Debate.org should not have only conduct-votes

This debate topic is inspired by recent events transpiring in the Debate.org forum. This issue was inspired by this thread: http://www.debate.org...And is currently facing under review for policy moderation change based on a democratical vote here: http://www.debate.org...Several other relevant threads to this topic can be here: http://www.debate.org...http://www.debate.org...http://www.debate.org...For some brief framework, this debate is specifically centralized around Debate.org's community. With that said, I am going to be focusing sources on debates and forums relative to the community, entirely internal to the website. The BOP should be shared. I asked that no semantics are used in this debate, or any other form of manipulation varied loophole. It should be understood what this topic is about based on the threads above, and what each of the debaters positions are. In other words, don't abuse the resolution phrasing in order to steal an easy debate win. This is a serious topic that directly effects the debating community, and both debaters should be upheld to respect the nature of this topic. Without further ado...The 7 point system at a glanceDuring my time as president of DDO, Airmax1227 and I worked hard on pushing several different updates through to Juggle's community adviser at the time (Chrumbelievable). In that we were successful in a couple updates, the major one being the select winner system. The select winner system was during that time a very heavily requested feature from the community. It simplified the voting process in an incredible way. Too much controversy arises from the 7 point system, as the 7 point system, as it carries a voting weight not just behind the arguments, but behind sources, conduct, and spelling/grammar. A large part of the community at that time opposed the 7 point system on a basis of it being abused. A voter could at that time skim a debate for spelling and grammar errors, and give a point to the other debater based on one standard alone. A person could scour the sources near the end of the debate, and vote 2 points for the debater who had the most sources listed, or who had less sources from wikipedia(1). The overall point is, that arguments essentially didn't matter with this system as a voter wasn't required to explain point in detail. The select winner system mitigated part of that problem for the debaters. However, it didn't completely mitigate the problem. People could still award a point to the winner for a minor conduct violation, or a source violation. To combat this, Airmax1227 (the site moderator) induced a policy to remove votes that didn't take into account arguments as well. a policy was implemented to help streamline quality votes. (2)(3)The key points to consider here are "standards" in (3). It is unreasonable (re: the second criterion of sufficiency) to give a debater such a sizable fraction of the ballot when both debaters' S/G were close.This same logic is applied to the conduct and sources points as well. Over the past months, more and more people start to see the dwindling efficiency of the the 7 point system because of this line of reasoning (effective as it is), because on a debate site, the actual debate seems to be more important aspects worthy of awarding winners. But let's say you had the better arguments as agreed by two to three people who fully read your debates, but are from another country, and can't spell very well. You can still lose the debate because you have more people voting on a singular standard.The current moderation system still holds to this standard. Airmax1227 recently stated: In the example you [Me, TUF] gave, it would be considered an insufficient vote, because vote moderation considers votes of that sort ("juicing votes" with extra points for negligible aspects) to not meet the standards. So an S&G vote for a single misspelling error would likely be removed.(4)Cross applying LogicWhether or not you agree with the voting policies or not, they are largely what makes up the voting communities standards. People abide by these standards, and I think the larger part of the debating community agrees these standards are necessary. However in Bsh1's current standards you may have noticed this: "The person who actually showed up and didn't forfeit clearly deserves conduct points, but they do not deserve argument points because they made no arguments."(3)This logic is completely understandable, because it demonstrates the lack of arguing, the purpose of even debating in the first place. It is missing a very large picture though by being so simplistic in nature. It is preceded by this:Also, a person who forfeits more rounds than the other person should lose conduct.(3)Here is the problem with this logic, is that it seems to fall in direct contention with the previous logic. I could very easily cast a vote on the person who had less spelling and grammar errors, but it would be against the rules in this voting guide. Singular Standard VotingSo voting guide by bsh1, and the understood meaning of juicing votes from airmax, seems to be similar in that 'one standard alone shouldn't determine the winner or loser of a debate'. Why is it so different from forfeited debates? The main aspect seems to be status qou. Voting conduct on forfeited debates has something that has been done for a long time in DDO's history. In fact we used to have a forum dedicated to voting on forfeited debates. It was since changed to "forfeited and unvoted" debates, and is now phrased "Voting Thread". But what are the drawbacks of voting on one standard alone without reading the debate? First of all, you aren't giving credence to any of the debaters arguments, if you are voting on only the the appearance of a red forfeit line. That is the entire purpose of bsh1's voting guide, and the basis for having moderators for votes. When you see forfeit only votes, not a single line of the debate is shown to be read and that is a problem. You are voting for someone and have absolutely no idea what they have said, or what you are voting against. The debater forfeiting a round may have had a serious attempt through the entire debate, posting good logic and sources, where his opponent trolls the entire debate but can still win because of voters not bothering to read the debate. Good debates often get butchered by this behavior. Here are a few examples of debates where someone lost due to just conduct points:http://tiny.cc...http://tiny.cc...http://tiny.cc...In all three of these debates, arguments were made that were just completely ignored by voters. In fact, serious votes were cast on these debates, but in each case, the single line forfeit votes outweighed the "good votes" that actually read the debate and provided solid feedback on the arguments. This is does not meet the purposes that are clearly perceived from the Voting Guide that the quality of arguments is what is most important in a debate.How does a forfeit effect a debate?What makes a forfeit such a negative voting point? This will obviously vary depending on who the voter is, but what impacts a debate to me, are arguments missed that clearly would have effected the debate. If the opponent brings up a great point and that point just can't be responded to because of the forfeit, suddenly the gravity of the forfeit impacts the debate in a different way. Some debates, however, it doesn't impact the argument bad. On the debate "God Exists" For example, both (5) The Voice of Truth forfeited a round. However he had three very strong debate round arguments supporting his case prior to that, and was back again for the final round. The opponent in this debate didn't even mention the forfeit as impacting the argument because it didn't really. Does this mean non-forfeiting could help? Sure. The more arguments you can dish out to make sure you are tackling the whole topic, the better. But the debate clearly isn't warranted for a vote only judging the debate on one standard, because there were many intelligently written arguments in the debate.Now there are multiple situations where this can vary, which is why this debate is phrased with "Over three rounds of argumentation". It shows that if there is substance to the debate, it is deserving of being read. This directly falls in line with the purposes of voting guidelines. Obviously a debate where one side forfeits every round or doesn't respond to his opponent, isn't going to give the voter much to reflect on in an RFD. But the examples in this debate show that this clearly isn't always the case, and that good debates often get abused with this type of voting.Consequentilism ConclusionWe can argue all day about the impact of a forfeit, but at the end of the day the consequences are realistically negative with forfeit votes. What I mean by this, is that if we say a forfeit vote is justified on on accuracy alone, which it is because someone DID forfeit and in the 7 point system that meets a standard of a specific point, we are taking away the value of the entire debate. Just like in the three examples in my "Singular Standard Voting" Argument, the consequences of allowing these votes impact the overall debate in a way that it devalues the proper votes that spent time reading the debate. Good votes should never be placed second to bad votes, and with that I conclude that Debate.org should no have conduct only votes. Sources:1. Old 7 point system voting standards (prior to moderation policy) http://www.debate.org...2. http://www.debate.org...3. Bsh1's voting guide (the president) http://tiny.cc...4. http://www.debate.org...5. http://www.debate.org...