Barney is not a good debater
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 7 votes and with 14 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 2
- Time for argument
- One week
- Max argument characters
- 5,000
- Voting period
- One month
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
we only consider debateart because debate.org is gone and we don't know about it
- Beaten good opponents.
- Good analysis abilities.
- How we determine this? Two ways
- Look at all their opponents holistically - what is their combined record?
- Combined records is a good way to determine strength. Eg. if my record is 100-0 but all my opponents have lost 10 times this isn't impressive. However, if my record is 10-3 and all my opponents have won 100 times, this is indicate of a better debater. It isn't perfect, but the probabilities of noob sniping is much less in the bare record (more difficult to find 10 bad opponents who've won 100 times than to snipe 100 people).
- For reference two debaters we consider good
- Whiteflames
- 1171-1704 (excluding oromagi because he is an anomaly)
- Bones
- 238-159
- Notable people they have beaten
- Whiteflames
- Oromagi
- bmdrocks21
- blamonkey
- RationalMadMan
- Ehyeh
- Undefeatable
- Intelligence
- MrChris
- Tejretics
- very respectable - these guys all have positive ratios themselves, and Tejretics was a DDO goat.
- Bones
- Whiteflames
- Fauxlaw
- Benjamin
- Nyxified
- Sum1hugme
- Respectable, considering the small numbers of debates done - Nyxified was herself a state champion debater.
- Combined record
- 390-1104
- FUN FACT - Barney has, out of his 37 opponents beaten on 3 people with a positive win loss ratio
- Strong opponents
- Novice (who he calls bad at debating) and who he is currently running from.
- shas04 who is 0-2, 17 years old and who barney said "Were this debate to happen today, I am quite certain I would lose; and justly so"
- Literally no one else. I couldn't find a single person who hadn't lost three times more than they had won.
- Win Record
- Leaderboard
- Quality of Debates
- The Hall of Fame winning Fetuses as a replacement for the USD (3, 4).My opponent for that demonstrated himself to be quite good in his months before facing me, with several victories and a fine showing against Pinkfreud08; for which my arguments were able to turn a pro-life voter (5).
- I successfully navigate trap debates, such as Brandon Stark will be the one who leads Westeros at the end of episode 6 (6)(and yes, sourcing pun intended).
- I even win arguing uphill against truisms, as seen with The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is God (7).
- And let us not forget it was one of my debates which spawned the meme worthy “Mr. Hitler” quote (8). And including Like a Boss as a serious line of contention (9, 10)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
- https://www.debateart.com/leaderboard/debates
- https://info.debateart.com/hall-of-fame#debates
- https://www.debateart.com/debates/866
- https://www.debateart.com/debates/654
- https://www.debateart.com/debates/931
- https://www.debateart.com/debates/950
- https://www.debateart.com/debates/2397
- https://www.debateart.com/debates/2184
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NisCkxU544c
- http://tiny.cc/DebateArt
- https://www.debateart.com/debates/803
- https://tiny.cc/Kritik
- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/causes-of-death-in-children?time=2008
- https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/2745-ragnar-first-gold-ama?page=1&post_number=4
- I'll start of with CON's case, which will morph into my own. Just some thought before I dive in, the first two arguments are premised on the very mechanism I critiqued - that utterly manipulatable elo system which allows for noob sniping.
- B's point in his Win Record Argument is this.
- p1. I have long win record compared to everyone else.
- C1. Therefore I am good debater.
- B's point in his Leaderboard argument is this.
- p1. I have a high elo compared to everyone else.
- C1. Therefore I am a good debater.
- The argument here is assumes that a win record and high elo is indicative of a good debater. This is not the case. I clearly provided a criteria for a good debater (beaten good opponents and have good analysis) and farming wins does not satisfy any of these criteria.
- Though it may seem odd, winning debates here does not necessarily mean you are a good debater. Consider for example, as I said in my first round, someone who snipes 100 debates. By B's logic, this person would be good at debating. This makes no sense, does someone who picks on people who they know will forfeit debates show they are a person who argues about a subject, especially in a formal manner to a degree which will make them good? Obviously not. I proposed a far better metric (looking at the combined record of past competitors) to which I get zip nada response from B.
- 1. B himself said it was a "satirical debate on fetuses" (comedic ≠ good debater) which got only three votes at the end.
- 2. Awful - PRO's entire first round was two sentences, unstructured, unsourced, clearly suggestive of a not good debater.
- 3. Against some guy who's 0-2 who plagiarised his argument.
- And the last's claim to fame was the spawning of some "Mr Hitler" quote, which doesn't suggest a good debater, merely a "funny" opponent if anything.
- Even if you think any of these one debates were good, to be a good debater, you need to have more than a single good debate. B has not shown this in any way.
- Beaten good opponents
- B hasn't
- Beaten anyone notable
- got analysis skills
- good resume
- gg
- Debates being too dry to read does not imply good quality. Besides, my satire easily defeated a wholly serious and good debater who had most votes thrown out for treating the debate as comedy. Extend.
- No challenge to me being great at analysis to defeat well laid traps has been offered. No samples of other debaters having the skill to do likewise have been offered. Extend.
- That my opponent plagiarized part of his argument, was not factored into argument allotments. I out analyzed a deeply rooted truism. No samples of other debaters being able to do this has been offered. Extend.
- Comedy gold is a net good.
Pro introduces another standard of a good debater of simply: “never forfeit.” I have consistently met this standard [7]; unlike many of the notables pro lists.
- https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special_pleading
- https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Handwave
- https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/central_limit_theorem.asp
- https://www.debateart.com/debates/3713/comment-links/46196
- https://www.debateart.com/debates/3651/comment-links/45355
- https://www.debateart.com/debates/3406/comment-links/41526
- https://www.debateart.com/participants/Barney/debates?result=lose&status=finished
BARNEY is NOT a GOOD DEBATER
As always, any debater who sets a generic, subjective standard without defining that standard deserves to lose her debate outright. There are few move more amateurish then arguing that something is good without defining what good means in context.
PRO makes 3 argument, all quite weak
One: PRO argues falsely that "not good" is a neutral condition that ought to be presumed, shifting to burden of proof to CON. SInce PRO failed to define "good" in the context of this debate this argument must fail. If "good" is defined as, say, most likes in the FORUM section then PRO's argument is obviously false. Worse, PRO rather muddies the question of GOOD vs. BAD by invoking Socratic ethics. If PRO is applying some moral standard here, he fails to make the case. As instigator and maker of a claim that contradicts the debateart.com convention, the Burden of Proof here is 100% PRO's.
Two: PRO argues that Barney lacks the traits of a good debater but the only trait PRO mentions is analysis and instantly offers that he is incapable of making such an argument. PRO argues that win/lose record is an example of a debater's trait but this is obviously false. By definition, debaters have little influence over their win/lose and so that record can't be ascribed to debaters as a trait. We need only look at the top ten win/lose records on this site and note that there are 3 or 4 debaters found there that couldn't format a proper syllogism if their life depended on it to understand that win/lose records are political artifacts with no connection to qualities or traits or performance or conduct of individual debaters.
Three: PRO argues that nobody on this site is a good debater when compared to debaters outside of this site. Unfortunately, PRO has forgotten the one rule he set for this debate which was that "we only consider debateart .com" Having violated his own single rule, PRO invalidates this argument and makes an excellent case for losing this debate outright just on rules violation
CON starts with two arguments based on win/lose records which I have already stated are objectively non-persuasive. There is no relationship between the quality of debaters on this site and win/lose records.
CON's third argument finally begins to adress the quality of a "good" debate- public recognition, dodging traps, overcoming truisms, meme-worthiness. I think there plenty more important qualities but CON goes way ahead here by defining a standard.
In rebuttals, CON correctly calls out PRO on his subjective standard and gives one good example of the unreliability of win/lose records for analyzing debate quality. CON refutes PRO's lame 'analysis' argument by providing one example debate that definitely demonstrates some skill in analysis. CON correctly call out PRO for failing to abide by his own rule setting the scope of this debate.
In ROUND2, PRO deceptively pretends that he did not limit the scope of this debate to debateart.com, earning a lost point for conduct.
PRO explodes his already failed second argument by confirming that win/lose/leaderboard is no reflection of quality. PRO entirely undermines the majority of his ROUND 1 here.
PRO then undermines his undermining by further relying on win/lose to counter CON's examples of quality debating. PRO's failure to define GOOD up front effectively give him no ground against CON's very reasonable examples of quality. PRO can't make up his mind from one paragraph to the next whether win/lose records is an indication of quality.
CON quite rightly objects to PRO wild inconsistencies regarding scope and win/lose record. PRO correctly stands by his example of quality in his debate style as entirely unrefuted (mostly because PRO seems to feel no obligation to define some objective standard for quality.
From first to last, PRO fails to erect any rhetorical goalpost for his assertions,fails to set an objective standard for "good," and consistently contradicts and undermines the argument he devoted all of his energy to in ROUND1- comparative win/lose.
PRO never really built a substantial case on any particular and made CON's job pretty easy here. ARGUMENTS to CON
CONDUCT to CON because PRO violated his own single rule for this debate, limiting scope to debateart.com and then pretending that rule does not apply to his (entirely absent) defintion of a "good" debater.
RFD given here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UvsRs2_mNCWYsLy5ufZoAGvduqCEq9Je3Xc2rTU3bng/edit?usp=sharing
TL;DR: Con effectively utilized the absence of thresholds from Pro's arguments, as well as points that Pro either dropped entirely or punted to Con early, to establish that he at least meets some criteria for what Pro considers to be a good debater. Since Pro didn't include offense in his argument (e.g. why Barney is a bad debater), largely just undermining the question or arguing that he can't demonstrated that he is, winning on any of these points was sufficient to net Con the debate. Con wins on some of them, so I vote Con.
RFD in comments.
I just want to open by saying that I have absolutely nothing against either debates and that particularly for Barney, I have nothing but respect for the contributions you have made in this site. Of course, debates ought not be awarded to who we respect, but rather who articulated better arguments.
Burden:
From the get go Vici establishes the Chaos state as the proof for a burden shift towards his opposition. For Barney to accept this is an absolutely terrible decision . It means that I must enter the debate judging Barney as if he were a new user, and then assessing whether the proofs he provides are sufficient in elevating him to "good" status (they could have just cited Wikipedia and asserted that Vici was the claim maker and quite convincingly threw the burden back). Even though a lot of us see Barney as "good", it is actually very difficult to establish what qualities contribute to "good" in a quantitative manner in the given character limit.
Metrics:
Vici provides the combined record analyses as his means for judging whether a debater is good, whilst taking note to emphasise why it is superior to the traditional elo and leaderboard system - "more difficult to find 10 bad opponents who've won 100 times than to snipe 100 people". I find this system problematic, but nonetheless far more capable than the traditional system. Note that if this argument is successful, two of Barney's contentions are nullified. Barney has some scattered rebuttals - he says that Vici cites the later records of his opponents rather than what they were, but Vici's reply of the boxer seems sufficient to me.
The "controversial" rule in the descriptions:
I was drawn to this debate quite frankly because of the abhorrent quality of the other votes (sorry), especially the ones which deducted arguments on the basis of the alleged "rule" in the description. This is entirely unconvincing. First, from a logical standpoint, Vici provides sound reason as to why we ought accept universal definitions with the example of the public speaker - that if someone asks "are you a good speaker, answer whilst only considering X website", it is clear that "consider" implies that we ought derive sources from only the website as opposed to any other source, not that we ought to define the term "'speaker". Obviously, all definitions are outside of this site (no such thing as a debateart owned definition) so it is entirely logical to derive definitions from a dictionary. Those who argue that "Vici must prove that Barney is a not good debater within the standards of this site" have terribly misunderstood the definition of "debater" and ought to bear the burden of conjuring any source which indicates that "good debater" refers explicitly to this narrow definition. Secondly, from just an emotional intelligence perspective, when Vici says "we only consider debateart because debate.org is gone and we don't know about it" it is clear that they mean that we ought derive sources, as debate.org was mentioned as a prohibited (clearly indicating that Barney's record from there cannot be utilised).
Overall arguments:
The argument comes down to Vici's metric, which acts as a preemptive rebuttal to Barney's entire case. Barney's refutations of it were not sufficient and amounted to poking holes at it instead of attacking it's essence. Furthermore, that Barney took up the entire burden meant that even if Vici's metric was disproved, he would be left at square one, for it is his burden to build bottom up a case why he is good (simply refuting the metric would have left him as the status quo 1500 debater). I mean this with absolutely zero disrespect, but in my opinion, this is a clear cut argument point allocation to Vici from me.
Source:
Equal. That Barney sites common sense claims (his profile, the leaderboard) does not constitute a point awarded.
Pro's case relied entirely upon one core tenet:
That defeating and competing with other good opponents (and, of course, winning often enough when doing so) defines a good (or better than good) debater.
Con truly rebuts this in Round 2 because he notes that whtieflame and bones themselves are good rating but I find this flawed.
Instead, using the same logic of Con's Round 2 Kritik, I notice that when Pro says whiteflame defeated good debaters and also says that Bones did, the debaters they defeated are called 'good' for no reason other than rating.
Another issue is scope of the debate. Pro says in the description, written by himself, that this is only about DART yet uses DDO to regard Tejretics as a good opponent for whiteflame to have defeated and starts an entire contention that cuts his case in half, slaughtering the first contention in its entirety.
If nobody on DART is a good debater relative to world debaters, then why the hell did Pro juxtapose Barney's noobsniping against the fact that whiteflame and Bones defeated good debaters?
The case of Pro actually was a flawed attenpt at a pincer BoP trap. I myself pioneered this idea but I do not care about that now. A pincer BoP is a phrase I coined to describe a strategy of having 1 or 2 contentions that actually directly cannot be true if another is true (from the same side).
This works well when the opponent has to clearly exert characters and energy to defeat them, since it blackmails the opponent to need to build and defend two independent coubtercases on top of their constructive. Conversely, this works terribly and backfires if it actually directly enables the opponent to reverse said pincer by dismissing one with the other in an immediate manner. It takes finesse to pull off and close attention to how direct vs indirect the contradiction is for a voter and opponent to grasp.
Barney's case is that his winrate is higher than other high-rated debaters at the tier he is and that Pro is completely subjectively drawing differentiation between good vs mediocre debaters that are ranked high based on if he deems the opponents of debaters good or not, making the entire thing subjective and thus not objective.
Debate description reads: "we only consider debateart because debate.org is gone and we don't know about it"
All of Con's arguments are based on statistics gathered on the DART site. They unambiguously demonstrate that Barney is well above the average user in terms of being able to win debates (which is if not definitionally, the most commonly accepted goal of a "good" debater.) Pro's only counter to this evidence is the argument that this metric means nothing because no one on this site is a "good" debater. Con rebuts this based on the debate description. Arguments to Con
Con provides the most valuable sources, as well as an impressive amount of BTS math on his own rankings, they cover the majority of his claims regarding different statistics on DART, as well as voting outcomes, he also provides definitions for the relevant topics of statistics and logical fallacies. Pro doesn't completely fail to provide sources, but a lot of the things he says are completely without a source, such as the first paragraph about Plato and Chaotic states, the list of other "good debaters" and who they have beaten. Sources to Con
S&G are equal. I had no difficulty reading/understanding either argument, nor did I notice any egregious errors. Tied.
I was tempted to take conduct points from Pro as I find the premise of the argument itself disrespectful, but I suspect that it violates the voting policy somehow, and anyway, he was civil during the debate itself.
As a critical note I wish someone had taken the time to define "good" in this debate. It was danced around very loosely and while I feel the arguments themselves were unambiguous, it was left to the voter to decide how they should evaluate the arguments in terms of the claim itself. RM or Intelligence (as well as myself) would almost definitely not have left this unaddressed, and I personally feel the debate suffers for it.
ARGUMENTS:
According to the debate description, we are considering DebateArt as the criteria. So for PRO to insist an outside definition should be used as a standard for a good debater is to go against the description. CON structured his argument based on the statistical average of the leaderboard and the existence of the Hall of Fame, which are two metrics that DebateArt explicitly uses to rank debaters and good debates. This means that CON better followed the debate's structure than PRO and therefore has won the debate. The question was never "is Barney and OBJECTIVELY good debater" (according to the description), but if Barney's performance on DebateArt is good, since the description blatantly states that DebateArt will be considered.
SOURCES:
CON and PRO both had reliable sources, but CON cited significantly more reliable sources than PRO over the course of the debate. The sheer volume of citations back to previous debates and profiles proving Barney's performance on DebateArt went unmatched by PRO, who relied on a cursory analysis that he/she did not reveal to the general public and only included a laundry list of people PRO considered "good" based on his/her unshared spreadsheet.
SPELLING AND GRAMMAR:
Both sides had typos and basic grammar errors. But none of these errors were able to sufficiently impede comprehension, so both are tied in regard to this score.
CONDUCT:
Both were equally respectful and the dialogue was open and barely hostile.
Nobody that whiteflame has defeated is good without proving they are good.
In proving they are good, you then proved that Barney is good on the same metric. You just are too blinded by ego right now to consider what I am saying is true. You defeated your own contentions by several contradictions.
I did not base it on that, that was one of many examples of you violating the scope that you then needed to stay true to.
Report the vote and we will see.
If that is what I am and you ignore when I have defeated high winrate debaters such as Novice on his old account here, your system is fundamentally flawed.
Furthermore, Barney as Ragnar on DDO amd here has a 100% winrate against debaters of high winrate when and if they clashed, including Oromagi on DDO and Novice on DART and now yourself, who you may consider good.
This brings into question why the scope ignores outside of DART if your entire second contention violates it.
rational mad man do you agree that you awarding the vote based on my "accidentally" adding Tejectics was a mistake, and that holistically, the other people whiteflames has defeated are good?
as said in the debate, if I have a high win record against people who have lost 10000 times, im not very good in any metric am I?
But look, you are also a noob sniper so this argument attacks you so you would never have agreed.
the high win record against people who have had a high win record.
So the high win record makes the opponent themselves good?
there is also within the policy of the site that you ought to leave someone alone if they wish. so if novice wants barney to engage, they ought to.
What makes anyone on your list good?
the ability to defeat debaters who have a high win record against people who are defined as "good".
Not sure why whiteflame would say that.
"Under Open Voting any member eligible to vote, may do so freely within the voting period"
This was the only line I could find restricting who can vote, with "eligible" being defined by meeting the following:
"Complete at least two rated debates which are eligible for moderation, each containing no more than a single forfeiture, using the open voting system (as opposed to judicial selection).
OR
Make 100 non-spam forum posts.
"
What makes anyone on your list good?
Reply only with arguments that you made in the debate.
I was informed that this was logically possible within the site, however, the moderator who revealed this information to me what whiteflame, and considering how incompetent he is, it is not unexpected that he would display ignorance of what will and will not be upheld on this platform.
"all of my subsequent debates will have rules that bar certain people from voting. These rules will be purposed towards preventing the expressions of incompetent people from influencing the outcomes. Some examples of people who I would as a general rule note to ban from voting are Barney, Oromagi, FLRW, Shila, etc. all of which are trolls who lack understanding of basic logic."
You can't stop people from voting on your debates. Even if you put in the description "no Barney votes" or something, they will still be able to, and so long as they uphold the Voting Policy, will not be removed even if you report it.
Well, I was being sarcastic if not apparent.
"ther may be voters who are not willing to do anything that may introduce the risk of upsetting them because that is clearly one of the worst things that could happen. "
What exactly do you think would happen if Barney or Oromagi got upset?
And there could be underlying reasons people vote to protect Oromagi and Barney as well. They could be personal, or more so emotional. For instance, ther may be voters who are not willing to do anything that may introduce the risk of upsetting them because that is clearly one of the worst things that could happen. The fact of the matter is, it is a peculiar issue. Because of this, all of my subsequent debates will have rules that bar certain people from voting. These rules will be purposed towards preventing the expressions of incompetent people from influencing the outcome of a given debate. Some examples of people who I would, as a general rule, note to ban from voting are Barney, Oromagi, FLRW, Shila, etc. all of which are trolls who lack understanding of basic logic.
I also want to attack the source votes from Michael and public choice. please observe the voting policy, saying when points are not given.
Common knowledge… E.g., that Wikipedia says JFK was the president of a country, which is unlikely to enhance any impacts (unless the other side is denying that).
Look at Barneys sources
The leaderboard uses an Elo calculation to rate debaters against each other via comparative and weighted wins and losses (1).
I’m 4th place out of 636 debaters (there are 2,839 total site members) (2).
The leaderboard uses an Elo calculation to rate debaters against each other via comparative and weighted wins and losses (1).
I’m 4th place out of 636 debaters (there are 2,839 total site members) (2).
it's just linking common knowledge things - ie the site leaderboard, his profile, and his past debates.
this site is wholly flawed - when it comes to say novice vs oromagi debate, the rational mad mans vote for novice (very lengthy and deeply rooted in logic) was removed on the grounds that there was speculation of it being "retaliation" (such subjective and whimsical evidence, contrary to say "rational mad man did not provide good proof), despite the fact that every vote here is retaliating. It is clear that there is a very very strong bias to protect the likes of oromagi barney.
"Another issue is scope of the debate. Pro says in the description, written by himself, that this is only about DART yet uses DDO to regard Tejretics as a good opponent for whiteflame to have defeated and starts an entire contention that cuts his case in half, slaughtering the first contention in its entirety."
ok well even wifi accept that this is a slip up, the veracty of my argument isn't changed if you remove Tejectics - there are the others
Oromagi
bmdrocks21
blamonkey
RationalMadMan
Ehyeh
Undefeatable
Intelligence
MrChris
which qualify whole heartedly.
" The voter is not required to cover all points made by the debaters, particularly when they set a standard for evaluating those points that applies more broadly to other points."
do you think voters ought to address the HEART of an argument? don't you see that the argument which Michael addressed as being strong was addressed? I"ll draw the issue. This is like someone argues the problem of evil, and I respond with free will defence, but as well the as free will defence, I also provide the Ontological argument. Imagine if my opponent then said "I proved the problem of evil and the ontological argument doesn't disprove this". OBVIOUSLY, I proved the FREE WILL DEFENCE, not the ontological argument which was a SEPERATE ARGUMENT. Do you not see that it is just wrong the line Michael went down?
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>Reported Vote: K_Michael // Mod action: Not Removed
>Voting Policy: info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
>Points Awarded: 5 points to Con
>Reason for Decision: See Voting Tab
>Reason for Mod Action:
The voter does sufficiently analyze arguments insofar as he covers points presented by both debaters and considers their context with regards to the description. The voter is not required to cover all points made by the debaters, particularly when they set a standard for evaluating those points that applies more broadly to other points. This appears to be the case with this vote. If the contents of this vote were only specific to a dropped point presented by Pro, that would be a problem, but the reasoning this voter gives as central to his decision - that the description confines what can be discussed to what is present on this site - is sufficiently explained and covers other points made in the debate.
The voter also sufficiently analyzes sources, taking specific examples from both debaters for comparison.
**************************************************
I just realized this is posted under "economics"
That word is spelled rationale not rational, FYI.
"The voter does sufficiently analyze arguments insofar as he covers points presented by both debaters and considers their context with regards to the description. The voter is not required to cover all points made by the debaters, particularly when they set a standard for evaluating those points that applies more broadly to other points. This appears to be the case with this vote."
Whiteflame has already passed judgment on the argument portion and found it acceptable.
Unfortunately, I must report this once again, for the argument points remain poor. The vote still says.
"Pro's ONLY counter to this evidence is the argument that this metric means nothing because no one on this site is a "good" debater. Con rebuts this based on the debate description."
The entire vote is hinged on an argument which I WILLINGLY DROPPED after the very first line, and the argument was itself a kritik so it was never the heart of my argument. Furthermore, the arguments which actually created conversation "my argument one and argument two", where never mentioned. Right now, this vote is akin to someone voting against a debater because their final sentence which summarises their arguments with some tongue and cheek is not sufficient. The ESSENSE and MAJORITY of my argument has been ignored.
Thank you for revoting with the rational for sources extended.
**************************************************
>Reported Vote: K_Michael // Mod action: Removed
>Voting Policy: info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
>Points Awarded: 5 points to Con
>Reason for Decision:
Debate description reads: "we only consider debateart because debate.org is gone and we don't know about it"
All of Con's arguments are based on statistics gathered on the DART site. They unambiguously demonstrate that Barney is well above the average user in terms of being able to win debates (which is if not definitionally, the most commonly accepted goal of a "good" debater.) Pro's only counter to this evidence is the argument that this metric means nothing because no one on this site is a "good" debater. Con rebuts this based on the debate description. Arguments to Con
Con provides the most valuable sources, as well as an impressive amount of BTS math on his own rankings. Sources to Con
S&G are equal. I had no difficulty reading/understanding either argument, nor did I notice any egregious errors. Tied.
I was tempted to take conduct points from Pro as I find the premise of the argument itself disrespectful, but I suspect that it violates the voting policy somehow, and anyway, he was civil during the debate itself.
As a critical note I wish someone had taken the time to define "good" in this debate. It was danced around very loosely and while I feel the arguments themselves were unambiguous, it was left to the voter to decide how they should evaluate the arguments in terms of the claim itself. RM or Intelligence (as well as myself) would almost definitely not have left this unaddressed, and I personally feel the debate suffers for it.
>Reason for Mod Action:
The voter does sufficiently analyze arguments insofar as he covers points presented by both debaters and considers their context with regards to the description. The voter is not required to cover all points made by the debaters, particularly when they set a standard for evaluating those points that applies more broadly to other points. This appears to be the case with this vote.
However, the voter does not sufficiently justify sources. The voter must evaluate sources presented by both debaters to award this point, but only covers sourcing given by Con.
**************************************************
Easy, thanks a bunch for all of your help!
so again to your question, I would like a good vote, but if it is a good vote, then it will be in favour for me. Im really trying not to be arrogant, but this is how I see it. I see zero way Barney won that one.
Have to get to bed early tonight, I'll aim to get to this tomorrow.
also, I wasn't saying your mother would rather have had a period than you, unless you reported my post?
Did you just expose yourself?
well you can vote but you can be sure that if the vote is bad, I will be after you (in the sense that I will question you rigioursly)
Because you are a toxic person that I do not want spamming me abuse or telling me that my mother would rather have had a period than had me.
You only like me when it suits you.
I don't think there is such a thing. I truly think I won and I'm not putting up the crazy raged insultive persona but I seriously think I proposed a metric (conceptually uncontested meaning that Barney doesn't disagree that that is how we ought judge a good debater, he only disagreed by saying he met that standard) which cut at barney. Also what was that thing which the debate came down to you thought which you mentioned a while ago.
also I don't know why you blocked me I rather I like you.
Would you like someone to vote against you with a good vote?
Why is everyone voting against me in such poor votes? I mean this genuinely - im just a guy here who wants to have some good quality debates, and who wishes for some engaging voters. All I wish for is just some voters who will put their predisposed biases away - I know this is difficult because Barney has indeed had great debates in debate.org, but I really wanted to just look at him now as he is.
Again, im sorry for reporting another vote but there are truly many bad voters here. K_Michael said
"Pro's ONLY counter to this evidence is the argument that this metric means nothing because no one on this site is a "good" debater. Con rebuts this based on the debate description."
I think the voter is weighing the entire debate on Argument three: No one on this site is a good debater, however, this is clearly to ignore argument one and two. Furthermore, I actually did drop that argument and instead pursued the first two, which got 0 consideration from the voter. It was also clear that the argument which Michael is referring to is a kritik - being a mere small bit of the debate which is not to be conflated with the meat of the debate.
I agree that a clear standard for good debater going in would have improved matters. With the low character limit, some of my commentary on that ended up on the cutting room floor.
People continue to say stuff like this about every "noob sniper" or whatever you want to call this. If you win, then it's not cheating, it's technique. The alternative is RM, who pours a massive amount of effort into the site and has a huge quantity of debates. Neither strategy is particularly indicative of argumentative skill so much as it is exploitation of the Elo system, and while I personally respect RM's method more, I wouldn't call him the "best" debater on the site.
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>Reported Vote: Undefeatable // Mod action: Removed
>Voting Policy: info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
>Points Awarded: 3 points to Con
>Reason for Decision:
Commentary: This debate might actually be a difficult one for Barney since his only real evidence would be his RFD’s and defeating Oromagi previously on DDO.
RFD: pro gives a few good arguments about Con failing to defeat any one significant and lists examples of Whiteflame, Bones, etc. as truly good debaters. However con manages to barely win out thanks to showing that his debate analysis is relatively thorough in his votes. He tried to show his enemy was serious and good in the fetus USD debate, but there is a mere assertion so I can’t really buy it just like that. The other debates also seemed like weak assertions since he’s just tossing out assertions with very little refutation on how his enemies usually forfeit or have no good win record. Still, I do agree he’s shown insightful analysis from the bit of evidence he’s given, but his source of welcoming noobs to the site seems irrelevant to noob sniping. So I do not accept that argument.
>Reason for Mod Action:
The voter does assess arguments given by both debaters, but the decision itself hinges on an argument the voter says Con made that isn't present in the debate:
"However con manages to barely win out thanks to showing that his debate analysis is relatively thorough in his votes"
Unless it is clarified within the RFD where Con made this argument, the voter cannot base his decision on an argument not given in the debate.
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thank you
I’ll take a look at it when I get a chance.
Could you please remove the vote? The voter said "However con manages to barely win out thanks to showing that his debate analysis is relatively thorough in his votes" even though Con never manages "debate analysis" thought "his votes", a fact which is also acknowledged by barney in comment 64.
what do you think of my criteria for a good debater and the combined record metric?
No problem. It was a very interesting debate to read.
Thank you for voting.
However, I don’t recall using my vote history (as extensive as it is) as evidence. A case could be made that good at voting equals good at debating, but I did not draw that link.
Thank you for voting.
Stop being a whiny little b**** please. You might be more sensitive than Novice_II, and that says something.
It’s a legitimate way of reading the debate going into it, one based in the text of the description. You can chalk that up to “predisposed belief” if you like, but that doesn’t change the fact that his vote meets the required standards.
"He seems to be straight up telling you that any response doesn't sufficient"
yeah well nothing I can do then right? predisposed beliefs are too powerful.