DDO Should Allow Unlimited Characters in Debates

Thanks, 9spaceking. --- CON CONTENTION 1: GISH GALLOPINGPro: "Gish Galloping ... should lead to warnings to banning." I have already countered this. It is better to prevent any level of Gish Galloping, which limiting the length of debates does. Allowing unlimited character debates, however, relies on voters and/or moderators to correctly punish Gish Galloping, which may fail. Thus, Pro allows more of a bad practice than Con. Pro: "Gish Gallops are easily [sic] to spot and ... have a common errors ... lies ... or straw-mans ... so they can easily be countered with just a few sentences." This is unrealistic. Responding to almost any claim usually requires a comparable amount of time. Because Gish Gallops are composed of many claims, all of which must be responded to, Gish Gallops cannot easily be refuted. CON CONTENTION 2: REALISMPro: "There is a double limit online, both limit in character and time. In real life there is only a limit to time." In real life there is a very real character limit, imposed due to limits in speaking speed and listening speed of listeners. Pro: "[Y]ou can babble more ... within an unlimited character debate, but the opponent and the judges can simply skip over it[.]" People can only skip over the babbling nonsense if they know that it is babbling nonsense, which means that they must first read the babbling nonsense in order to tell if it is nonsense. Pro: "[Y]ou still have to be concise ... to make all your arguments within the limited amount of time. Just because you have unlimited characters does not mean you can type up infinity arguments, because ... limited ... time[.]" Why must people be concise? There's usually more than enough time to write a response to an argument, meaning that concision is not guaranteed. Furthermore, it's possible for someone to say "As John Smith states:" and quote other writers on the matter, quickly allowing their argument to explode to the size of multiple peer-reviewed papers. Furthermore, there are many random-essay generators on the internet. It's entirely possible for someone to use such essays as filler that the opponent must respond to. Furthermore, if somebody frequently debates on a certain topic, they may have pre- written responses, which could be multiple pages in length, because they have effectively infinite time. PRO CONTENTION 1: HIGHER AVERAGE VOTING SCORESPro does not respond to my first point on this issue, which points out that the data presented is not detailed enough to allow a true comparison between, say, low-character limit debates, high-character limit debates, and infinite-character limit debates. Pro: "The voters can vote better within ... unlimited-character debates because ... they understand the debate further than a limited-character debate." This is not in Pro's evidence, which merely states that voters give higher scores to unlimited character debates, not that they actually understood it more. PRO CONTENTION 2: MORE REALISTICSee "CON CONTENTION 2: REALISM". PRO CONTENTION 3: LESS FOCUS ON ARGUMENT LENGTHSee "CON CONTENTION 2: REALISM". Furthermore, Pro did not respond to my point that substantative debate can easily occur within the given character limits. Furthermore, Pro agreed with my point that concision is better. Furthermore, Pro did not respond to my point that forcing debaters to focus on more important arguments aids real-world education --- CONDITIONAL CON COUNTERPLANPro: "[A]n "Exactly 83,215,642 Characters Limit" plan ... is absolutely ridiculous. It looks very troll[.] First of all, why exactly that number?" As pointed out, this is derived from the world champion speaking speed, the average word length, and the world champion filibuster length, and multiplying the aforementioned by 16. Thus, this plan has a very good reason to be so exact. Pro: "This does not follow the pattern ... 500, 750, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000, 8,000, 9,000, and 10,000." Simply because this plan does not fit the pattern does not mean that it is bad. Pro provides no reasons why we must follow DDO's "pattern" of character limits. Why not change the pattern? CONDITIONAL REBUTTAL TO PRO CONTENTION 1: HIGHER AVERAGE VOTING SCORESPro does not respond to the fact that Pro's evidence about "limited character debates" does not include my plan, meaning that the "Exactly 83,215,642 Characters Limit" plan may well achieve maximum voting scores, if those are valuable. CONDITIONAL REBUTTAL TO PRO CONTENTION 2: MORE REALISTICPro: "What if people want more than that much characters? .... Only unlimited can guarantee that everyone has enough to say." First, this bites into CON CONTENTION 1: GISH GALLOPING. If anyone ever wrote this length of an argument, then it would be effectively impossible to respond to, destroying any hope at a good debate. Hence, allowing infinite arguments allows destruction of good debates. Second, this bites into CON UNDERVIEW: PRO'S SIDE IS IMPOSSIBLE. Even if we continually must keep bumping up the limit, it will never actually reach infinity. So even though our character limit is 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 characters, it is still not infinite. CONDITIONAL REBUTTAL TO PRO CONTENTION 3: LESS FOCUS ON ARGUMENT LENGTHPro: "[B]enefits that unlimited character has ... which the massive amount my opponent claims does not have." See responses in CONDITIONAL REBUTTAL TO PRO CONTENTION 2: MORE REALISTIC and CON CONTENTION 2: REALISM. --- Pro: "[T]here is no actual "infinite"[.] ... This means that the debate can have as much characters and solid arguments as the debaters can type[.]" It is never necessary to have an infinite character limit. Instead, the site could simply have a "I need more characters" form, where debaters could type the number corresponding to the characters necessary, which would always be finite. In other words: All possible ground is Neg ground. Because it is impossible to have an actual infinite, it is always unnecessary to have an infinite character limit. --- Reasons to Vote Con: Conduct: Clear Con win. Pro called my counterplan "very troll" and "ridiculous". I cried for 17 hours after this heinous behavior. Spelling: Clear Con win. Pro stated "easily" instead of "easy" in Round 3. I cried for 71 hours after this heinous behaviour. Arguments: Sources: Clear Con win. Pro has 2 sources. Con has 6 sources.