Ramshutu

Look at the head mods (virtuoso) debate record - he has a win rate that’s quite low. I’ve voted against Bsh1 (former head mod), and virtuoso and speedrace (though the later is only a recent mod). I can’t speak for my own debates (I’m a debate vote mod), but you’re free to take a look at any of my debates and the votes on them.

The best debaters on this site imo are blamonkey and Semperfortis; the latter wins most times despite picking opposing positions in different debates; Oromagi, Ragnar and myself are imo second tier debaters and don’t often debate points contrary to our personal positions (unless we are super comfortable with the resolution) - and as we’re all mostly liberal, you don’t see us bump heads often.

Finally, there is a dearth of debating conservatives on this site. Alec was #1 for a while, Dr.F and Our boat are lurking around, but to be honest the later two are let down by approaching debate as if it’s a forum argument, the most common issue on this website is people failing to tie everything they say back to the resolution and to left key underlying points un-argued : the issue with the latter point is not limited to conservatives, but a lot of people with lower win rates.

The issue is not the conservative view point; but that they often don’t justify or outline their key assumptions, whilst their opponent does. It often means that other conservatives look at their debate and, due to sharing the belief in that assumption, may come to a different conclusion: however if they aren’t outlined and justified in the debate, it’s not always reasonable to vote on it - especially if it’s challenged by one side.

The voting restriction is a blanket restriction out in place due to a debate where an individual started creating alt accounts just to vote on debates; we can’t gaurentee to be able to detect such accounts so placed a limit on there. 

I don’t know whether we can make a special exemption for people that came from DDO (I’m not sure if that’s the case), however the limits were set low enough to be fairly achievable; so I’m sure it won’t take long to get your posts count up.

If it helps, the best way to make it to 100 posts is to try and get the last word in an argument with me.

The issue with abortion debates is broadly covered by WF above; it’s why you’ll find going back on my vote history I tend to go for pro life way more than pro choice - even though my personal beliefs are opposite. (Which is in part why I lol at these sort of claims of bias by people like Ethang)

The issue of framing is that regardless of what else happens, abortion fundamentally involves killing unborn humans, and that’s an immediate substantial harm that has to be overcome. Most people tend to focus on mitigate this particular harm - but even if motivate it’s still a harm; which means that they need to really sell the particular benefit as being better than harming the unborn.

This type of accusation goes round all the time. There’s little basis in it. If you look at the lowest scoring debaters on the site - Type1 and Billbatard, the latter is solely liberal and solely espouses liberal debate. He also loses so much because he’s a bad debater.

Theres been some conservatives on the site, Alec and Our boat is right - both are okay debaters; Alec used to be #1 at one point, and both have recorded good wins on conservative points of view. There are a few “troll” conservative accounts - there’s a lot that simply copy and paste arguments from elsewhere; and get penalized. 

There’s been a few abortion debates - I actually have a tendency to vote pro life on these as it’s easier to frame the argument for pro life; and many Individuals I’ve seen simply argue bad points for the pro choice side, with a few exceptions.

The “cabal” is basically highlighting the fact that Oromagi, myself and Ragnar are at the top of the board. Oromagi is objectively a great debater; he covers all his basis very well, and ends up getting voted for as a result, there’s one example where he didn’t get my vote related to electrical air craft, and my vote there explains the slip up he made and why. 

If I recall, at some point last years Ethang made the same accusation that I only voted for liberals and atheists in debates - and still continued to make that same claim even after I posted dozens of debate links showing my votes for conservatives and theists.

In general, I think we can all acknowledge that we may be imperfect, and I may have missed things in debates or messed up a vote: but in reality thus far it’s just a lot of accusations with no one really being able to point out exactly what part of the vote was wrong or unfair or why. I wouldn’t trust anyone’s accusations that don’t specifically mention a vote, and clearly specify how that vote indicates unfairness.

S&G should be presentation and structure

From my position as a voting mod my opinion is that this would qualify as a personal attack and an as hominem - as it is specifically implying that there is a material problem with the person (dumb due to being a movie star)

While I said the word explicit about 8 times in two sentences; your example illustrates I should probably have included strong inferred negative statements too as long as they’re material.

@RM

Thank you, the positive sentiment is appreciated.

If someone does something on the forums that you take issue to as bad behaviour.

Calling them a jerk, is an “Ad-Hom”.

Calling them a jerk, then saying that their particular behaviour was bad is “poisoning the well”.

Explaining the behaviour, and why it is bad; and explaining that this behaviour can be considered Jerky to some is - imo - legitimate.

I didn’t read everything, but imo personal attacks are ones that contain either explicit insults directed at an individual; or contain explicitly derogatory or insulting language about some material aspect of the person.

I can’t call someone dumb, stupid, mentally ill - as that is materially impacting and referencing  the person. I can explicitly talk about a particular action or behaviour of an individual as being specifically stupid - as long as I don’t use words that are ubiquitously used insultingly (what you did was stupid is okay, what you did was regarded - is not).

It is not possible to have a discussion concerning behaviours of individuals without being negative to some degree; and when your trying to explain the issues with actions or behaviours - it often legitimately lands in derogatory territory. The key aspect for me for where attacks cross from being behaviour based to personal based is when there is an inferrerence that the poor behaviour is due to a derogatory material fault or flaw in the person:

IE, 

Ramshutu - why the hell do you keep responding to RM, while he is calling you out, you should know better and should simply ignore him rather than acting like a petulant child demanding to get the last word.

Is fine

Ramshutu - why the hell do you keep responding to RM, while he is calling you out, you should know better and should simply ignore him. You must have some serious maturity issues to keep constantly responding.

Is the other side of the line and makes it a personal attack due to being material.

Ramshutu - why the hell do you keep responding to RM, while he is calling you out, you should know better and should simply ignore him rather than acting like a retarded child demanding to get the last word.

is also the other side of the line due to the clear inference of insult with the specific insulting word.

It’s a sliding scale with an area in between that makes it difficult to feel out what is okay and what a not, but there is a clear line in that inference that helps delineate one from the other.

The main issue is that often insults aren’t a big deal - no one really takes offence on either side yet action is taken: a lot of time’s I think it’s good to reiterate to people not to insult others as you find that while I could insult Ragnar and he could be okay, others may take that as green light for similar behaviour. 

I think we’re trying to foster a civil atmosphere; but we still have a personal small community that has all that sort of drama - it’s important to strike a fair balance between those. On the one hand we want to encourage a meta-bunk like atmosphere, with interesting discussion, data, etc; but we have to accept that this is more of a pie fight rather than a tea party, insults will be thrown as will happen in literally anywhere with more than one person, and we just need to politely warn people to be more civil and only take more substantial actions when there is clear abuse. 

It’s difficult to really pick out what the atmosphere should be; I would say act like you would at work - but this isn’t work and shouldn’t be. At parties with drink, you’re in a much more relaxed and less meaningful environment so the rules of parties isn’t quite the same. In a bar you don’t say bad things so as not to get stabbed.

The best scenario that explains the level of expected behaviour is probably that of an amateur football team. You won’t all like each other, you wouldn’t start a fight in a game, or screen obscenities at a team mate; but you can understand if someone insults another player of frustration is running high - the manager would tell them both to calm down as the goal is everyone pulling together to win. Like wise in the locker room if you took issue at how another play worked in a game, I think it would be fair to go into detail of what a player does wrong, to explain how it’s bad as to be expressively negative as long as it goes both ways

I’ll try again early December :)

Oh man! Thanks for reminding me!

Please everyone let me know if you’re still interested, or if anyone wishes to sign up for it.

Ragnar and myself are generally the most active voters - I normally prep votes while on the bus in the morning/evening, pooping, or when I have a particular complex software build that takes time that I can’t spend elsewhere. As I’m driving now, I have been given an extra workstation; it’s down to poop time only, which I normally try and spend on other urgent web related business. 

Ragnar is now a mod, which takes up a lot of his times

To get votes, the best way is to try and mention it in the debate request section. I’m hoping to run a debate tournament too shortly, which could help.

It’s a subtle protest against imabench’s use of a frozen profile picture

It means a user has been banned, and has created an alternate account to get around the ban.

Normally if you started the debate, you’re not normally penalized - and you can just wait for the win.

When banned users create new accounts and spam new debates - those will normally get deleted, and there has been talk of deleting debates that were in the challenge people when a person is banned, but it’s not currently a rule. 

We’re having a discussion about your toxic behaviour, repeated call outs, the fact that you never justify any of your accusations and really just shrivel away when given the opportunity.

Even if everything you said were true - nothing I have said would be any less true. Even if you were “more popular”, it doesn’t mean you’re all of a sudden not engaging in toxic behaviour, or clear harassment. It’s just an example of you trying not to engage; and resorting to playground style insults instead of trying to actually show you’re correct.

Also, framing this conversation in terms of “winning and losing”, is very much your own personal perspective here. I’m not sure whether you’re sensitive about losing arguments or you’re projecting your own insecurity and perception of not being able to argue back as me feeling I’m “winning” - but I tend to view arguments not as winning or losing - but being correct or not. Given you have offered nothing to challenge the arguments I’ve presented other than childish insults and playground tactics; I am particularly reassured on that front.

I’m sorry, but pointing out that you’re making a series of unsubstantiated accusations but are never able to mount any defence of these accusations is not bullying. Period. This thread; the former thread (twice), the issue with spam account debates, my voting record: all examples of you constantly making claims, then having those claims embarrassingly demolished - then continuing make the claims at all opportunities but never trying to justify them. 

It reminds me of the saying “if the facts are not on your side, pound the law. If the law is not on your side, pound the facts; if neither the law or the facts are on your side: pound the table.”

You’re logic is particularly twisted and false here - I am being critical of your toxic and obnoxious behaviour: and your seeming inability to make meaningful defense of your position, I am belittling your strategy of using accusations in lieu of arguments, and I am criticizing your unwillingness to argue the things you do resoundingly claim to believe in, whilst on a website dedicated to arguing.

I am very much attacking the things you say, and the things you post. I will keep doing that, regardless of whether your feelings end up being hurt.

These are not personal attacks, this is not harassment; because attacking your words and content is expressly and deliberately allowed; your words and actions here will never be protected from criticism because that is antithetical to a debate site. The fact that you feel criticism of you - and take downs of your behaviour, is inseparable from attacking you personally is the very problem with the rules I’m trying to point out.

You seem to be hoping that the rules are changed so that you can request punishment for those who are critical of you, and to stifle criticism of your actions and your content. Unfortunately, that’s not the case: if you wish people to stop being critical of you, then you should stop acting in an overtly belligerent way that invites so much criticism. I can’t make your feelings not be hurt by me being overtly critical of your content; but the appropriate way to avert your feelings being hurt is either to adjust the content.

The reality is that if you “feel like shit” or have hurt feelings when someone point out that the things you say are false, illogical, absurd, or if the way you act is harassing or insulting, or expressly outline disparities or hypocrisy in your behaviour : especially on the back of you deliberately and repeatedly calling people out as you did here - this is no ones problem but yours.

I’m sure that you consider it cyber bullying someone asking nicely you to stop inventing accusations that you won’t bother proving. Perhaps if you were not so belligerent, and stopped engaging in repeated and unceasing attacks on people, you’ll face less criticism.

And finally, no one would know whether any of your absurd claims are true, as every single time you’re asked to prove them, you shrivel and wilt like an emasculated puppy. 

I think, given your fairly toxic behaviour; your style of repeated unsubstantiated accusations should be explicitly branded as personal attacks.

@RM

Awesome. So as you won’t defend anything, I’ll have to presume you are conceding your arguments have no merit.

I will politely ask that as this is a debate website, not an accusation website - you should stop making up nonsense accusations of you are unwilling to defend them.

So, as I said before: these rules should prevent people making explicit call outs and abuse via profile picture, but won’t not prevent relevant satire directly aimed directly at others toxic behaviour.

The more stringent aspects should be issued as guidelines, not upheld rules due to the likelihood that individual members will pretend to be upset by legitimate and reasonable discourse in order to shield themselves from criticism that they cannot address with intelligent discussion.

Yes it could. And I agree that this could be a problem: a specific attack, such as someone’s RL image, or some explicit attack (such as bench is a ^}*]+[^}) absolutely - but the general issue is that you cannot put the offended party in charge of defining what is offensive. Especially as the anti frozen glass of water is the type of profile picture expressly seemed as “abusive harassment”.

Its the inverse of the just kidding excuse - JKE is there to ensure that someone doesn’t call someone a c**t then say “just kidding, don’t warn me”. It’s not there to punish actual jokes that clearly shouldn’t enrage anyone - like the glass of water.

This is a microcosm of the US government. The issue is not the regulations and the crappy laws, they have a good reason for most of them, the issue is that they are officiously enforced despite not being intended for what they are being enforced against.

I think as guidelines they are good “try and act like this”, but I don’t think it’s reasonable as an enforceable rule.

But this is inherently the problem - even if you hated me and vice versa - a glass of water vs Elsa is not even close to something one could consider abusive. If I had, for example, had a picture of a bench being sawn in half, that’s where we get closer.

Correct.

It could also be harassing anyone who considers themselves either an optimist or pessimist.

<———

How about this for an anti-frozen profile picture?

Again. Another personal attack,  unsubstantiated accusations and falsehoods.

You’re not justifying your position, your not providing any detail; you are just doing what is called “poisoning the well”. Your not making your case, just saying bad things about the opposing party. Nothing you have said is true; and I will happily refer you to any of the threads or debates where the above were discussed - and you failed to defend your claims.

This is expressly the issue I am trying to make about the rules; the rules as written mean that harassment or abuse is constituted by whatever party wishes to say some critical behaviour felt harassing or abusive. 

Given that you seem quite willing to accuse, but wilt when given the opportunity to defend your position - this is clearly problematic: moderator actions and rules should be based upon objective criteria, and clear violations of good conduct, not on arbitrary accusations of hurt feelings.

This is personal attack #3.

This type of post serves absolutely no purpose. It doesn’t advance your ideas, nor does it attack mine. It doesn’t challenge any of the points made, and is simply a pointless and meaningless attack for the sake of it. How am I a hypocrite? What am I hypocritical about?

For example, I could call you a hypocrite for repeatedly issuing personal attacks (such as in this thread) on multiple other users - yet is the first to comment, accuse and object when someone else does the same at any point.

This is the point I am making; a user to whom all criticism is harassment could get a genuine user who is engaging fairly and in good faith banned despite the inherently odious behaviour coming from the other side.

I agree - I think the rules are great as guidelines and listing encouraged behaviour - but not as enforceable criteria.

This is both a community website and a debate site; it’s not a sterile environment where there are no personal interactions, but it also isn’t 4chan or Createdebate where overt hostility and personal antagonism between users poisons the atmosphere. To survive, Dart needs to foster a good environment of community and debate: I completely agree that personal attacks should be against the rules (though tbh I think due to the community nature, most of the time a simple “calm down, and stop insulting people”, is enough) most cases of personal attacks are not a big deal - and we can all (well most) tell when they start crossing over into the poisonous type.

ROs have their place : to stop the dart equivalent of the family guy chicken fight that becomes excessive - and for actual genuine harassment.

Quite frankly, while moderation should foster an environment that allows healthy discussion, and dissuade attacks: it’s shouldn’t be moderations job to protect people’s feelings as a baseline.

The reality is that we want an environment where grown ups, adults can come in, see valid and reasonable discussion and then feel willing to participate. 

We don’t want those people to be jumped upon, for overt hostility to make them reluctant to come back, or to have the environment become especially toxic. It’s tough because what keeps most people coming back over a longer time is the clash, the arguing, and trying to come up with ways of expressing their opinion and sometimes preventing toxicity can undermine that goal.

So in a round about type of way, you’ve just illustrated the main issue with the way the rules are written. I have provided a fairly detailed justification on why I think the rules could be abused by the obtuse, the overly sensitive and the nefarious; I also re-linked the explanation of how some specifically actions do not constitute harassment because they are both aimed at behaviour and content - and in no way rise to the level of objectively offensive.

Rather than actually try and engage on those points, you made a call out related to the accusation you couldn’t defend in the other thread and resort to a personal attack instead of explaining why my point is wrong. You appear to again accuse me of breaking the rules, and imply that I am unfairly treating you, or abusing you (implicated elsewhere).

Now, as I am both a grown up, and a vote moderator - the two explicit attacks in this thread do not particularly bother me. However, if I were to say that your tendency to try and unfairly harangue moderators into taking over the top actions to punish those who are critical of you - which is true; or to point out that when challenged on your accusations in debates, threads or in other locations - you invariably fall far short of showing you are correct, and quickly revert back to simply accusations and vagueness - that these rules could easily lead to someone like you continually throwing such accusations and attacks around repeatedly - yet demand moderators take explicit action the moment anyone says even the slightest cross word about you: I’m sure you would find this fair and reasonable criticisms of your actions and behaviours to be “harassment” and “cyberbullying”. 

No matter what rules are in place, it is not possible to stop your feelings being hurt by something that shouldn’t hurt your feelings - this is an issue for you to personally resolve, rather than rules to be put in place to soothe users for perceived slights.

I absolutely agree that as a pointer for how users should act - guidelines - these are great, but given patterns of behaviour already outlined, if these are enforced as is, this site will rapidly become someone like RM abusing his ability to define what gets other people banned.

The profile picture issue is covered here:https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/3031/i-will-like-to-clarify-why-harassment-via-profile-pics-is-allowed
As explained, this is clearly not harassment, and is merely satirical mockery of behaviour and accusations made by another user.

I am completely for rules that prohibit profile pictures that single out individual in the form of personal attacks.

There is, however, a major caveat that should be made in these rules.

My main concern is that those who wish to abuse the rules, or simply have impossibly thin skin are likely to be able to exploit these rules to impose their will on others.

For example, if I am not a great debater, or I wish to game the system - I could demand that those I don’t like, or that I think could vote against me if I had a bad debate don’t vote on my debates. MAR did this a lot.

Likewise, someone with exceptionally thin skin who is unable to accept any criticism could very well use these rules to claim harassment in the most innocuous scenarios where other users are criticizing them, their actions or their positions.

It is critical that these rules cannot be used by such individuals to gain an unfair advantage or to suppress criticism by simply making accusations or claiming oppression and demanding action.

Harassment, personal attacks and abuse must be objective in order to take action on these grounds.
This is the biggest concern that I have: there are more users I can see today that would unfairly abuse or invoke these rules to the detriment of the site, than there are scenarios in which the new rules would have reasonably prevented toxic behaviour over what is here already.

I think they are very good guidelines in general as operating principles - but I feel there is a big difference between listing behaviour we would encourage all users to follow, and behaviour that is actionable: I think some of the rules blur that line a little. 

The game has a some key differences from risk, fixed loss ratio, limits attacks only to adjacent territories and no initial position selection (at least the rules for that game).

If your fighting two people at a time at the start - you’ll be destroyed. The focus is on minimizing the number of fronts you’re fighting on, whilst pushing expansion.

The issue with WaterPhoenix approach, is that he expanded rapidly, with no defending armies; then spread attacks thinly. It means he was inviting attacks on all sides, when he pushed out to the point he was touching multiple people. Why attack a person with 10 armies when you could attack with 0.

RMs split his forces over two locations, and branched out to attack the first person he saw; but the expansion meant he was fighting a war on

3 fronts in two locations, meaning he could either defend one, or get beaten in both locations. There were a lot of examples of him pushing out, then losing the territory he came from - doing that in two locations meant he rapidly got squeezed out of the game.

Supa did the same thing, imo he had the strongest position starting in New England - But didn’t capitalize until he hit a wall against WF and RM. He had a good strategy with the push from west, but pushed out from two sides which weakened his overall force. 

Ilikepie also had a decent strategy, but was caught between WF and RM so couldn’t do much.

My strategy was a good old fashioned Risk Steamroll. Push west continually from one location, capture continents, maintain a large enough army base to dissuade attacks. Worked pretty well. I expanded a little slower than others, but had enough defensive force that I did not get attacked until I was too powerful to stop. I pushed west, then when I reached the Midwest, I wiped out supas west side in pretty much two rounds. From there I was getting a large enough bonus that I just cleaned up.

I would have much preferred to start as supa than anyone else; ilikepie probably had the worst position.

Pfft, my win was based on the pure and unadulterated application of game theory

RM didn’t have a great starting position. Supa and you started off in the best locations.

Looking at the reply, imo supa had the best strategy. WF overextended himself.

Conan : what is best in life?

“To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”

My votes all follow that philosophy.

All of those debates and all of those votes compare your debates and arguments against the others, and meant that you lost; for a large plethora of reasons - most commonly irrelevant arguments that are unrelated to the resolution, lacking warrant, or simply ignoring major parts of your opponents argument. Suggestions otherwise are really just fabrications from someone who does not seem able to take any criticism of any kind from anyone. If you recall we had a debate on this specific topic and you were crushed hard. I would happily have another.

 

I don’t judge arguments people don’t make; I do sometimes point out that arguing some side tangent instead of the main argument isn’t relevant to the resolution, or point out that sacrificing a topical argument for an absurd semantic Kritik harmed your defense : but this is mostly for the purposes of offering some constructive help on how to improve.

Judging by your own standard, of the perfect standard often leads to a scenario where you judge the debates against how you feel one side should have argued. Not only could you be wrong about how he should have argued (as it’s often personal preference), but as your judging each side by your own opinion, the standard is different for both sides, and thus is often inherently unfair.

Virtuoso covered his explanation in his two replies prior to my comments.

The entire premise of the thread is to get people to tag derogatory things on other members.  Whether or not it’s satire, that was the goal as I don’t believe there is any other way it is possible to interpret a thread billed as “nominations” for derogatory awards other than encouraging people to nominate others for derogatory awards.

By all means, feel free to explain how you feel that a thread that expressly asked people to nominate users for derogatory awards wasn’t expressly encouraging people to be derogatory about others: but I don’t see it.

Secondly, even if the intent wasn’t to encourage people to be insulting; thats what threads that explicit encourage people to be insulting end up doing, and was exactly what ended up happening in that thread.

As insults, derogatory comments and other personal attacks are prohibited by the CoC, I think the decision to lock a thread which explicitly encouraged people to violate the CoC, and in which multiple people has violated the CoC is perfectly reasonable - whether that was the intention of the thread or not.

Like I said to coal; what is the alternative? Should we have allowed the multiple violations? Waited for more of them and then started issuing warnings or temporary bans? And probably locked the thread anyway.

The issue, I strongly suspect, is that the objection to the decision is a proxy for objection to the rules themselves; while it’s valid to object to the rules on personal attacks - it’s a different conversation than the one here.


The main issue, however, is that the result was a thread was locked, no one was banned. I most cases where there are personal attacks - which obviously happen all the time - there’s often just a message to cut it out.

Speaking for myself only, if the thread expressly states people could only put themselves forward for the award and shouldn’t nominate others: or had it just been a thread suggesting darker award criteria - I wouldn’t personally find those to be violations - as they aren’t expressly encouraging others to insult other members: but that encouragement to insult, and the fact that it ended up that way is why the threads were locked.

I also find the comparison to rape particularly fatuous and asinine as it relates to issues of whether clothing constitutes consent, (it doesn’t) and a ban on such clothing would be imply that it could be reasonably construed as such (it doesn’t). This is completely different to the issue of whether threads  implicit or explicit encouragement of other members to break the rules on a private website should be locked - whether intended to be humorous or not. 

This is pretty much an exact summary of our back and forth: the only part where you even came close to explaining why you took issue was not only answered by Virt; it had absolutely nothing to do with the question I asked which you said you answered.

It seems you would prefer spending your posts talking about how bad moderation is, and how we are all either acting in bad faith, rather than engaging in any good faith attempt to explain why the decision was wrong, or how we can improve.

To be honest, there’s not much we can do with that; and I’m sure you can appreciate that simply engaging in attacks, not elaborating your thinking when people make an attempt to solicit your thoughts on what was actually wrong isn’t the most constructive way of improving anything.

Looking back on your last few replies

You accused Virt of being too heavy handed a couple of times, accused him of locking a thread that was meant as a joke (which he pointed out clearly violates the rules).

When I asked the question - you questioned my intent, accused me of not understanding fighting words, you then claim I deliberately mischaracterized your thread. You then also claimed virt doesn’t have the ability to moderate the site; complained about the moderation, accused me of asking the question in bad faith, then asked whether I suggested another thread to be locked.

At no point that I can see in any of your replies have you answered the question I posed; I’m asking so as I can understand what the issue you have with the logic of the decision as per the rules. Just to elaborate on that in case I didn’t explain my self way, I asked you the question again.

I think that it’s important that moderation listens to feedback - and owns up when we f*** things up, as we will do fairly often - because the best mods can aim for is for everyone to think we’re always acting in good faith; but given that our job here is to enforce a set of rules; I really do want to understand what the error in the decision actually was - as simply being told the decision is wrong, and that moderation is terrible is not useful feedback, or even feedback we can really do much about.

This is actually my intent - you think the decision is bad; that’s fine - but Virt and I have outlined the reasoning behind it, and it would be very useful to know what issue you have with that reasoning and why; rather than just be told how much we suck, and how the decision is terrible.

If we understand your reasoning, or what the issue is - we can at least take that perspective on board - but without more information from you, there’s little more we can do to take on board the issues you have.

Please elaborate how I mischaracterized the thread? Whether it was a joke or not: Its a thread that basically encouraged other users to be needlessly derogatory to other users. No?

What replies were you expecting to see that weren’t basically pointing out the implicit stupidity or worthlessness of other users?

Your last reply appears more explicitly dedicated to simply trashing the decision and the decision makers, and to tell us how we don’t understand how to apply the currently in force code of conduct rather than any attempt to explain why you feel the decision was incorrect as per the in force rules of this site.

I’m trying to understand exactly what about the decision you take issue with? You obviously don’t agree with the decision, so I’m explicitly stating what I think is reasonable to conclude would happen to the thread if it were left up, and asking whether you feel it would have been acceptable.

Is your issue that the thread would not have inherently ended up as a set of users engaging or inciting personal attacks?

Is your issue that the thread should have been left up even though it seemed clearly intended to encourage users to be derogatory to other users?

Is your issue that personal attacks should be allowed?

 

There’s a lot of nuance to it.

The most important aspect is that whatever you think or believe should not have any bearing on the way you vote. Facts, information that you know but aren’t discussed can’t figure in. Arguments that you have in your head that you think would win the debate is irrelevant. The debaters are debating against each other - not you: so you should bear that in mind, you are always comparing the two debaters and points together.

So in this case C.) is the only way of judging.

However, there are a huge variety of different ways you can do that. And basically there has been major arguments in S&D about the best ways of doing that.

As a voter you must consider who has burden of proof on each individual claims, whether the debates has provided a sufficient warrant (justification or evidence). 

An argument is often a tug off war; a justified issue pulls the way towards on individual. A good rebuttal that casts substantial doubt on the point pulls it back. Well evidenced and justified arguments pull harder than a logical opinion.

Most of the different styles of judging boil down to how you these different aspects are measured.

I’m not entirely sure I see your point.

Could you explain why you feel a thread where the premise is to purposefully encourage multiple responses that are derogatory or insulting to other users should be deemed acceptable and be left?

Or are you suggesting that moderation let the thread continue, and simply issue warnings to the users who inevitably post, then start issuing bans when the thread inevitably deteriorates the same way as call out threads and “fighting words” inevitably do?

Structure imo doesn’t matter, I much prefer general flow and back and forth over structure; I find it especially hard to read when there is a disjoint order with rebuttals skipping a round like the more formal structures come with.

Are you trying to imply that Dr.Franklin is not 108 years old?

/in.