On balance, the current voting moderation standards have been a net harm to DDO.

I look forward to a good exchange. FrameworkThe purpose of this website is to encourage intellectual discussion, read the opinions of others, and produce productive online debates. When it comes to judging a debate, we ought to prefer a system that encourages quality RFDs and quality votes. Because of the nature of debates, disagreement and personal bias often cloud our judgements. In order to prevent biased voting, voting standards ought to be in place to ensure that the voter read the debate and is casing a proper vote. Voting standards promote quality over quantityVoting on debate. org is a privilege not a right. One of the most viewed and voted on debate in DDO history was a debate between Contradiction and WriterDave on the topic, "Homosexual Acts are Immoral. " [1] The debate received 54 votes. The quality of those votes, however, were lacking. Of those 54 votes, 17 votes were vote bombs or counter vote bombs. The votes that were not necessarily vote bombs were still pretty bad. Here are a few examples:"There were a lot of arguments on the part of the Contradiction that didn't necessarily make too much sense, and overall, the CON had stronger rebuttals that swayed me more toward his position""Conduct and sources for con because of Pro's formation of arguments outside of the debate with his sources. Argument to Con because Pro failed to clearly establish a strong connection between function/purpose and morality. ""Good debate, but Pro failed to convince me his side was the better one. "These were the nature of votes prior to the current voting standard. The impact of vote bombs resulted in several members of debate. org leaving due to vote bombs. For example, InquireTruth was one of debate. org's most respected Theist debaters on the website. When izbo10 vote bombed his debate at the last minute, it caused InquireTruth to become upset and has since been inactive on debate. org. [2] Had the current voting standards been in place, izbo10 would have lost his voting privilege and his vote would have been removed. This could have saved debate. org from losing one of its most valued members at that time. Because of the way vote moderation is set up, it forces the voters to actually read the debate and analyze specific points of the debate. For debaters (such as myself) who wish to improve their skills, it is important for me to be able to get quality feedback. Personally, I'd take 2 or 3 excellent votes over 10 or 20 mediocre votes. Vote removals and account restrictions are easy to appealIn one instance where my vote was removed (it actually happened to be pro's debate), I failed to adequately explain the source point. I PM'd the moderators and asked how I can improve the vote so it would be sufficient. They gave me some tips and explained to me why my source point was lacking. I went back and and fixed my RFD and the moderators allowed it to stay. [3] The impact of this is that it gives voters room to improve their voting skills while also giving them a way to appeal their voting restriction. ConclusionOn a website such as debate. org, it is important to have voting standards to prevent vote bombs and from people to vote for a side simply because they agreed with that person prior to the debate. The current vote standards promote quality over quantity, force the voters to actually read the debate and analyze the specific points, and prevents voting based upon personal bias. With that, we have seen the quality of votes improve on debate. org. These standards have helped to keep me as a member and encouraged me to continue debating. Thus on balance, I believe that the current voting standards have been a net benefit to debate. org. The resolution is negated. Sources1. . http://bit.ly...;2. . http://bit.ly...;3. . http://bit.ly...;