Presidential Debate - Airmax1227 VS Larztheloser

I thank Airmax for his participation in this debate. I also apologise for setting a long posting time.Airmax prioritises his time rather like he prioritises this site. He's prioritised everything BUT debates. Apparently he knew he was going to be president before he was actually elected since he started with his deprioritisation of debates long before winning. All to make room for that big responsibility which, if his weekly updates are honest, basically involves doing a whole lot of nothing. In fact he's done so little this past fortnight he doesn't feel there's anything significant enough, not privacy or anything else – his job is just too easy. The two weeks he did make updates showed only perhaps one significant thing in each of those weeks, taking at most a few hours to resolve. Alternatively, Airmax is not being honest and DDO has elected not just a politician, but a liar.It's no surprise that debates have suffered because the president is refusing to roll up his sleeves and do something. DDO needs and deserves a president who cares about debates first, not everything else first. This is a debate site. It's not a forum site. It's not an opinion site. It has those elements, but only as supports to facilitate debates. I wish the president would see things the same way. The time he spends on this site is spent on the forums. The benefits he has brought to this site have been to the forums. And debates have suffered. This needs to be reversed.TournamentsI'm glad Airmax is finally copping the blame for the poor quality of tournaments, and not relying on Juggle. One would expect, perhaps, in such a situation, for Airmax to correct his mistake rather than continue it. Airmax's solution now seems to be bringing in more members to help run his misguided tournaments. I hope I need not remind Airmax that this is exactly what he's been doing for the last year, and that his program of sharing the load has nevertheless been a complete failure because the tournaments themselves are the problem.He encourages other members to put together tournaments to compete with his. Trust me, I would have run several tournaments by now if it weren't for the fact that there's always 2-3 other tournaments on at the same time, almost always run by Airmax. That's because I actually know how to do tournaments and like I've tried to explain, tournaments will always fail if there's too many of them. We RL debaters know this. Frequent site debaters have learned this the hard way and now often shy away from tournaments. Airmax isn't a debater and clearly doesn't care.Alternatively Airmax suggests that perhaps he shouldn't micromanage tournaments. I have a better idea. Perhaps Airmax shouldn't run tournaments at all that are destined to fail. Airmax's idea of not micromanaging tournaments is to start a bunch of tournaments, put up crazy rules, and then pass the burden of running the trainwreck on to some unsuspecting member. I'm grateful to the members who try their best, but that doesn't mean I have to accept the system that makes their life so difficult.I'm telling Airmax in this debate EXACTLY what tournaments need. Airmax is ignoring my suggestion. It's as simple as that. He wonders why tournaments are failing? This is why - he doesn't know much about debating, or running a tournament, but he still insists on starting a bunch of tournaments every month with his rules and his oversight. Sure he passes the boring details on to other poor members, but Airmax has taken control of tournaments on DDO and run them incompetently. Until he recognises this, or starts listening to members like me that are trying to help him, tournaments on DDO will fail.VotingMy opponent claims poor votes have been reduced. This is quite ironic given that Airmax has never really cast what would generally be considered to be a "good" vote. In almost all cases Airmax only votes on forfeited debates. Airmax has done nothing to reduce poor votes. There has been no program on this site or any attention Airmax has drawn to the issue during his presidency. I know because voting has been a big issue for me too.Look at the debates on the homepage right now. Top three debates have zero votes. Fourth has one, 21-word vote. Fifth and sixth have no votes. Seventh has one, 20-word vote. Eighth has one, 22-word vote. And so on. It's a shame! The homepage did not always look this way. I remember when votes had at least 100 words, and that was BEFORE Juggle extended the character limits. I remember when the problem was getting multiple votes, not completely unvoted debates! When I first joined, getting six or so votes was NORMAL. This was before presidents slowly destroyed voting on DDO.Airmax should be apologising for this, and more importantly, telling us what he will do to turn things around.Airmax's solution, predictably, is to wait for Juggle to make some magic change that will fix everything. This is wrong. We've created this problem. We can fix it. The DDO president should be leading the charge, not waiting for somebody else. Airmax agrees my ideas for reforming voting are awesome. Rather than be part of any solution himself, Airmax pushes the onus on to me, which I'm happy to do, but the point is that the president should be doing something. I can't reform voting on my own.RL IntegrationAirmax agrees these ideas are awesome but is predictably too lazy to do them himself. Right at the outset I said the president sets the overall vision and direction for site members, what Airmax called "community and cohesion" - but a community around what? DDO is no longer a community of debaters. It's an old boys' forum club. You're not going to integrate well with RL until that changes. If it's a great idea, the president should be embracing it and taking responsibility for it, as I promised to do if elected. I've said in the past that without the support of the president in making this into more of a debate site, I'm going to fall flat on my face.There are other reasons why the presidency would be required, but if I can be entirely honest, if Airmax would pledge to do something about the sorry state of debating on this site it would have ramifications far beyond just this which would set the stage for a much improved DDO generally.BullyingI'm glad Airmax has at least a mock-interest in stopping this, although he seems to mostly pretend there's nothing to fix. As long as there are bullies on DDO, DDO has a problem. Ever noticed how some forums on the internet seem to be much more bully-friendly than others? That's because some places take it more seriously than other places. Airmax takes it a little bit seriously, and I give him credit for that, but until harassment is eliminated on DDO there is a problem worth solving.Airmax has a stated policy of waiting until it's too late, then banning. Sure you catch bullies, but only after they've bullied. That's why bullying happens on DDO. It's time to take it seriously. He messages in arbitration rather than have trials, implying that bullies will take him seriously. Ever notice how the worst bullies don't care about getting punished? The worse they are, the less they care. To be ostracised by a community for your actions - that's another thing entirely.My stated policy works because I know how bullies work. I had to be relocated to another school three times in my childhood due to severe bullying, not just by other kids but by staff, and not just in the playground but digitally as well. I spent much of my management degree studying workplace bullying and what companies and managers can do to prevent it. The kinds of things I'm talking about are not new. We can stop bullying on DDO now if we all stop tolerating the conditions that create it.Once again I thank Airmax for participating in this discussion. Thanks to the voters for reading the debate, and thanks to all those who supported me in my campaign. I look forward to reading Airmax's response.