The practice of only voting in favour of your friends should not be acceptable

Unfortunately it looks as though his account has been closed and I've been informed that he may be a permanently banned member. Even though he will likely be unable to complete the debate, I will still address the arguments he put forth. Before I address Con's arguments, I would like to remind the reader of the resolution: The practice of choosing only to vote in favour of another user, while withholding your vote if you believe that user lost the debate, should not be acceptable on DDO. As you can see, there are two components that we are talking about here--we are referring to the specific practice of a user refusing to vote against a friend who lost AND ALSO votes when they believe the friend to have won the debate. None of Con's arguments actually address the resolution; Con's first two arguments do not address both components of the resolution (A & B). For example, if the resolution were "Children should not be allowed to go out while they are grounded" and Con argued that children should be allowed to go out, he has missed the resolution of the debate. =Con's Arguments= 1. "Any user of this website is (and should be) entitled to not vote on a debate without having to give a single justification for it. " Here, Con has addressed the part of the resolution referring to not voting, but has not addressed the resolution in its entirety, which is the combination of not voting because your friend lost, and only voting because your friend won. The issue is not simply about withholding a vote; it's about selective voting. You may not have to justify the votes you don't place, but you do have to justify the votes you DO place. If a user abstained completely from voting for their friends or loved ones, there would not be a problem. Con argues not voting in your friends' debates when you believe they lost is better than voting in favour of your friends when you believe they lost. This does not address the resolution. Both actions should be discouraged. Con's argument that requiring more from an RFD of a user would be "reverse favouritism" is a straw man (1), since I never once argued in favour of that and it does not address the resolution. In fact, I would prefer that if a user cannot be impartial, then they should refrain from voting for their friends completely. However, the resolution is that the practice of voting selectively for your friends should be discouraged, and Con's argument is both a straw man and out of the scope of this debate. 2. "Banning being the best, this is the second best deterrent of troll-type members who aggravate the community as a whole from doing so. " I am not sure what this argument means. Con claims that the practice of selectively voting for your friends will make antisocial people leave DDO. It appears he is advocating a system where the most popular members win by virtue of having the most friends willing to vote for them and unwilling to vote against them. This goes against the spirit of debate, and the spirit of the rules around voting. If what Con means is that users will only vote against trolls, this is not resolutional. This debate is about not voting against your friends; it is not about purposely voting against other users. 3. "Unless private PMs occurred and privacy rights of users are violated for no reason other than suspicion of vote conspiring, there is simply no morally acceptable way to prove this is occurring. " This point is probably the closest to addressing the resolution, but still misses the mark. First of all, if we based all rules and laws on whether people would admit things, then we wouldn't have any rules or laws. But more importantly, the question is not whether we can or cannot prove someone is engaging in this practice; the question is if this practice should be acceptable. If a user does admit to engaging in this behaviour, it should not be acceptable, and Con's argument does not address that. =Conclusion= None of Con's arguments thus far have addressed the resolution, which is that the practice of choosing only to vote in favour of another user, while withholding your vote if you believe that user lost the debate, should not be acceptable on DDO. =Sources= 1. . http://tinyurl.com...