The opinions and polls sections of DDO are broken, nobody can use them, so yeah. People can only use forums and debates currently. DDO is basically a giant bug.
In the debates section, I've seen some pretty terrible ("Black rape victims who complain should be forced to work in the sex industry"), and stupid ("morality= survival truth" and basically everything by vi_Spex, "is it gay for a guy to wear girl clothes"). The debates section is extremely low quality.
I also rarely see any debates getting voted on. Infact the majority of debates get abandoned before the voting period. The ones that get into the voting period? They usually don't get votes and when they do it's usually by the debators friends who they had waiting to vote for them, or they just get removed instantly because "I don't like how you did this little little little little little thing blah blah blah" and alot of the times, people won't even try to win debates by arguing and doing research but instead by getting their friends to vote for them as already said, or reporting opposing votes.
I used to be friends with someone who organized vote bombings all the time. Also, the most viewed debate on the entire site is a troll debate about a tv show character.
Most of the activity on the site comes from the forums section. Forums that aren't just spam and games such as Philosophy lack activity. In more active forums that aren't just spam and games, it's usually the same exact people in them.
And you know about what I said about whiteflame? In general, the moderation is corrupt. Head moderator airmax will ban people for very small things while allowing active trolls to roam freely.
Debate.org is dying, and now many top members are abandoning their accounts. It went from actual discussion to a bunch of trolls and spammers.
However there is still one thing good about debate.org: The account deactivation screen.
Debra AI Prediction
Arguments
Anyways, starting with the users. There's nothing wrong with vi_spex. I actually like his argument style, though he isn't able to clearly show his views with how he's doing it. And there are a few people who are racist. But in no way is DebateIsland a prohibition of this. User awaketowhere (backwardseden on DDO) came here and started hating, so there's nothing saying other bad users are unable to make accounts.
On to your argument about votes. I agree that there's a lack of votes, but who's to say there won't be a lack when this site starts 1v1 debating. And you obviously aren't familiar with the fact that votes often vote because the voter just believes that person has the correct side. That's where whiteflame comes in. He looks into a reported vote and determines how their Reason For Decision judges the debate. Who had the better arguments? Why are these arguments sufficient enough to overpower the other side's? If you take the time to actually look at the votes, you can see that they suck. Which vote would you want your opponent to have: "Debater A had such good arguments!", or "Debater A showed that abortion isn't really murder, as they've proved that the actual time of a human's life comes after the fetus becomes a baby. Debater B didn't touch on this subject, just resorting to random quotes which didn't support his side." Believe it or not, a lot of votes are more like the first example. Even if a voter voted for me, if they don't actually talk about my arguments, I report it so whiteflame can examine it.
Even though I have an account on DebateIsland, I did not 'switch' sites. I still very much like Debate.org and I'm still loyal to this day. Also, there's no point in advertising a site inside of the site you're advertising.
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I cannot speak to your preference for 1-1 debating, and cannot comment how that would work here if available. However, the way it's implemented at DDO is not working well. I personally prefer casual formally as it provides flexibility and you still have polls for voting. Actually winning or losing is not what's important to me, but I am more interested in quality of debating, which is mostly lacking at DDO.
I agree with @SilverishGoldNova
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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http://www.debate.org/debates/We-should-cut-all-funding-to-NASA/1/
And they automatically bug the match, ending in what's essentially a tie, he's an advertiser?
Scientific method: noun; a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about.
Wayne Dyer
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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I feel the site is a fresh change. The lack of formal debate formats is not permanent, I'm sure, but I for one don't miss it. The voting method is broken on DDO. If you were lucky enough to get anyone to vote on your debate, chances are they would be removed due to infraction of the sites voting restrictions. On the opposite side of the spectrum, getting a non-biased vote on a refuted truism debate was near impossible, most of the refuted points were ignored.
Scientific method: noun; a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about.
Wayne Dyer
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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On a side note the moderator of Debate Island really cares about his site, I messaged him about being excited about using the site and he responded, and asked me if I had any glitches to report, and asked me to message him if I needed anything.
On the contrary, the DDO moderators, are so about that hands-off approach, that when I first joined I was told that they abandoned the site.
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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The polls were down for 5 months, and now it seems they're down again along with opinion polls.
It is impossible for the voting period to end now
Voting is always glitched
So are messages
It takes forever to load a page.
It frequently goes down temporarily.
With all of this in mind, combined with the terrible community, it's obvious that debate.org members are gonna switch to debateisland. I wouldn't be surprised if it shuts down soon. Who knows how much time until all of the members that are still on the site are just trolls and spammers, and then the site shuts down?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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Back at you. Yes. The most active users were the worst when I left.
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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My prediction for them is that many of their users will leave, leaving them with nothing but spammers and trolls, and then eventually, it will become so buggy the most basic and essential features will become unusable.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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Scientific method: noun; a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about.
Wayne Dyer
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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I think both debate.org and debateisland are great debating websites.
By the way, I started using debateisland because of someone recommending it in debate.org. Was it you?
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6M-VgXHwwdpJarhyQYapBz-kRc6FrgdOLFAd3IfYz8/edit
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my concern with 1-1 formats, is that often people don't follow through and forfeit debates,which is frustrating.
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I am a switchover from DDO with a DDO account that I rarely use, I also wanted to shed some light onto the matter, because although DDO is disappearing, there does seem to be some general interest in the site. Yes, there were some trash debates, including one that I was in called "Should families go to die after eating their children" Roast Game. However, it only takes a few rational users to accept these kind of debates to raise some interest. When I accepted the debate and had 2 rounds to exploit his theses's, I recieved over 47 comments and 237 views. People truthfully enjoy seeing pointless debates in which a voice of reason attempts to exploit the views of a person whose mind is not in the right place! On DI, there are a TON more rational people, which is really good for the community, and the debate structures are much better than DDO, but that doesn't make DDO bad. I really enjoyed the opinions / polls section that didn't require debate and simply asked for opinion yes or no on an issue presented. I personally think this is what made the site good at its prime, as these opinions could rocket off of other users as well and spark debates of the same nature.
It is also quite obvious that DDO is lacking in moderator activity and debate quality, for reasons mentioned by SilverishGoldNova, but most users are rational and love good debates, the problem is that the debates that actually make sense are not viewed as much compared to the debates that are outlandinsh in nature.
Finally, I do have a solution to both sides for the voting system. In both accounts, you can leave reasons for your selection of your person, and while organized vote bombing is a problem, winning isn't everything in a debate. It is about sharing views through an objective spectrum and finding out more about the views of others by bouncing arguments off each other. If a person vote bombs you, know that your argument was so good that they had to vote bomb you to keep you from winning, because in that case, you had already won. If a person forfeits you, I would suggest stopping the debate and adding a 3 point bonus for the person who didn't forfeit and vote from there, that way there is still a winner, but it is heavily in favor of the person who didn't forfeit.
Thanks for your time, and I am loving seeing this community thrive.
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