The Voting System For Debate.org Has Many Avoidable Mistakes

Thank you for responding so quickly. This is the first debate that I have started and I’m sure it will be a stimulating one. There are seven mistakes/errors/issues that I have found in the voting system for thisvery website. My first six issues have to do with the outcome of who is declared the winner, and the last one deals with logical issues involving time and voting. 1- The first two questions in the voting criteria do not have any points, so it does not matter how one answers them. It will have no effect on who is declared the winner. The first two questions are irrelevant. 2- The next two questions have points but are still irrelevant as to who won the debate, so there is no need for them to be there. I think that grammar and conduct is important, and so I think that debaters should be penalized in some way if they have poor grammar or poor conduct (perhaps by having it stated for them at the top of the debate when finished) but it has no relevance to who won the debate. 3- The question of having the most reliable sources is problematic. What if one debater does not use any sources? What if he does not need them? What if he uses pure logic to prove his contention? Suppose one debater uses unreliable source and the other debater does not use any sources (but needs to). Which is worse, using bad sources or using no sources (when they are needed)? What if onedebater uses reliable sources but they do not support his topic and the other debater uses no sources but proves his topic? How does a voter escape this dilemma? This question should be scrapped for these reasons. And how would a voter go about determining if the sources are reliable or not? This might be extremely time-consuming would involve in depth research beyond the debate itself. The only relevant question in the criteria is the fifth one, which is “Who had the most convincing arguments”? 4- Under the voting criteria it says “reasons for your voting decision- required”. But this does not stop some voters for voting without providing reasons. Also, even when the voters do provide reasons, that does not mean the reasons will be good (read the reason provided from the guy who voted against me for my first debate to see what I mean). There is apparently no third party to enforce that votersprovide reasons for their votes and that their reasons are good, so lack of reasons or bad reasons can pass. 5- Voters are allowed to vote for themselves, but voters should either not be allowed to vote for themselves or should be forced to vote for themselves. Anything else results in unfairness or irrelevancy. Let me explain. There are several scenarios that can occur under the rule that voters may vote for themselves. 1- Both voters vote for themselves, in which case their votes cancel each otherout. 2- One voter votes for himself while the other does not, and this creates the win for the voter who voted for himself, in which case this is unfair. 3- One voter votes for himself while the other does not, and this does not affect the outcome of the debate, in which case the vote was pointless. So theself-voting either is pointless or unfair. By the way, I would not fault a debater (debater 1) for voting for himself if his opponent (debater 2) voted for himself first and this vote was costing debater 1 the win. But the problem would not arise in the first place if voters were either forced to vote for themselves or denied the right to vote for themselves. The same problem obviously does not affect larger scale things like political voting. 6- One of the things an instigator of a debate must decide is how long they would like the voting period to be. When I went to start this debate, there was no option that says “the voting period will not end”. Yet when I stumbled across a debate entitled “Acronyms should have a period mark after each letter, instead of there just being the letters”, under the “cast my vote” box was a statement that said “the voting period for this debate does not end.” I have two complaints here. One, why was the instigator of this debate able to create an endless voting period but I was not (not that I want to, because I don’t and my next reason reveals why), and two, endless voting periods make voting pointless, because no one will ever officially be declared the winner. 7- Even after the voting period has ended and either the instigator or the contender has been declared the winner, the section under the debaters may still say “winning” or “losing”. It uses the present tense, but if the voting period has already ended, and one debater has been declared the winner, how can a debater still be in the process of winning or losing? This goes the other way too. When the voting period is still going on, and one side is winning while the other side is losing, the “debate statistics” on the profile pages of the debaters will add a number both to the “won” section for the winning side and to the “lost” section for the loser, even before they have actually won. In conclusion, it is clear that the voting system for this website has several issues. I am eagerly awaiting baggins’ response to my contentions. I hope that his old age and long flight from Middle Earth to India do not hinder his debating abilities.