ELO doesn't make you a good debater

My position is that ELO is determined by the number of debates you won, but it doesn't imply that you are a good debater. It just means that you won alot of debates. How you did it determines whether or not you are a skilled debater in the realm of logic. First of all, there is plenty of factors leading to the loss of a debate including bias, forfeits, vote bombing, etc.I would say based on the votes i had in the past, many members have misinformation on certain subjects such as the Bible. Secondly, there are troll debates and rap battles which really aren't debates. Here's an example of a debate i had when i first started titled "Is there evidence for Adam and Eve?": http://www.debate.org... One vote goes as follows: "The existence of Adam and Eve is one of the most feeble Christian assertions. It has the very least possibility of ever being remotely true" That's a complete vote bomb. No reason is given to support that. Now true i may have lost due to plagiarism, but it rarely scratches the surface of a debate. What is a debate? A debate is basically an argumentative discourse in which both sides use factual arguments to support their view points (1). What makes someone the best debater? Someone who uses effective communication, logic, facts, understands other arguments, and is well prepared by doing their research. Someone who does not resort to logical fallacies, but exposes their opponent's logical weaknesses. The best debaters analyze both arguments, coming up with every single possibility that could potentially affect the outcome of the debate. They don't just cite a bunch of sources and/or look arguments online, they create their own and show that they mastered logic by being able to use what they know to come to a sound conclusion. Who is the best debater on DDO in my opinion? No one, including myself has reached the status of "best debater." This is because we all have something lacking. I consider myself a good debater though and i also consider people who have an ok ELO which are also good. A few examples are: ShadowKingStudios, Envisage, Jellon, BladeofTruth, 1Devilsadvocate, ThoughtsandThoughts, and others. While they may not be well known, the quality of their debates is enough to show that they are good debaters. There are alot of factors in debating such as people not voting, vote bombing, biased voters, forfeits, etc. which could potentially cause debaters to lose debates. Now does that mean that they are bad debaters? No. There are also debates voted on because a debater fulfilled their burden of proof and "made the most convincing arguments. " Does that make them the best debaters? No. It's simply because voters rarely do a thorough analysis of each user's arguments. Fulfilling the burden of proof doesn't imply much if you have committed tons of fallacies before you finally are able to reach a logical conclusion. I'm willing to try out this experiment (maybe you can help). In order for us to say that ELO has an affect on debating performance, we would need to compare those who have the highest ELO ranks with those who have very low ELO ranks and see a difference in arguments on the same topics. I don't think we will see a difference. I will do that next round. Sources: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org...