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

============DEFENSE============Quality over quantityA. Vote bombs/Counter vote bombsMy opponent is right in saying that obvious vote bombs were often countered. However, whenever you have to counter a vote bomb, you lose a potential quality vote. Let's say that a person vote bombs this debate and someone has to counter it. That is one less vote that could have potentially been of quality feedback. Two votes are essentially lost. -----------B. Good votes are often removedMy opponent need to substantiate that the vote moderation is causing the lack of votes. I'll get more into this later in the debate, but 3-5 votes is the average number of votes most good debates have today. My debate with Cobalt, missmozart, and Danielle received 5 votes (1, 2, and 3). Similarly, the amount of bad votes often times changes thte outcome of the debate (such as in the debate with Contradiction. Had the poor votes been removed, Contradiction would most likely have won). -----------C. Quantity is still importantI agree that quantity is important, but quality is even more so. Quality debates and quality votes will bring quality members to the site. The result is a more enjoyable debate. org for everyone. TUF summed this up nicely:"[V]ote moderation isn't at fault for the "lack of votes", it's personal motivation. People are less willing to put the time and effort into winning an argument if they think they will lose the debate simply on a basis of being vote bombed by an individual who may be more popular on the site, or who has messaged more people lobbying for votes on their debate. Vote moderation by extension creates higher quality debates from the most committed community members. This doesn't push out the noobs; it creates a standard for the noobs to adapt to in order to fit in better on the website, and there is nothing wrong with that. " [4] -----------D. User precautionsThe problem with setting an ELO minimum is that it often locks out good voters who simply do not have a high enough ELO score. THe higher the ELO limit, the less votes you will receive. This is probably a more significant factor than vote moderation itself. Pro seems to be contradicting himself here. He wants a higher quantity of votes, but the very method that he chosen to prevent poor votes is the very system that will get less votes. For example, in my debate with Amed, I set an ELO limit of 2,000. The problem is lannan13, one of the best voters on debate. org, could not vote because his ELO score is under 2,000. We allowed him to vote and used famousdebater to post his vote on his behalf. The trouble is, famousdebater is also an excellent voter. By having to use him as a proxy, we lost a potential vote. Instead of having three quality votes, we had to settle with two quality votes because of the ELO limit. [5] Easy to appealI agree that the moderators were a bit too strict with my vote and the interpretation of the standards, however with the standards in place, simply stating one side used sources and the other side did (which is basically what I stated), the RFD is lacking with sources. -----------Pro goes back to the issue that mistakes are made. I got more information from whiteflame as to how the issue came about. Vote moderators go through scores if not hundreds of votes every single night. They use a template for posting in the comments about the removal and often times some things are copied over incorrectly. Part of the issue is there are only two vote moderators and one head moderator. In a site like debate. org, the moderators can improve by having additional help. Cost/Benefit AnalysisWith the debate almost over, I want to do a final cost/benefit analysis. Potential Costs-Less votes-Possible mistakes by moderatorsPotential benefits-Higher quality votes-Higher quality debates-Higher quality membersAs I have shown, the potential costs are far out weighed by the benefits. Voting on debate. org is a privilege and not a right. The members that do not want to spend their time giving feedback to the debaters or whose bias is too strong to give a fair analysis should not vote in the first place. Even though mods make mistakes, they are quick to recognize it and do not hold that mistake against the voter. Even when it is seen that they are too strict, they have been very quick to respond to my querries about my votes and have shown me ways to improve. This in turn has made be a better member of debate. org. Having defended my constructive case and showing that the benefits outweigh the harm, the resolution is negated. Sources1. . http://www.debate.org... 2. . http://www.debate.org... 3. . http://www.debate.org... 4. . http://www.debate.org... 5. . http://www.debate.org...