DDO should only have a "more convincing arguments" point

== My case == 1) DDO should mirror real life debate In competitive debate at the high school and college level, there are no "conduct, grammar, or sources" points. Each judge"s ballot contains a space that says, "The team [or debater] who did the better debating was ___________." The judge is supposed to reward the entire debate to the team or single debater who had the more convincing arguments. To the extent that conduct, grammar, and sources matter, they are simply factored into the decision about which side was more convincing. If a debater speaks incoherently, ungrammatically, or mumbles nonsense, that debater is not going to be considered more convincing for those judges. If a debater has egregious conduct, that will factor into the judges" decision. I have personally witnessed 3 out of 5 judges vote *against* the better team for a conduct violation (being rude in cross-examination). This was in the final round of the state qualifiers, and the team that lost failed to qualify for state. That same team went on to place second at state the next year. This was a really good team that lost on conduct. So it does happen. And even less extreme forms of rudeness factor into the decision. But usually, a violation has to be extreme for the clearly better team [or debater] to lose. Lastly, sources play most directly into whether the argument is convincing. Evidence is used heavily in competitive debate. If one team has vastly superior evidence, they almost always win, even if the other team has much better rhetoric. This is because debate is about the facts. To any competitive debate judge, it would seem crazy to think that you could award "sources" to one team and "better argument" to another team because the two are so inextricably intertwined. There are two impacts to this argument. First, a lot of the best debaters on this site debated competitively in high school or college, so a site that mirrors their real-world experience is more likely to keep them active and on the site (rather than jumping ship to a site more like larzetheloser"s). In addition, current and former competitive debaters offer the best potential source of smart, new users. If Juggle advertised the site better to high school debaters, it could get a ton of these users to test their arguments here. Some of them are really smart and would contribute greatly to this community. But because judging on the site is so weird and does not seem to resemble their experience of debate, many of them leave or fail to ever start a debate. To appeal to this audience, DDO must mirror their real world experience. The second impact is that having only a "most convincing arguments" point is more real world. When Obama debates Romney in a presidential debate, viewers decide on who wins based on who made more compelling arguments. They don"t judge the debate based on conduct and sources points. For DDO to be a useful learning experience, it should mirror how a debate would work in the real world. 2) Having more than just one "convincing argument" point encourages vote bombing and other more subtle forms of cognitive bias in voting. My most frustrating of my 3 losses on this site was my loss to innomen because I ultimately got more votes than he did (11-9) and the better debaters on the site (like Danielle, Roy, Raisor, Maikuru, thett) all voted for me. However, the problem is that the people who voted against me really wanted me to lose so they awarded more than 3 points, whereas the people voting for me only awarded the "argument" point as is site protocol in close debates between established members when there is no conduct violation. But some of innomen"s supporters, such as Mirza, wanted him to win so badly that they engaged in strategic voting behavior. If you want the full story, see my debate here against Mirza (where I proved he voted strategically at the last second just so I would lose by exactly one point). [1] As another example, see my recent debate against Garret. [2] While that debate was in the early voting period, most of the people voting for me were only awarding 3 points, but the people for Garret (at his urging via PM) were awarding him sources and conduct too. So it made it very hard for me to catch up to him (without getting almost twice as many people to vote for me as for him) because the people voting for him were awarding double the points than the people voting for me. I hope that the above two examples don"t come off as a "woe is me" complain-fest. The point I am making here is that if there is only one argument point, then one voter who vote bombs, engages in strategic behavior, or is influenced somewhat by their prior beliefs to vote in conformity with those beliefs [cognitive bias] is easily countered by another voter. However, if someone who has a hidden agenda or cognitive bias can award up to 7 points, then it can take up to three people awarding only "argument" points to counter that single person. Thus, giving more points to potentially unscrupulous or even subtly biased voters is a bad idea. More points = more power. Power corrupts. Absolutely power corrupts absolutely. Inherently, giving more discretion to judges in awarding points gives more room for abuse. 3) One person, one vote In my debate with Garret and when I debated innomen, I had a few of my judges contact me during the voting period and express amazement that I was losing or that the debate was so close and saying they wish they could go back and award me the "sources" point. However, none of them did, and I encouraged them not to because doing so is unethical. But these judges seemed perturbed by the idea that somehow their votes counted "less" than other people"s because they had voted "customarily" by awarding only argument points when sources were close, whereas people who felt strongly about the other side felt no need to constrain themselves. Ultimately, this different custom in awarding points means that not everyone"s vote is created equal. People who fail to follow the custom of only awarding argument points or that are so biased by their own personal beliefs towards one side that they try to award as many points as possible are counted as if they are better or more worthy voters than the people who adhere to the 3-point custom. There is a natural desire to want to award as many points as possible to the side you believe won. And people stretch and find ways to award more points when the side that they want to win is losing. But this isn"t fair. One person, one vote. That"s fair. In contrast, if someone is willing to bend the rules, their morals, or their logic to award 6 points (S&G, sources, argument) instead of 3 (argument), then their vote counts double. I would note that it is really easy to justify an S&G and sources vote for the side that you voted for. The RFD simply says, "I liked ___"s arguments more and this was partly because his sources were better. Also, ____ [other side] made a few spelling mistakes. Argument, sources, and S&G to ____." Given how easy this is to justify, anyone could make their vote count for double with minimal work. (4) Being edgy or funny is overly punished Because the conduct vote is going to be used by anyone who agrees strongly with your opponent, it is hard to make jokes or be edgy because it will cost you conduct for those voters. For example, I got docked conduct by the voters for Garret in the above-referenced debate for making a crack about how Garret pulled a number out of his "rectum," even though the number really was something that he just assumed into existence. In competitive policy debate, jokes like this are fine and happen all the time. The jokes are usually to lighten the mood and make the debate more fun to read. Strict enforcement of the conduct point leads to vanilla debates with neither side really trying to crack any jokes for fear of losing conduct. This isn"t the result we want. == Rebuttal == My opponent makes a key assumption that is wrong. He says, "I will assume that Grammar, Conduct, and Sources would NOT be addressed at all if Convincing Arguments were the only category." However, I explained above how each of these three categories affect "convincing argument" and how judges can award the argument point to the other side for egregious violations of readability, conduct, and sources [such as completely fabricating a source]. But this should only happen in egregious cases. Usually the person with the better argument deserves to win. Grammar: my opponent claims he debated people with awful grammar, but I challenge him to prove that he lost to any of those people on arguments. If someone"s argument is unreadable, in 99% of cases they are not going to win the "convincing argument" point, so the grammar point is redundant and is only there for strategic voting. My opponent"s claim disproves itself because the grammar point exists now and yet people still post arguments with terrible grammar. Therefore, it fails to act as much incentive. Good grammar generally comes from inherently good writers. Bad grammar generally comes from inherently bad writers. Sources: my opponent claims he would not use sources if not for the existence of the point. However, if he were ever to debate me on the Iraq War or Obamacare, I would most definitely use lots of sources and would challenge any and all of his claims that were unsourced. This is just good debating. Competitive debaters constantly challenge their opponent"s sources (in order to win best argument), even though no sources points are awarded at the end. The most common phrase you will hear in a policy debate round is, "On my opponent"s first point, 1) this evidence is TERRIBLE. Read it after the round. It is awful. It doesn"t say what my opponent says it does." Sources points are redundant with "convincing argument" and allowing them only opens up more points for strategic voting [especially since sources are worth 66% as much as arguments]. Conduct: this is empirically denied by real life debate. Those debates don"t devolve into cussing matches simply because there is no conduct point. There is only so much rudeness that judges will tolerate before it distracts from the debate and loses that debater the entire debate. In addition, the single conduct point is not much of a deterrent now. Most debaters assume that they will win on arguments and sources. [Seriously, everyone thinks they won every one of their debates, until the voting period closes.] Thus, a single conduct point is not much deterrent for someone who thinks they will win 5 points for sources and argument. Conduct points only matter in extremely close debates. And extremely close debates are the ones that are most likely to have strategic voting behavior because a single point can alter the entire outcome. People have more incentive to make up bogus or conflated reasons to award conduct to a particular side in close debates so that their votes "count more." Thus, the risk that conduct points will be used strategically substantially outweighs the small chance that the single conduct point is the only thing standing between us and total chaos and anarchy in debates. In general, respectful members have good conduct. And in general, disrespectful members - like izbo10, have bad conduct. Disrespectful members don"t obey or care about the rules. A single conduct point is no deterrent to them. [1] http://www.debate.org... [2] http://www.debate.org...