I am bad at debating

"I recently joined DDO, and thus accepted any debate topic I found interesting so far. The Pro side cannot accuse me of solely choosing debates that have weaker arguers because one, there is simply no evidence for this accusation, and two, I didn"t know my opponent or his/her debating skills when I accepted the debate. Again, I accepted the debates because they were interesting." There is evidence. People can simply look at the profile of people you have debated. Regardless, it doesn't matter whether you knew or not, the fact is that you debate weaker debaters. "The pro side also states that good debaters should "debate more." The statement is non sequitur - clearly I am accepting debate challenges, so I don"t see how the pro side is claiming I should debate more. If the pro side is judging solely based on the amount of debates I have done so far, then it doesn"t follow from this that I am necessarily a bad debater - even if someone only did one debate on this site, they could still be a good debater. Thus, this point is entirely invalid." Not entirely non-sequitur. You can't say a "debater" is good at "debating" when they rarely even debate, and debate people who are less good at debating. That's like saying a fireman is good at putting out fires when he only successfully put out a small fire a couple times. "If my opponent"s do not argue, the onus is not on me to try to make them argue. It does not make me a bad debater if my opponent"s are bad at debating. The pro side states that I win my debates not because I"m good at arguing. Where is the evidence for such an assertion? Yes, I"ve done 7 poll votes than debates on this site - so? This simply doesn"t prove nor show anything useful to the subject of being bad at debating. I have also scratched my ear today more times than I have debated on this site. Voting on polls took my perhaps 1 minute when I was surfing the DDO site." I'll accept this refutation "In most debates, the topic requires terms to be defined in the beginning. However, this isn"t some rule that one must follow every debate like a robot. In fact, it is entirely up to the challenger to define the rules for the particular debate. Since I put up a challenge, if the pro side wanted to argue semantics, he/she could have asked for clarification in round 1. Since the pro side did not do so, and only posted the one-liner "your good at debating", I assumed, not hastily, that the pro side in fact understood the terms of the debate, and was ready to proceed." You're right, it isn't a "must". But I'm not saying it's a "must". Defining terms is a general rule to follow, and all good debaters follow this rule. Good debaters also don't use fallacious arguments, even though there is strictly no "rule" against fallacious arguments. Also, you're wrong assumption is no defence. You shouldn't assume what your opponent is thinking! You should make the rules and terms properly defined at the beginning of every debate. If you don't, you're an inferior debater! There's nothing more to it. "Again, look at refutation #2. This invective simply does not tie into the subject of trying to show I am bad at debating. Many "good debaters" set up ELO requirements to join particular debates on this site, and therefore, I simply accepted debates with interesting topics, and ones I could actually accept. Just because my opponent is "worse than me", that doesn"t mean I"m a bad debater because I didn"t choose to debate someone better. It isn"t on me to filter out challenges for only the best of debaters - I debate any topic that piques my interest. It doesn"t follow that if I debate worse debaters than myself, that I myself am a bad debater. Good debaters do not in fact have to debate a diverse range of opponents. You must define "diverse" rigorously. All of my opponents were different, and had different amounts of debates and skill level. Just because I won the debates, it doesn"t mean that in general my opponent"s were necessarily worse at debating than myself." I accept this refutation. "I did in fact carefully inspect the debate rules for this particular debate before accepting. However, it is perfectly fine to imply to the opponent that a larger amount of characters allowed would have led to a more meaningful conversation. The Pro side have not shown that I in fact accepted the debate impulsively - in fact, I did quite the opposite. Healthcare is an issue I find very enticing, so I saw an open challenge about it, and accepted it. I stated "500 characters seriously" in parentheses at the end of one my arguments to imply to my opponent that it would"ve been better if he had increased the character limit. This in no way shows that I didn"t look at the rules to the particular debate." If you did look at the rules, you wouldn't have accepted. How do I know your lying? Because if you knew, you would request a character increase in the comments section instead of accepting and then complaining. Why? Because then the instigator would have been able to change the settings. But you didn't, you presumptuously accepted the debate and then complained afterwards. "See my previous refutations for this assertion. The pro side seems to have a logically fallacious argument. He or she argues that because I have only done 5 debates so far, I cannot be a good debater, which is non sequitur - the two are entirely independent. The pro also tries to look at my relationship with the voters, stating that every one of my debates was voted by one of my friends, and therefore there was probably bias. This accusation is invalid - I simply friend anyone that comments, votes, or friend requests me. In fact, I am a friend with the pro side him/herself! The votes would have been long removed if they were biased. This is the nature of the DDO site. The pro, in other words, is looking for every opportunity to defame me - which is fine, since it is the nature of this topic: however, many of the accusations do not have anything to do with showing I am bad at debating. Instead, they are accusations which make me look bad - but not necessarily a bad debater. Therefore, the pro"s accusations and assertions are invalid." You can't be good at something if you rarely even do it, and do it with inferior debaters! And how would you know if they were biased or not? You can't read minds!* *BTW, after this debate, no hard feelings!