Board Thread:Debate of The Week/@comment-28112409-20171002232846/@comment-32881402-20171105194533

Vertroyer wrote: I am with you on improving the standards, I am by no means disagreeing with you on that part. It gets infuriating to see people come and leave, not take the debate seriously, laze out and hope for a carry. It's just that I need verification on whether a certain issue is insignificant and doesn't need any tuning, or the issue is of an actual problem to a portion of the people and must be fixed. This is the information I'm trying to weed out.

'''Please notice that what I say is not invalid until you have anything to say against it. Sure, I might not have large-scale proof that people share a similar opinion, but that is insignificant if you can't argue against it. I stand by what I said, because I know that it wasn't nonsense. If people are disagreeing, I'd really like to hear why, because I am clueless.'''

While you did point out the problem, I still need to see a good bunch of people agreeing that it is indeed a problem. I don't need to get a poll for thousands of tos players, I just need the wiki community's opinions and what they think. It's not the thousands of ToS players participating in DoTW after all, it's just certain wiki people. If those 6-7 people are the only people in DoTW, then that's all that matters. I don't see where all the other ToS players come into play.

'''I meant it regarding the subjective arguments. You can't say 'that role is boring' is a valid argument until hundreds or thousands share the same opinion. It's a game and it is meant to be entertaining, but in the end 6-7 opinions means nothing, when the playerbase is at least a thousand times it.'''

'''You might want the community's opinion on the matter, but you don't need it at all. What I say hasn't been argued against, so there's no reason not to do it, unless you worry about others approving it. Which should be a concern, sure, but it doesn't invalidate my point.'''

The thing is, I can't stop subjectivity from coming in. I can make a guide on debating right, I can warn them about it, but it won't stop. There'll always be the lower levelled debaters who'll somehow let subjectivity leak into their argument one way or another. I can't go removing subjective arguments either, because then that's too strict and will start killing the debate for the people involved. The judges already filter out subjectivity, so the issue of subjectivity affecting debate results is eliminated. I can still see where you're coming from, but the maximum I can do without killing the fun of DoTW is verbal warnings and guides, what is there to do to raise standards without heavily damaging the activity?

'''You can't, unless you limit it. You're right there. But that's why you don't begin the debate with a topic heavily concerning subjectivity. With your 'Target Play' debate, there was no way to calculate the chances of the Executioner hanging their target, so it became a debate of 'fun'. Eventually, is developed into a debate with Survivor and Jester, but Jester still can't be calculated. Therefore, to keep the debate going, people were making arguments based off of subjectivity as there was nothing more to discuss anyway. This links back to the problem I'm addressing: swingy roles like this do not make good debates.'''

'''I don't suggest you kill the fun. I suggest that you do make these guides, so that people know not to do these things. It might take effort and prove ineffective, but then you can make these inadequate arguments a bigger deal. Begin to deduct points from these arguments and make it a more serious threat to their team. At the beginning, I'm sure it will be harmful, but as the debates go on, people will be less likely to make these arguments. Now, you say this will kill the debate? It will, you're right, but that's why we come up with alternative arguments. See, with more knowledge on balance and therefore the advantages and disadvantages of a role (to a greater degree), people will have more to discuss. Rather than taking the debate as a whole, people will learn to pick at the less significant - but still existent - parts of the topic. That is what I'm doing here. This affects the quality of posts on one board, and isn't at all a major problem. Why am I doing it? Because it isn't causing harm. If anything I'm helping. It will encourage more thought into the debate which can only be positive.'''

The issue of people not reading previous arguments is also a recurring problem that I definitely agree with. It was still awful seeing that Team BG has recycled their argument because Team Doc did so too. Instead of propagating such a bad debating habit, you could've went the extra step or so to develop specific counters or replies rather than recycling, then used your way of argument that is not recycling to provide an example to the same people who recycled their points against you to show them how a good, well-formed debate looks like. When someone performs really well and is a well-known debating powerhouse, lower debaters will start looking up to them. The idea of "we recycled because they did too" stifles development of debate skills and prevents demonstration of said better debate skills. If you were doing well and didn't need to bring up new arguments because the other side wasn't bringing up new arguments, then you're not encouraging better debating, you're encouraging stale debating. If you truly want to raise better standards in debating, then do it in all aspects, not just the specific one that bugs you.

'''Except there wasn't much left to say. There were a few larger posts at the beginning which were drowned out by the huge amount of posts that followed them, not giving feedback, rather recycling what had been said in the larger posts. There really wasn't much more to say. Of course, our team could have presented more evidence, but it wasn't needed. Are we lazy? To an extent, yes, but we needn't exert our full effort. Our side had much more potential, but the arguments recycled by the opposing team were defended by arguments that had already been said. '''

This is not world-class debating, it will have issues no matter what. The standards of this activity are not world-class either, which means the smashing majority of the participants don't mind most of said issues, especially small and minor ones. The way I'm still seeing it is that swingy role debating is still a minor issue because I have seen absolutely no proof of it being a significant problem, all I have is your word for it, which I deem not enough evidence. Again, I'm giving you the opportunity to prove it. I will make a poll asking for opinions on this, or I will make a debate with swingy roles and we'll see how it goes (maybe even collect participant feedback after said debate).

'''I think you're misunderstanding what I'm doing here. I didn't mean to blow it out of proportion and I said many times that it was  small issue. Not minding an issue doesn't mean that it isn't there.'''

'''I believe I said this somewhere above, but I needn't more proof until you can prove me wrong. What I have said is reasonable and I have no proof against it. Although, I understand now that this is a community matter and their opinions need to be taken into consideration no matter how sensible what I said was. Can we start a thread somewhere on the topic? It would be intersting to hear what people have to say.'''