That filling out the big issues on one's DDO profile is beneficial

Finding Friends and RivalsI'm going to agree that people do (albeit rarely) find people to debate with using the big issues. But imagine, for a moment, that there were no big issues. If you desperately wanted to debate whether life begins at conception without knowing where everybody stood on abortion, you wouldn't scan through DDO member's profiles wondering who might hold the opposing view (which is a silly solution anyway, because there would be plenty of people willing to be a devil's advocate). Rather, you'd simply post an open challenge. If you didn't want to post an open challenge, you would wait until somebody else posted an open challenge and accept that. Using open challenges to find debate partners is better for two reasons. First, it exposes you to everybody on the site, including new members who might not know anybody on here yet. This is good because it improves the social aspect of the site, and provides a better experience for new members, who might otherwise lose interest and leave. Second, it's easier. Rather than going through a whole bunch of profiles to see who you'd like to debate against, and then typing out your challenge, with an open challenge you simply type out your challenge, saving a step. Sometimes, of course, you'll want to challenge a specific debater because you know them and want to test yourself against them - that's why private challenges exist. But if you know them, then what's the point in having a big issues box reminding you. Finding people to debate with is not the same as finding friends and rivals, making this whole point a bit of a non-sequiter. I'd say that if you choose your friends or rivals based on whether they believe the same as you, you live a sad life. Even if the big issues accurately reflected whether you believe similar things to somebody else (which it doesn't) it doesn't provide a good basis for choosing friendships. Even people who believe weird things can be friendly. I disagree with RoyLatham on many things, but that doesn't mean we start acting rivalously towards one another. For sure, having friends of different ideologies means arguments ensue - but there's nothing wrong with a polite, respectful argument about a serious point. If people don't want to have arguments, then I question what they're doing on a debate site. My opponent finishes with the point that without the big issues, people have no clue who believes what. The big issues don't solve that problem because some people like to lie on their big issues because they like to play devil's advocate on particular issues. Increasing ActivityAgain, finding debaters whom you disagree with is not a problem solved by the big issues - open challenges will probably yield a disagreeing debater. My opponent's assertion that people are more likely to take debates where they know whether the other debater agrees or disagrees with them doesn't really hold water, because even if there are a small number that check everybody's profile and have a vendetta against those without filled-out big issues, there is a still greater number that don't really care. Random messages can be generated by big issues, but are usually generated by debates. If I argue for a big issue in a debate, I'll likely get tons of messages and comments about that. If I update my stance on a big issue, the vast majority of people will ignore it. If people weren't so distracted by the big issues, perhaps they'd have more time to dedicate to discussing debates. This in turn is often the catalyst for even more debates. I remember the second debate I had on this site was generated in precisely this way. Debates are also better for discussing than big issues because there's more characters in a debate than a message, allowing you to present your view more fully. If somebody wants to present their view against yours, then hey presto, you've got yourself a new debate. Big issues limit the range of debatesMy opponent begins by using the "finding friends and rivals" argument and repeating it for two paragraphs. Then he presents a new example - this very debate. Since this debate is part of a tournament, it isn't a good example - most of the time debaters don't randomly scan random users' profiles, looking for things to debate with them. It so happens that I would argue on either side of ANY challenge, and I think that's the true test of skill in a debater. For tournaments, that's what should determine victory - not who has the most facts to back up their own position, but who can defend an arbritrary position better than their opponent. Real life debating is built on this premise. However, since this site doesn't even offer any real tournament functionality, that should not be used as the reason for using features like the big issues. While it is true that challenging one's beliefs can change them in extreme cases, it is much more frequent when one has to argue and appreciate the position of the other side. I presented loads of analysis last round as to why this is, and my opponent doesn't really engage with it. Sure, DA debates aren't caused by a lack of big issues, but if finding friends and rivals is the point of filling out big issues as my opponent asserts, then filling them out will mean you won't exactly be getting many DA challenges. And if you are, then that only proves the big issues don't work for finding friends and rivals. BI do not lead to constructive debatesIt's great to see my opponent re-using the source that I provided for her in the comments. On past issues, my opponent does not engage with the fact that context is everything, as I showed last round. Next time you can choose to elect a republican, the world will be very different from when George Bush was elected. Seeing republicans in George Bush terms is thus both counterintuitive and wasteful in that election. While some vague issues are being removed, the new issues are mostly equally vague. "Animal rights" for instance - which animal? What rights? "Torture" - what sort? To whom? By whom? These are all vague issues. My opponent argues that "not saying" is equivalent to "do not care" for new debaters. Most new debaters don't fully fill out their profile, however (and who could blame them - how could they know whether to trust this site? ), and thus are unlikely to care about any given user's big issues completion rate. And even if they do create challenges, that doesn't make the debate constructive. Better to create open challenges than waste time completing non-constructive debates. My opponent also argues my point about interpretation of the issues, claiming it helps show debates in a new light. That's true, but that only proves that big issues don't accurately show "friends and rivals" as my opponent calls them. An open challenge on a broad issue could have yielded exactly the same insight, making the use of the BI in no way better. BI are brokenMy opponent claims Juggle wants to fix the issues around presentation of the big issues. In fact they have shown no interest in this - they are simply introducing some new ones and retiring some old ones, with no consideration for the issues themselves. If my opponent agrees that Juggle listens to members like Koopin, she also agrees that Juggle won't assume members have lost interest in face of a clear protest. Showing support of the BI gives Juggle the dreaded "it works so don't fix it" mentality we all want to avoid. ConclusionPlease bear in mind that my opponent retains the burden of proof in this debate. She needs to show why filling out the big issues provides some benefit to the site that other features do not already provide sufficiently. Furthermore, she needs to show that doing fewer devil's advocate debates, as happens with the big issues, is not bad, and that fixing the big issues is not necessary, plus that the big issues aren't even conductive to good debates. Good luck for next round!