DDO should keep a voting system with multiple categories

Thanks Roy. I'll make my case in this round. I. Real world debate Real world competitive debate ballots leave the judge with a single decision for determining the win, "The better debating was done by____". This system should be preferred for two reasons: First, it's the tried and true method used by every competitive debate league. If having multiple categories was preferable, surely it would be implemented or even considered in a real world debate league. To win, Roy has to prove that there is some compelling distinction between online debate and face to face debate or else you should vote Con by default because the people who actually know and care about debate and compete at a much higher level than DDO (real life debate leagues) implement a one man one vote system. We should look to debate, not figure skating, to determine which system is of greater merit. Secondly, one vote for one voter is better in that it better represents the competitive nature of debate. Debate is adversarial and combative, what distinguishes a formal debate from a forum is the selection of a winner, and winning has to be all or nothing. If a judge decides Roy wins, then I cannot win "part" of the ballot, either his arguments are better or mine are.This all or nothing interpretation also seems to match Juggles vision for the site--debaters are ranked by ELO and ELO factors in only win-loss, not the closeness of the debate. At the end of the day a 1 point loss is the same as a 100 point blowout. To better match the ranking system, the voting system should turn to a one judge, one vote system. The current system is confusing--it's not clear when a judge should award conduct or sources to one side. Should the judge try to fill out every aspect of the template and look for even the slightest rational to vote on each category or should the judge only vote based off which categories are a clear blowout? It's left up to the judges preference and, consequently, some judges vote using only on arguments, some vote on everything and still others vote on only certain categories. The impact of this is that some judges votes are worth more than others, which can completely skew results. This is also unfair, there's no compelling reason why one judge's vote should be worth more than another just because one is uncomfortable with the idea of voting on certain categories and others aren't. In his debate on this same subject[1] bluesteel explains a debate he had where he actually picked up more ballots overall (11-9), but still lost the debate because the people voting for his opponent allocated more points. I doubt this is uncommon, and this is obviously a flaw in the system that would be easily solved by the principle of one man, one vote. II. The current system gives bad voters a blank check It's no secret that DDO has some bad voters. A one judge, one vote system would mitigate this. Many experienced judges vote only on the arguments point. Part of this reason is because many of the best voters here used to debate in real life, which uses only one category to determine the win that is analogous to the more convincing arguments section on DDO. I know that for me, as a former debater, the idea of voting on sources and conduct separate from arguments makes is extremely disconcerting because it's completely contrary to the experience I've had with debate. In real world debate sources and conduct factor into the judge's decision, making arguments without any sources and being rude to your opponents makes you much less compelling, but at the end of the day the judge has only one vote. By distinct contrast, many people inexperienced in debate have no issue with voting on every category, and as a result their votes are worth more despite being often being of lesser quality. Even if having a template is preferable on paper, I should still win the debate because my proposal is more similar to the type of debate real world debaters experienced and they make up a large proportion of the site and an even larger proportion of active voters. The current system encourages strategic voting. Airmax has repeatedly stated that for a vote to be considered valid, they need only to explain each category they award[2]. This means that someone who is blindly partisan or wants their friend to win can easily justify giving them more points. Biased voting on such points as sources and grammar is *ridiculously* easy. Let's say that at the end of the debate, Roy has slightly fewer sources than I did. If someone really wanted me to win, he could add two points to my total by simply counting the sources and saying I had more and declaring the sources going to Con. If however Roy had more sources, that same voter could simply abstain from voting on sources. Even if Roy demolishes me on sources and deserves the points, a voter might still not give him the sources vote or give them to me for some half baked reason because there's no clear framework established by the site as to *when* a voter needs to vote on each category. The result of the current system is a perverse incentive where if someone really wants the side they vote for to win, their voting behavior will be different. I think I'm a pretty fair voter and have debated and judged real world debate for years, and even I feel tempted to make my votes heavier if the side I think that deserves to win is not winning even with my arguments vote because everyone is biased to think the side they think won actually did. It's a prisoners dilemma, the best outcome is for everyone to vote fairly but since we all know some voters will fudge their votes to add more points, the dominant strategy is to do the same which encourages bad voting among even otherwise good voters. This is a problem that will exist inherently in any system with multiple categories.A single biased voter who "justifies" his four non-argument points and votes on arguments as well will far outweigh a fair voter who spent hours analyzing only the arguments. For that matter, a voter need not even vote on arguments and give hasty explanations for the non-argument categories and his vote will still outweigh the fair judge. Even if the weighing of the points is changed, a biased voter can still add some points to his side without even reading the debate by skimming for spelling errors from the opposing side or counting the sources used, and the worst part is that there would be no basis for reporting the vote as long as they justified the categories they awarded. Judges shouldn't be allowed to have *legitimate* votes of any size without reading the debate, and a system that allows this is a flawed system. Roy may argue that having a single vote based on arguments might be even worse for vote bombing, but this is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, justifying an arguments vote takes more work than justifying the others because the voter has to explicitly reference the arguments made. This has the advantage of forcing the voter to at least read the debate. Moreover, it's a lot easier to tell a votebomb or an unfair decision through their decision on arguments because they're more likely to make a blunder when describing the flow of arguments. Secondly the one man one vote system doesn't create the perverse incentives that the current system does, as such it automatically avoids a huge subset of ideological voting that occurs in the status quo. Thirdly, even if someone votebombs with a shoddy vote in my system that is just good enough to not get deleted, their vote will *always* be countered by a good voters vote because they are all weighed the same. In the status quo if someone makes an ideological vote that just barely passes muster they're also likely to make their votes heavier and their vote can potentially take *two* or more good voters votes to outweigh it. The resolution is negated. A one man, one vote system is preferable. Sources:1. http://tinyurl.com...2. http://tinyurl.com...