m93samman should rejoin debate.org as an active member

I would like to welcome m93samman back to DDO, even if it may be only for this debate--I sincerely hope it’s not that short-term. Con is from a different era of DDO than I, but I do remember him from my early days on the site and he’s on my friends list, so I guess we interacted. I think we can obviously take it from the existence of this debate and the fact that Con felt compelled to revisit this site, that he is at least open to returning to the site as an active member. Furthermore, Con's significant past participation implies that he used to find this site a worthy focus of his time and energy. These two factors give me hope that he will be swayed to rejoin DDO. The central features of the site 3-5 years ago--debating and forums--are essentially the same now and are still the main aspects of the site. The main difference, as Con alludes to, is the users. Many of the older members are gone, and many new ones have come in. I would not condemn Con for missing his old debate colleagues, or for feeling that the site is not quite the same without them around; most members would feel the same. However, there’s little inherently better about one generation of users compared to another; we just have a bias towards those we’ve known from the start. There’s nothing wrong with such a bias; but it does mean we have to give other members a chance. DDO currently has many great members that I don’t have the character space to list. Most of them are strangers to Con, which probably makes Con reluctant towards reentering the community. That’s understandable, but I would remind Con that the users he got to know 5 years ago were also complete strangers at first--the site itself was completely foreign to him when he joined. The users now are neither better nor worse than the users of 5 years ago. It was rewarding and worthwhile for Con 5 years ago to enter the community and participate in debates, voting and forum posting, and it would still be beneficial today. DDO is still alluring in all the same ways as it used to be; the members are just different. Also, there are some older members who are either currently active or drop in and out from time to time. For example: Raisor, Roy, Mirza, Bluesteel, OreEle, Badger (now AnDoctuir), PCP, FREEDO, Tvellalot, Danielle, Nonentity (now Tulle), and Maikuru. If I recall correctly, Con left around 3 years ago at the same time many other members were leaving. The state of the site back then was in fairly poor condition. If that is what contributed to Con leaving I’d argue that in many ways the site is much better now than then. One of the main reasons the site was in such a bad state then was the lack of moderation; now that is not an issue at all and Juggle have been very active in modifying and adding site features. I’ll list a few below since they make DDO even more fun: Leaderboards: In the past, the DDO community almost unanimously supported an Elo leaderboard to replace the old one. Now Elo ranking is an integrated part of the site, providing a much more accurate, sophisticated, and interesting way of ranking members. Juggle have also added a forums leaderboard, a voting leaderboard, and a judge leaderboard. Voting: Juggle have added settings for voting on debates, such as an Elo floor for voting, preselected judges for the debate, and “select winner” voting instead of the 7-point system. Furthermore, the number of votes cast is listed on members profiles, a voting leaderboard is in place, and votes can be reported. The current president of DDO, Bladerunner, has a platform that focuses much on voting; he’s even set up a committee to address voting issues. In other words, much more emphasis is put on good voting now than before. It is far more fun to debate when voting isn’t an issue. The point of mentioning these features is that, in at least some ways, DDO is even more enjoyable than it used to be. I hope I’ve swayed Con at least a little. Perhaps participating in this debate will help renew his interest.