On balance, the current voting moderation standards have been a net harm to DDO.

Thank you warren42 for your speedy reply.Re: Intro/ImpactsI am going to start here as this is the easiest contention to counter. In my opinion, it is also pro's weakest contention. In the intro and final contention, pro blames vote moderation for lack of votes. In order for Pro to be able to win this point, he needs to show that vote moderation is the sole or at least the most significant factor in the lack of votes. I will contend that there are two other factors involved that are causing the lack of votes: 1) The debates are hard to find, and 2) An increase of overall debates. Factor 1: Debates are hard to findOn the old debate.org design, debates were the front and center of the website (see screenshot). As soon as you went to debate.org, you saw the completed debates on the homepage. Debates were the selling point of the website and the first thing you saw. You could easily locate completed debates that needed to be voting on. Screenshot from the Internet Archives.The current user interface, however, is quite inefficient and hides the debates in the voting period. In order to find those debate, the fastest way to do that is to go to debates->voting period. Had debate.org simply kept the old design to the homepage, then the voting thread would not be needed (more on this later as pro brought this up in his arguments).Factor 2: An increase of debatesOver the past few years, debate.org has grown exponentially and the overall number of debates have increased as a result. For example, as I am typing these words, there are 16 debates in the challenge period and over 8K debates in the voting period. Going back to the Internet Archive, we see that in the past two years, there has been a consistency in debates that are in the voting period. However, going back to only 4 years ago, there were only 4 debates in the challenge period (2). -------------------------------------------------"Misidentification hurts innocent individuals’ right to vote, as they are penalized for an act they didn't commit."I will address misidentification later on however I want to address this point now. On debate.org, there is no "right to vote." Voting is a privilege that can be taken away at any time for poor votes. Similarly, whiteflame and the moderators are usually quick to acknowledge their mistake and oversite. Should a vote be removed in error, the moderators allow the vote to be re-posted and the removal will not be held against that person.For example, Pro voted on my debate with Amed. The moderators failed to notice the RFD in the comment section (this is why I always post that my RFD is in the comments) and the vote removal is not held against that person. [2] Re: Voting standards are inadequatePro begins by taking Bluesteel's comment out of context. It is quite clear from Bluesteel's post that she is referring to RFDs that are very clearly biased. Pro agrees that biased votes ought to be removed. I will screenshot the post to make my point clearer: Bluesteel never stated that you cannot vote for the side that you agree with nor did he say that if your ballot on a 7-point system mentions that you agreed with this person before and after the debate your vote will be removed. I do not know of a single case in which a vote was removed solely because you voted for the side that you agreed with. I also do not know of a single case where a vote was removed because you indicated on the ballot that you agreed with a particular side. -------------------------------------------------The next point that Pro brings up the issue he takes with voting on the arguments presented. Pro writes:"[W]hen one debater makes statements which are objectively false, I think that previous knowledge of an issue can and should be utilized."I am in full agreement with the voting standards on this one. It is important that the voter does not become a debater. In actual Lincoln-Douglas debate styles, the judges only vote on the issues presented. Let's say that I make a statement that says 2+2=5. If that point is not countered or is inadequately countered, then the point is dropped and should be given to the person making the claims, regardless if it is objectively false.What you can do with your RFD is that while the point goes to that side, this point did not convince me because of X, Y, and Z. -------------------------------------------------Finally, Pro takes issue with the voting thread. I fully agree with him on this point that the voting thread should not be used to sway voters. The voting thread is important because debates in the voting period are hard to find. However, it should not be used to make additional arguments. I would argue that the main rule should be that the only thing that is allowed to be posted is the resolution and the link to the debate.The voting standards are adaquetI wanted to bring this point up in the pervious round but did not want to be seen as violating the rules of the debate and making a rebuttal. The voting standards are more than adaquet because they require only a minimum adaquecy on your RFD. No moderator is going to make you write a doctoral dissertation on your vote. Debate.org user TUF summed this up quite nicely [3]:"[L]et's be honest, the vote standards aren't overly complicated enough to where all of the potential problems with a vote can't be solved by just reading the debate in it's entirety. That's what the standards encourage members to do. Do we really want members voting who don't want to put the time and effort into giving you feedback on a debate you worked so hard on? I say good riddance to any voter that quits voting because they think the standards themselves are "too strict" and happily welcome the new era of voters who care enough about the site and community to contribute to fixing the problems themselves. "The voting standards are easy to understand, easy to follow, and do not require a ton of effort. If one is a decent voter and consistently posts good votes and good RFDs, then any vote standard will not effect you that much.Re: Interpretation by modsRe: A. Adaquet votes are removedPro cites a few times in which adaquet votes were removed and one of them happened to be my own vote. According to the vote guide, sources should only be awarded because one side had better quality sources. If one side used sources and the other side did not, then I still need to explain why I found that one side's sources to be reliable. In other words, quality is more important than overall quantity.As I mentioned in the first round, I was able to repost my vote after I added some more detail on the sources. In both instances that Pro cites, the voter failed to properly explain *why* the sources had an impact on the debate, thus the votes were in violation of the voter guide. As to Pro's argument that he has had a vote removed that he did not cast, this is the only time that I have heard of this happening. It is clear that the mods simply made a mistake as to who the voter was. Re: B. MisidentificationI've already touched on this previously and now wish to slightly expand. Moderators are only human and will make mistakes regardless of the voting standards in place. When a vote is removed in error, the mods are generally quick to make corrections and will not hold that against the voter. The resolution is negated. I look forward to your reply. Sources1. http://bit.ly... 2. http://bit.ly... 3. http://bit.ly...