A tribute to DART

I joined this website in late 2022, back in the days when I still had copious amounts of free time. Of course, I wasn't very good - in fact, looking back at my early debates, the structure of my arguments was horrific. But I had fun, and that was what mattered.

I left for a few reasons. My final debate vs. blamonkey showed me how outmatched I was in many respects against a truly competent debater. Then I kinda got distracted with preparing for my 1st year of high school and trying to achieve my goal of becoming a National Master in chess.

So why did I come back? Well, my school has a debate club, so I joined just for fun, and entered my 1st serious debate tournament (e.g. with schools competing from multiple states). This tournament really made me realize how much DART helped my debating skills. While my fellow novices were stealing cards and cases from the more experienced debaters (and proceeded to get rolled because they didn't know anything about their own case), I researched and put together a case, blocks, and frontlines with my partner.

We ended up going 5-0 in prelims, and broke all the way into the finals before losing a split decision to a team with over 10 tournaments under their belt. I'm absolutely sure this wouldn't have been possible without everything I learned when debating at DART.  This is far from a perfect website, but I have a lot to thank it for.

Even most on DART do t use the 1v1 arena nearly enough. Well done for taking it serious here, I didn't experience similar because I was a naturally gifted debater that got banned from DDO less than a year into being part of it.

I did however, find I gained critical thinking skills themselves from learning how to debate MYSELF on things constantly.

If you are a person who constantly argued yourself in your head, you're usually ferocious in the actual debating arena against someone who is just doing it for a sport/fun

This site did improve both my trolling and debating skills.

Thats because I am one of the rare people who understand that strong competition makes you stronger as you have to figure out a way to overcome it.

In fact, the strongest competition sets strongest challenge, which demands greatest effort to figure out how to overcome it, which in turn gives you most knowledge about overcoming obstacles.

Congrats. 

You said there should be a rule noobs can only vs noobs or medium members.

Congrats on your high placement in that tournament.

I'm glad this site helped you... it goes to show that this website still serves a good purpose, despite its flaws.

I am not sure about that rule anymore.

Some people respond different from others to challenges.

1. There are noobs who have no problem losing bunch of debates, they dont even care, it only makes them stronger to face experts.

2. And then there are sensitive noobs who do care if they lose.

I think 2 is the issue, because between expert and noob there often exists such a large gap in debating knowledge.

It goes from knowing how to cherry pick topics, abuse definitions, stick to the topic, negate arguments...

So its a bit of a question if we want to keep sensitive noobs or make the non-sensitive ones stronger.

So far this site was like survival of the fittest, many did not stay long because they did not fit in the site.

I was thinking of ways to make noobs fit in, but I dont think its possible, not on a debate site.

The only solution I can come up with other than leaving noobs alone is giving them some guide for debating/trolling which is shown to them as soon as they join the site, but I dont think it will happen.

The elo system works in a way that users feed on each other's elo.

No one can gain elo without someone else losing it, which creates a system where there are only two possible outcomes: Many people losing elo or every debate being a tie.

Since every debate cannot be a tie in practice, as odds for that are zero, the only thing that can happen is bunch of people losing elo so that other bunch can get elo.

Its sort of like vampire system.

Now, the forum is an exception to that, but in forum you face many other different problems, such as being forced to debate 1 vs 3, being mentally fucked by trolls, or just being unable to have a debate with character limit and round limit.

I tried what you're describing, filling the gap with mentoring/teaching offered. Only Benjamin took me up on it and clearly didn't like my teaching style as he quit during the first lessons's interactive part.

I'm glad to hear you ended up doing so well in the tournament! I'm glad to hear the the site has been such a help to you, especially after you put in so much effort and took on tough opponents. I hope you continue to excel during your time debating.

That's definitely an interesting point - competitive debate may be about being right for the sake of being right, but the core skills of debate are about being able to critically understand both sides.

Thanks. I think that like everything else, this website is only as good as what you use it for - if you get a good debate out of it, then the hundreds of low-quality ones (you know who I'm talking about) don't really matter at all.

I just want to personally say that your RFD's were probably one of the most useful things I got out of my time here. The biggest lesson I learned from them is to not waste time and attention fighting the small battles that don't matter for the final outcome.

Whiteflame is an overrated voter that is all I will say.

I’m glad to hear that they’ve been helpful to you. For better or worse, I internalized many of the messages I got from judges in live debates, and a big one was knowing how to pick your battles and figure out how to make the most of what you think you’re winning. I was terrible at it for years.

Instead of dropping many arguments, you can address them all easily by saying they are all unproven, false or outweighed.

Just negate few good points, while saying the rest are bad or false.

If I judge a debate and somebody ays that then I will till give points to the unproven false or outweighed argument. 

You can suggest how I should weigh arguments. You can provide me a citation that proves a point false or you can explicitly state why something is unproven. 

However if somebody makes a bare assertion and the only response is "unproven" well we have 2 bare assertions and I am giving the first bare assertion the benefit of the doubt. 

You mean you accept assumption as true for no reason, despite it being challenged?

Well, voters can spin around anything,

but usually if argument 2 negates argument 1, but argument 1 cannot negate argument 2, argument 2 wins that battle.

There needs to be some basis for the challenge. 

If you just state "that is unsupporte". Or that is a lie or that is outweighed.  It isn't enough. 

Then we have w statements that are just bare assertions. 

The statement that something is unsupported doesn't take much elaboration. Statingit is outweighed does nothing since i decide how to weight arguments. You would have to explain why it is outweighed. 

I am also taking every fact stated at face value unless their opponent proves it false or maybe does the opposite and makes a bare assertion about the opposite of the fact. If each provides a citation with no elaboration than i am likely to read both citations and both sides are risking my bias taking over if i have to choose which citation I like better. 

If only one side provides a citation I will not read the citation but take the cited statement as fact. 

I've never liked the whole idea of tech > truth (e.g. you should accept something as true in the context of the debate even if it's patently false), but on the other hand, choosing which bare (or poorly asserted) assertions to accept and which ones to reject can easily lead to excessive judge intervention. Just food for thought.

If opponent's argument doesnt have a basis or any proof supporting it, its silly to be choosing to accept that argument over a challenge to it which points out that argument has no proof.

I can't accept 2 baseless arguments at once. One has to win

In some cases, there are dropped arguments on both sides.

Now, if there is no any challenge to an argument, voter has to accept it as true, because to do otherwise, his way of voting wouldnt make logical sense.

If he is not going to accept dropped arguments as true, then he cannot accept any arguments as true, because the only way to judge fairly if argument is true in a debate is to see if it is negated by some other argument.

In some other cases, there are arguments which are essentially a tie.

It would be voters adding their own arguments into debate.

If argument was dropped and unchallenged, voter cannot in any way conclude that argument is false unless he uses arguments which werent mentioned in the debate itself.

They can be tied.

You going to accept my new debate or what?