commentary). Moving from agreed/disagreed to neutral (or neutral to agreed/disagreed) would be worth 1 point, and from agreed to disagreed (and vice versa) would be worth 3.
I view this as something informal with only minimal moderation (such as a voter repeatedly gaming the system; like a known pro-lifer insisting they agreed with mandatory abortion before each debate to give undue points to their friends).
Due to the risk of no voters beginning in the position of agreed to certain claims, no ELO impact.
Note: Meta data could be collected from having strongly agreed/disagreed, but I would not grant extra points. While extra points would certainly help identify cheaters, people already complain about such too much on categorical voting.
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An idea for an alternative voting system: Changed Opinion.
This is taken from how some live debates are handled, specifically from an article Tejretics shared. Judges cast ballots only reflecting the strength of their opinion before and after the debate. Moving from agreed/disagreed with to neutral (or neutral to agreed/disagreed) would say be worth 1 point, and from agreed to disagreed (and vice versa) would be worth 3? (if you want to collect meta data, maybe an option for strongly agreed/disagreed, but I would not grant extra points).
I view this as something which would have only minimal moderation. And due to the risk of no voters beginning in the position of agreed to certain claims, no ELO impact.
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A religious debate which did not bore me to death, could use another vote or two before time runs out...
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Very cool!
I will however point to the bias of the setup. The human had a potential 79 points to gain, of which he gained 17. The machine had only a potential 21 points to gain.
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@bsh1
1. Yes.
Anyone who has dealt with online stalkers, will understand why this is vital. ... Don't get me wrong, things could certainly be fairly lax, but there's time when lines are intentionally crossed.
2. Abstain.
Probably best to just ask the users being banned if they want it to be a secret or not.
3. No.
And the request for every little insult to be deleted is lacking in foresight, which means were yes to pass this post should be deleted.
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@Alec
I am reminded of the Dead Parrot sketch.
Regarding the number of debates happening there, the number of non-zombie debates is well under 1% of the claimed ongoing debates. What the site owners are doing, is akin to arguing that a graveyard is the next Disneyland due to total occupants.
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@Castin
Most likely that a forum post can be made by a non-bot.
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Different site, some years ago. No one in their right mind (with the possible exception of whomever's photos), would particularly care.
I dislike the images of people avatars, but you taking part in that trend (and tamely at that) isn't the end of the world.
Anyway, I hope you are doing better.
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@RationalMadman
Scott Adkins would have been the most complete Batman.
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Regarding votes:
First, it'd be cool to be able to edit our votes (at least until the timer runs out). By now most of us have probably noticed some little typo a little too late.
Second, it'd be very cool if mod actions were amended onto the vote itself, rather than removing it.
The way I see this working is:
- The point score is removed.
- The vote is grayed out.
- Mod comments are posted below it in red text.
- The mod manually posts in the comments to inform the user (unless direct vote notifications are easy to implement)
- If a user edits their vote, their former one is deleted (so as to decrease their stigma).
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@DrChristineFord
If you wish to believe it is merely a coma, and wait for a full recovery, that is your right. ... Let me know when they have completely fixed debate functionality (at least the reported bugs), at that time I will gladly reconsider.
Likely it is because for a long time I was one of the best contributors to that site, and seen the owners intentionally sabotage the community again and again, which has jaded my opinion.
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@DrChristineFord
You're missing years of debates being in limbo unable to be updated. Case in point, the user who first filed a bug report (https://www.debate.org/forums/debate.org/topic/82207/2#2511128), still has their debates sitting there. As recently at five months ago, still active members have the same BS happen (the second user to formally report the error, currently has 4 of 5 from their most recent debates affected: https://www.debate.org/dsjpk5/).
In the interim, there's been reports of users trying to post arguments and having the site fail to do that (causing forfeits when they did not), and various other problems with core site functionality.
To say a broken watch isn't broken because it's right twice per day, does not mean it's been fixed.
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@DrChristineFord
As I've addressed through most of this thread, I've settled on the cause of death (not to say cause of illness), as debate functionality being disabled. While such might seem like a late phase in the illness to focus on, but it's about like the cancer patient who suffers a heart attack, technically the cigarettes caused the cancer, and the cancer caused strain on the heart, but the heart is the vital organ which failed first.
The first page of the DDO guide now reads as follows (if anyone has better wording, I am amenable):
Warning: Debate.org is broken beyond utility, and should be considered dead.
DebateArt.com is the advised alternative.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
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@Earth
I agree it was past prime, I've been extremely harsh toward it in that regard. However past prime does not imply dead. The majority of popular movie actors are past their physical (or even career) prime, but are not reclassified as dead.
DDO became a forum and not a debate site and this spelled the end
I will wholly agree with you on this, even if not your disconnected conclusion.
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@Earth
I agree that eventually most sites die, but disagree that time alone is the attributable cause of death... Nearly every website has a reason to exist, users come and go, but functional websites usually attract new users. MySpace for example, failed to innovate when a better platform design came along (Facebook); yet without a website like Facebook being dreamed up to compete with it, there is no reason to suppose people would have just stopped using social media.
Someone smokes a hundred cigarettes per day, gets a bunch of tumors growing in their lungs, the corner does not list "Time?" as the cause of death. While time played an important role, it does little suggest anything related to the health or function of the organism.
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@Earth
You have offered zero reason for anyone to agree with you. If time is a valid cause of death for websites, than I suppose Google must be dead because even more time has elapsed for it.
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@Vader
I'm going to stick with my cats eating a corpse analogy. ... Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the sight of it scared away most of the remaining mourners.
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@DebateArt.com
A few more suggestions:
- Change "Winner Selection" to "Arguments Only" (I can't find the post about it, but I recall there being a rule change to that effect... why not make it self explanatory?)
- Change "Four Points" to "Categorical" There are currently 7 points within it to be awarded; so clarity.
- Remove points awarded for tied categories (I don't know why it irks me, it just does).
- Allow formatting within votes (the options seen in the forums are fine).
- Allow formatting within user profiles.
- On formatting, adding a strike-through and and indent would be fantastic.
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Added a section on it to my profile.
Judging Paradigm:
1. Resolution is key: I pay close attention to the precise resolution and definitions, and am unswayed by attempts to move the goalpost to another topic.
2. Four Points > Winner Selection: I prefer categorical ballots, but will only award arguments unless another category is decisive.
3. I have ethical integrity: This means I will neither award points on debates to which I am too heavily biased, nor partake in vote-trading.
4. Presentation: I appreciate both conciseness and organization. If you hide your point within a jumbled wall of text with no clear goal, their importance will likely be diminished.
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@DrChristineFord
I was literally staring at one of them 20 minutes ago.
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@Imabench
I had ceased using the site before the spam got that bad, but I do remember a few months ago glancing to see that island site had flooded 6 pages of the main forum with their pity bait.
Of course to Juggle as long as spam-bots fake site activity, it will continue to be alive in their ledger.
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Think I found it. July 2016! They updated the code in such a way that disabled forfeited debates being able to end (and then decided it was too wonderful of a change to ever reverse): https://www.debate.org/forums/debate.org/topic/82207/2#2511128
We stayed in denial a long time, hoping it was temporary. But denial is just the first stage of grief... There were certainly other wounds, but that one is highly comparable to cardiac arrest.
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@Vader
I don't count Weekend At Bernie's II level shanahans to be living...
Anyway, what event in 2018 would you say killed it?
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@oromagi
Roy was the single most active voter. For that alone I will always hold some fondness toward him.
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@oromagi
I got to have a debate with Roy over Facebook... I was left unimpressed to say the least.
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I believe it is safe to say it is dead. Much like how finding a corpse which no longer resembles whom it had been after being largely consumed by cats, that person is indeed dead... But time of death? For DDO I am estimating sometime in 2017, but without a change log for their site (the update that removed debates being able to end?) it's a bit hard to narrow down.
For that matter, time of life? I believe the site came alive November 2008, as that is the oldest post which hasn't had necrophiliacs have a go at it.
Anyway, I've decided to polish up that guide a wrote for it a final time, and have a brief farewell message to a site which at one time had been so good to so many of us.
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Small thing, but I dislike how much space there is after a quotation. I wish it were like the space given preceding one.
Example:
Something someone else said
My reply... About three lines down, and already feeling disconnected.
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@Raltar
Not worried about it in terms of the vote, merely in making debates more enjoyable to read.
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Pretty short read (about 3 pages if printed), and should be an easy vote. I also wouldn't mind feedback on the formatting I use, to ease readability in future on this site.
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@bsh1
Might be ideal to have a hidden archive for deleted threads.
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1. Is the current MEEP process an acceptable framework for hosting these policy discussions?
Yea.
If anyone comes up with a better framework, they should suggest it. Until such time, MEEP seems to be a coherent system with which to work.
2. Should an opt-in voting standard which is less stringent than the default be implemented for debaters?
Yea.
I firmly believe debaters should be able to set the standards they wish for their debates.
3. Should moderation moderate select-winner votes using the argument standard currently applied to the 7-point system?
Yea.
I stand by the categorical allotments (I've posted elsewhere about slightly better categories to be used), but I remember on DDO when the select winner system was written such that a vote under it would have been technically valid for just S&G so long as it did not address any other category. Arguments are the most important piece, so it makes sense to have an easy to access option which just focuses on that.
4. Should moderation be able to suspend problematic votes prior to deleting the voting in order to give the voter to fix the vote before the vote is taken down?
Yay!
Actually I would prefer if votes are never outright deleted, but just have the scoring stricken from them.
5. Should there be an opt-in for stricter moderation standards? If yes, what should those standards look like?
Yea.
Honestly whatever increased standard the debaters in said debate desire.
Regarding voting... I firmly believe votes should never be held to a higher quality standard than the debates themselves. Meaning, a two paragraph debate does not warrant a full dissertation of a vote. There are times when little more than 'Pro did not address the topic, con did' are enough.
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@Polytheist-Witch
According to you being a rational person is a god complex. Good luck in life, you'll need it.
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@Polytheist-Witch
How many separate times has it been explained to you that running debate.org was not his job? He was just an unpaid volunteer. Yet that does not fit into your world view, so you disregard it as fake news.
Yet you "don't give two craps about [him] or that site," therefore you shouldn't care enough to repeatedly complain about either one.
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@Polytheist-Witch
Your confirmation bias is showing rather badly.
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I love the movie enough to have bought the Chrome Edition.
A couple things...
The lead actor in question is Tom Hardy (not Dan).
The villain Immortan Joe, is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played the lead villain Toecutter in the first Mad Max.
It is perhaps the only movie to ever be awarded 100 stars on the five-star scale (http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=mad_max_hell_yeah).
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Last time I glanced at that site, debate island spam filled six continuous pages of the main forum...
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Posting only due to being tagged in this thread...
I neither approve not disapprove of any of them. Were the poll to have a better setup, this would be the third option.
I will say they each obviously care about this site a lot, and that deserves some credit. Please cut them a little slack for whatever prompted this thread, they're flawed humans, just like the rest of us.
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I second #39.
Additionally, I would prefer a certain level of built in handling of these debate voting matters. Such as the debaters being able to outright disable categories individually (which would be very good for comedy debates, as they could just disable conduct and have the votes otherwise be tallied and moderated normally).
Further, I think with only slight refinement the ballot itself could fairly easily teach people about the voting standards, without it becoming particularly confusing when in use. Instead of just "Con Tie Pro," it could it could factor in the level of strictness the debaters opted for on a scale. I'm envisioning an extra option in each direction, such as as "Pro by strong margin, Pro, Tied or Indeterminate, Con, Con by strong margin." The voter increased BOP for by strong margin, should speak for itself. For a more lax debate, points would begin being rewarded at the lower margins, and with that lesser RFDs would be needed (while votebombs would stick out a little more clearly for moderation action).
As an extra bonus, this would further take this site away from resembling any other.
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In general I like the idea of badges to be earned...
For a major incentive, I would suggest beta access to upcoming features. IMO this would be to the benefit of everyone.
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@RationalMadman
These days more and more people have a problem with androcentrism, so even men are more likely to get their feelings hurt by the usual default, than by the pain of making a selection one line down from their usual.
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