That the User Known as RoyLatham Should be Awarded with (At least) One Free Win

Thanks 9space. It has been an enjoyable debate :) Before I start, I'd just like to say that Pro's claim that my rebuttal last round was somehow an "unfairly-introduced new argument" is wholly unwarranted. .. it was a rebuttal, placed in the rebuttals round just like it should be; it's not a new argument. He even concedes that it was a "false accusation" in the comments section of the debate. I'll start by briefly defending my rebuttal from last round. Pro attempts to prove that the voting standards of the time did not condone Judgeisgod' self-voting by citing the generous voting habits of a single user. .. this is a blatant fallacy of induction. Kleptin's actions do not determine what the voting standards were any more than my own actions do now. The fact is that voting standards at the time of the debate allowed for RFD-less votebombs and self-voting, and Judgeisgod took full advantage of both of those allowances. Roy had every right to do so too, as well as every reason to believe that his opponent would do so, but he didn't, and as a result, he lost the debate. The fact that we now consider the loss unjust is irrelevant. The winner of the debate is not obvious, as both sides put forth substantial effort into their cases, and all of the votes were of average quality in the context, so Pro cannot objectively claim that Roy should have won. He has not proven that Roy's loss in that debate was necessarily unjust in the first place, and with that revelation, his entire case falls apart. Moving onto defending my opening arguments. .. 1. Pro concedes that merely handing Roy a free win would not do justice. Instead, he proposes the contingent measure of also deleting the original debate along with that. However, doing so is impossible due to the mods' policy on debate deletion; the mods can only delete debates if they have the permission of both debaters or if the debate is clearly spam. Far from being "spam", the debate is actually reasonably well-done, with both debaters having put decent amounts of effort into it, so the mods have no right to delete it without obtaining the permission of both debaters. And seeing that Judgeisgod hasn't been online for quite a while at this point, we have no way of knowing whether or not he would agree to it. The debate cannot be justly deleted. Thus, Pro's contingent measure cannot be carried out, and Pro has already conceded that only awarding Roy a free win doesn't really serve justice. This is more or less a concession of the entire debate; if the proposed motion does not solve the problem it is meant to address, then there is no reason to execute it! 2. Pro proposes that to 'fix' the problem of free losses, Judgeisgod could be the opponent in Roy's free win debate. However, in order to justify this, he characterizes Judgeisgod as having committed some sort of misdeed that is deserving of the punishment of a free loss. This is a completely baseless claim; he has not demonstrated that Judgeisgod's vote was wrong (in context) or that any malicious intentions were involved, and as I mentioned before, what he did was not at all an uncommon practice at the time (Roy did it too, just with less points). More importantly, Judgeisgod is no longer active (and no sign of returning any time soon. .. ), so he can't accept any debates-- this makes it literally impossible for him to be Roy's opponent in his free win debate. Pro's solution to the problem of free losses is entirely unsound. 3. Pro misses the point of my argument about the moderators being obligated to offer the same service to every other member who feels they have unfairly lost a debate due to the lax nature of ancient DDO voting standards. He totally ignores how immensely inconvenient it would be for the moderators to have to review the inevitably large number of cases that would be presented to them upon enacting such a policy. For each case, they would have to read over the debate to see if the outcome was just, read over the votes and weigh them against the voting standards of the time, and get in contact with the unfair winner (even if they are long gone from the site), The inevitable practical consequences of carrying out Pro's proposal render the proposal as a whole to be unfeasible. 4. I concede this argument. However, I will point out that Pro's response relies on the assumptions that the initial loss was actually objectively unfair (refuted by my rebuttal) and that awarding a free win is a sound means for compensation (refuted by all three of my other arguments). In conclusion, Pro has not been able to demonstrate that Roy's original loss was necessarily unfair, which is what he needed to do to even begin to affirm the resolution. Moreover, awarding free wins is a terrible way of compensating for unfair losses because, objectively, they don't actually make up for anything, and they involve massive complications such as the injustice of awarding someone a 'free loss' and the moderators' obligation to extend the same service to all members. The resolution is negated.