That the User Known as RoyLatham Should be Awarded with (At least) One Free Win

Thanks for the opening argument, 9space. Since BOP is shared, I will only be using this round for my opening argument as well. For my case, I am just going to be pointing out a few pertinent problems with Pro's proposal to award RoyLatham a free win. 1. A free win does not actually do justice Pro seems to believe that by awarding Roy a free win, it will somehow make up for his unjust loss. However, the number on Roy's "debates lost" section of his profile will still read "15" regardless of whether or not he receives a free win. All that will happen with a free win is that his "debates won" number would go up from its current 221 to 222, his win ratio would go up from its current 93.64% to 93.67%, and his elo would go up from its current high 7700s range to the low 7800s range. The common characteristic between all of those changes is that they are virtually insignificant because of how high the original numbers were already. Such tiny changes to Roy's stats are going to do nothing to make up for the debate he lost. The issue at hand is not about the effect losing that debate had on his debate record, as Pro seems to believe, but that he unfairly lost that particular debate. The *only* way to properly remedy this is to alter the outcome of that specific debate itself; since that seems to be impossible, nothing can be done about it. Giving Roy a free win does not solve the problem at all; instead, it just creates more problems of its own.... 2. His opponent would have to suffer a 'free loss' Naturally, if Roy were to receive a 'free win', then whoever his opponent is would be receiving a 'free loss', which is completely unjustifiable. By definition, a *free* win would entail that, theoretically, Roy could simply forfeit every round and still win; his opponent would have an exactly 0% chance of winning no matter how well he does or how poorly Roy does. This is blatantly unfair to his opponent, and represents a fundamental flaw with the entire idea of a 'free win'. 3. Everyone has a few "unjust" losses Almost all the active debaters on the site have at least one loss they would consider to be unjust. I, UchihaMadara, personally think that the majority of the votes against me on my debate with lannan13 regarding the Military Draft are worthy of deletion. Bluesteel lost his debate with Innomen by a single point, mostly many of the votes against him were votebombs with no RFDs whatsoever (allowed under ancient DDO voting). Popculturepooka lost his debate with Sargon only because the notoriously-biased atheist voter Sagey voted against him for reasons largely unrelated to the actual content of the debate. If DDO's moderation were to award RoyLatham a free win, in the interest of member equality, they would be obligated to allow *everyone* who believes they have lost a debate because of vote bombs to appeal for the same to be done for them; this would not only be hugely inconvenient for the mods, but if we take into account the complication detailed in point 2, it becomes entirely unfeasible. 4. 'Free wins' are meaningless The significance of winning a debate is that the victorious side was able to use their debating skills to present a more convincing case to the voters. By handing out a win for free (which, by definition, entails a lack of labor or effort) the "win" completely loses its significance because there was no skill involved in achieving it at all. Awarding 'free wins' is the equivalent of giving out medals made of styrofoam at the Olympics for participation-- it makes the medals basically worthless and is just overall a nonsensical idea. " In conclusion, we see that awarding RoyLatham a free win does not solve the problem at hand at all, that doing so would come with a number of complications, and that the concept of a 'free win' itself is fundamentally flawed. The resolution is negated.