Debatecraft would benefit from a strict modding style as a opposed to a laissez-faire one.

Resolved: Debatecraft would benefit from a strict modding style as a opposed to a laissez-faire one

I would like to affirm the resolution.

Contention 1: A civil environment is the embodiment of healthy debate.

“It is better to debate a question without settling it, then to settle a question without debating it.” -Jospeh Joubert (1)

Let’s face it, people will always dis-agree on things. Throughout history, major issues have been resolved with violence, flared tempers, genocide, and enslavement. The side that wins rules with an iron fist, while the side that loses is subjugated. Such is ultimately the way of things, even if we cross apply things to modern society. The difference in a successful modern society however, and ancient times with Kings and Queens, is generally speaking, (Besides some of the more traditional countries), some form of Democracy is involved. People get to vote and choose what they think the laws should be and can elect politicians who they believe best represent their ideals. Politicians can argue in a civil way to encourage people to agree with their ideals, as opposed to the side with the larger force of men and arms winning by beating their opposition to a pulp, as was the case in ancient times. Why this is important, is because the very essence of what debate is and what it embodies, is civility as a baseline. We encourage students to participate in debate classes to learn better ways of discourse, as opposed to fighting, screaming, and yelling. We encourage high school students to engage this way, because we want a future of leaders, lawyers, law makers, judges, etc, where people make intelligent and appropriate choices out of calm and rationally thinking mindsets. 

Now all this is to say that the language we use in debate is extremely important. Allowing users to say nasty things, or call their opponents “idiots” isn’t in the spirit of accomplishing healthy debate. These behaviors encourage the opposite rather, and tend to trigger a defense mechanism of retaliation. You are more likely to get a response of similar nature when provoking and insulting your opponent. Is that really the type of behavior we want to encourage in our society? Do we want a society where people feel threatened to voice controversial opinions at face value, rather than on merit of what they have to say? This type of behavior cancels out the entire purpose of what we want to accomplish with debate, and thus will be a baseline argument for the rest of my case. 

Contention 2: It is important to craft a culture based on what we are trying to accomplish, not by appealing to civil liberties.

“No Shoes, No Shirt, No service!” We’ve all seen the signs in a public store. This isn’t a rule made to discriminate against people, but to set a standard. What kind of people do you want to attract to your business? Homeless looking people who might not even buy anything, or if they do will probably spend little? Because the idea in principle is that people without shoes and shirts will drive other customers away from a business. The decision to not serve these people is a smart financial decision on the part of the business owner, because they want to attract the right kind of customers, and putting signs up like that will deter people who might drive away better business for the store. 

The same principle applies to a debate site. The owner or creator of a debate site, probably envisioned housing a social community where people could interact and debate topics in a manner that is coherent, intelligent, and professional. Otherwise why go through the effort of labeling it a “debate” site, if it essentially accomplishes the same things as a regular social network platform? People are already calling each other idiots and flaming each other for their beliefs on facebook and twitter. A debate site should be trying to appeal to a culture where people can argue their opinions in an elevated way, that makes a website like this an escape from your stereotypical facebook argument where people block and unfriend old friends and family members instead of hearing them out. To have a healthy debate environment, we need to weed out the members who treat it like your average social network, and hold them to a higher standard. Stricter moderation can help enforce this mindset, so that when members view the webpage they can be greeted by an intellectual debate that piques their interest.

Sub A: Search Engine Optimization

Debate websites can also be a great resource for people who want to learn about a subject, and potentially weigh both sides of something before coming to their own conclusion.  People will naturally create debates like this especially when high school debate tournaments occur every year around the world for the National Forensic League. People will use websites like Debatecraft for research purposes. Now imagine if they were to search a topic of interest and the thing that populates is two people arguing with each other, using personal insults, and general depravity in their arguments? What if people saw users calling each other names and insulting their opponent for having beliefs they dis-agreed with? Is this person more likely to want to contribute in fostering a healthy debate website by becoming a member themselves? And if that is the sort of content they like, do we want more of these individuals behaving the same way on the website? If so, what actually separates us as an intelligent debating community away from any of the major popular social networks? Debaters will always be a niche community, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a community that thrives by enforcing stricter rulesets and raising the bar for the types of members we want to attract.

Contention 3: Strict moderation encourages better behavior, and acts as a deterrent.

My final contention here is that strict moderation isn’t a bad thing. We aren’t implementing some Nazi regime designed to kick people out of the community and discourage them from debate. In fact, strict moderation accomplishes quite the opposite of this. Depending on the severity, mods should be encouraged to start off with warning members about their conduct. Many rational people will heed a warning, and be thankful to avoid a ban and adjust their behavior to accommodate the moderators in order to remain as an active member of the website. Otherwise why would they be here participating at all, if they didn’t get some level of personal enjoyment from what the website has to offer? Bans should be implemented only in the more extreme and repeat scenarios, and should start off light, and slowly progress only if behavior is repeated. The idea is for reformation, not outright exile, until it is a last resort. It is fair to assume not everyone who participates in this website comes from a high school debate background, and thus might be mostly used to debate from social media sites such as Facebook. An initial ban can help reform these members to see the ultimate idea of what we are trying to accomplish on this website. Only in cases of extreme repeat offenses would a member be theoretically banned. The whole idea behind strict moderation is to deter users from engaging in this space in a negative manner, and to propel the idea that discourse can and should be had, but at higher levels of etiquette. Eventually the member should become a contributing member to the website, unless they absolutely refuse to conform to the general layout of the site's rules, in which case, their overall presence becomes a harm or detriment to the website's growth and progression.

That is all for my opening arguments, I wish my opponent the best in his opening remarks. 

Sources: 

1. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/joseph_joubert_377081

Round 2: Rebuttals

RC1: Mirroring DDO

It is important to note that there was a change in the head moderator Airmax1227's moderation style towards the end of the website's downfall. Airmax1227 wasn't always completely Laissez-Faire. There was a pretty distinct reason he became that way, and that was due to a few combined factors. One was Juggle leaving the website. The site did continue for a few years after that point, but this was pretty much the end of development. Alex Chrum (1) was the the liaison for Juggle and the president at the time who happened to be me, and one of the bigger issues was what was being advertised on the front page of the website. One of the major complaints originally brought up by popular user Yraelz, was that the homepage of the website advertised low quality debates about things like child pornography. 

(2) When I raised this issue to Alex she confirmed that until recently,(2013) it was her who was managing the sites home page content and she just no longer able to keep up on the project. so it became an automated thing. This shows how lack of direct moderation impacted Debate.org however. On March 13th Alex informed me via email that her time dedicated to the Debate.org project was going to be more limited and she was delegated to focus on projects elsewhere (4). This led to pretty much the last contact anyone had with the developers of the website, Juggle. 

After this Airmax1227 was the sole person responsible for not just moderating user behavior, but almost everything else the site required. This leads to the second reason that Airmax1227 switched to a more Laissez-Faire style. He simply didn't have the time and ability to over-moderate in addition to his other tasks. A lot of people who stuck around debate.org remember the invasion of the bots. For the last few years on the website, bots would create accounts to spam threads in every forum with various advertisements. Airmax1227 was the primary person who had to keep these bots at bay, and he did so by having to constantly ban the bot accounts, and manually delete each and every thread. 

As time went on, the bots ramped up and the algorithm controlling them was more and more consistent. Airmax1227 was a volunteer user of the website, was not a paid member of the development team. All of this work deleting spam was on his own free time, which limited his ability to mod the website. As the bots ramped up and Airmax1227 slowly lost the ability to keep up with them, users started leaving the website in droves, and eventually Airmax1227 gave up the good fight, which is completely understandable. Airmax1227 was known for being extremely laissez-faire towards the end of the website's life, but it was mostly out of necessity. In fact Airmax1227 was known for multiple big bans against members who violated the Code of Conduct frequently. Juggle's dis-appearance was the major factor behind his change, but even then he was far more strict with users in the interim of Juggle leaving and the bots ramping up to take up the remainder of his time. On Debatecraft, we currently have active developers to work with, that can help with these issues, so Debatecraft can avoid the inevitable downfall that Debate.org faced. 

RC2: Lax Moderation vs engagement

I think my opponent mis-remembers some of the bans that actually took place from Airmax1227. Airmax1227 didn't only ban for cheating and multi-accounting. He had issued multiple reformation bans to users like RationalMadman, MalcomXy, imabench, and many others. In fact I remember distinctly a time where Airmax1227 had threatened popular user YYW with a ban just for trying to silence the opinions of others. Most of these individuals banned weren't just banned for controversial opinions though, it was almost always because they delved into personal attacks. Imabench, for example, was extremely fond of the word “Idiot" and “retard” and would frequently throw them out at people he dis-agreed with. Imabench received multiple temp bans for things like this, and Malcomxy was even perma banned because he couldn't reform. This is actually a great point about that can relate to my Contention 3 about how temp bans act as a deterrent. Imabench would considerably change his behavior after every time he was temp banned. He was given a chance, but only after being shown through a strong hand of moderation what was and wasn't acceptable behavior. 

RC3: Controversy and Growth.

I am not arguing that controversy doesn't sell. In fact I agree that it does, and it's the entire point of a debate website even existing. Controversy is the whole point. There is a distinct difference between extreme rule violation and regular old controversy however. All of the content creators that my opponent mentions for example, are well known for their professionalism and ability to debate. Crowder isn't dismissing his opponents as “libtards” for example, just shutting down leftists logic with research and solid argumentation. I encourage controversy, but crossing a line with argumentation by resorting to personal insult exchange accomplishes the opposite of what my opponent claims he wants, as it encourages people with different ideas to just “shut up”. Insults don't gratify and argument, they detract from it, and stricter moderation can help us keep the important parts of the argument in perspective by encouraging users to engage in these heated discussions in a civil way.

RC4: Debate / Free exchange

I agree with this entire point, however I am not advocating complete censorship, only censorship necessary to keep a debate in a healthy place. I also agree that it should be used only when absolutely needed, and I believe Airmax1227 also adhered to that as well, even with having to inflict multiple bans himself.

RC5: SEO

I actually believe filtering content accomplishes more for SEO purposes. Again refer to source 2, where Debate.org was advertising low quality debates about child pornography. Imagine being a new user interested in the website, clicking on that debate from the homepage, and seeing one liners and forfeits immediately after. My first impression of the website would be that it is largely dominated by trolls, rather than people seeking intelligent discussion. 

RC6: Etiquette is contextual

Stricter moderation does not dis-courage drama, nor does it expect users to be courteous. It only ensures that major lines aren't being crossed that deter people from being willing to engage in these discussions. If I want to be told that I am an idiot for believing the thing I do, instead of being explained to why and shown facts as to why, I can just go to Facebook, or any of the million other sites that encourage this behavior. Debatecraft should be held to a higher standard than this.  

Sources: 

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20130302123634/http://www.debate.org/chrumbelievable/

2. https://imgur.com/nYyHlRI

3. https://i.imgur.com/UNhl7kt.png

4. https://i.imgur.com/32f2vYe.png

Thankyou to Mikal for his timely response, this debate has been a blast, and I am grateful to him for agreeing to it!

Let's begin with my final rebuttals.

RC1: Civil Environment = Healthy Debate

“My adversary obviously values civility.”

This isn't about my values, it's about what a debate site should value, and what values a debate site should appeal to.

My opponent says curated interactions pushes dis-agreements underground to fester.

The entire American Legal System dis-agrees with this. There's a reason we have courtrooms where we can discuss laws civilly and present best evidences for guilt or innocence. It's not perfect, but it's far better than burning witches at the stake. There is a reason we don't immediately nuke countries or go to war with every one that pisses us off. Jumping straight to violence without being reasonable, results in punishment of millions of innocents. The very essence of debate is to prove the notion that the pen is mightier than the sword.

My opponent next speaks about allowing the community the solve their own issues via “letting them lose”. This will inherently be the case already with bad arguments, such is the beauty of debate. But this doesn't always allow for the opportunity of creative discussion the way the site intends. I have two major examples of this. 1. Is that this ignores when two members are equally engaging in a dispute the same way. If both people are just calling each other idiots, it devalues what the site is trying to accomplish. We aren't setting ourselves apart from websites like Facebook where people are already engaging in this manner. 2. Using ad populum to shut down an argument goes against the nature of debate. The user named “A Dream Of Liberty” Is a classic example. ADOL was consistently “witch hunted” for his beliefs on bestiality, despite always being able to provide a well detailed argument behind the things he believes in. Debate should exist to explore situations like these and challenge our beliefs, not shut down people who have controversial takes because “the crowd says so”.

Mikal's next point is about the social nature of the website. Its true people can argue in bars, classrooms, discord, and family diners. But in reality those situations are policed as well. The teacher will shut down arguments when they get out of hand, bars usually have some form of security to prevent mass disruption, and family diners would most likely call the police in a scenario where people get too unruly. It is not unreasonable to expect a debate platform to have some sort of baseline for policing behavior the same way reality does.

Lastly for this point my opponent talks about a site development option that allows people to opt out of offensive content. I do not see how this effects my argument however. Debateart.com similarly had a blocking button to allow users to ignore each other. That didn't prevent users from interacting willingly with each other. I'd assume most people who would be on the receiving end of mod intervention are people refusing to use these functions.

RC2: Culture and Civil Liberties

In response to the No shoes No shirt argument, my opponent argues that we are a platform not a boutique. I dis-agree with the notion though that we aren't appealing to a specific type of culture by naming this a debate site. Debaters are a niche category of people who wish to engage in discourse in a different manner than normal. The very nature of this being a debate website means that we should hold people to a higher standard of that than reddit or 4chan. We are creating something different, not just another social network platform. People who frequent this site do so because they want a social platform that has evolved intellectual discussion, which is inherently absent from other social networking platforms. 

My opponent again references DDO's model of success, and I again remind him that DDO's model was not always Laissez-Faire, and it wasn't until it was basically forced to be that way due to developer abandonment, and the head moderators limited time. In fact using debate.org's success as an example basically glorifies my point about how successful the site was when there WAS stricter moderation in place. The website fell apart the more Laissez-faire it became until it was completely phased out entirely. 

Next we go back to SEO. My opponent again brings up popular youtube hosts as an example of popularity. As I said in my last responses however, for the most part these Youtubers aren't completely shutting down their opponents with insults. These platform hosts are knowledgeable about the subjects they talk about and are usually better prepared for debate than the people that call in to their shows. This point doesn't really negate anything I've said, because I am really only suggesting moderator intervention in the extremely messy scenarios. I am not trying to prevent drama. Drama is fine, as long as it can remain relatively civil in nature. Mod intervention should only occur when it comes to shutting down ideas. My point about SEO remains. This site is actively doing a better job already of advertising itself than Debate.org did in 2013.

DDO: https://imgur.com/nYyHlRI

DebateCraft: https://i.imgur.com/4Edp1qy.png

Tell me which website does a better job advertising civil debate? DebateCraft being new in development obviously isn't as flashy, but it boasts the better quality content on the homepage. DDO's advertising went wrong because it lacked moderation, and the homepage only got progressively worse and worse after that point. With active developers moderating content, DebateCraft has the potential to be so much more than DDO ever was. 

The last part of this my opponent says the more debates pushed out the better SEO. In general I agree, but he is mis-understanding me if he thinks that I am proposing only Lincoln Douglas style of debates qualify as “quality” debates. I only used my own experience researching LD topics as an example. The most popular debate on debate.org for a long time was about characters in “My Little Pony” (1) This debate had 1.2 million views, but it wasn't full of insults and one liners. It was actually a quality debate. Any debate that encourages civil discourse and isn't full of insults and one liners is good enough for the standard of what a debate site should be trying to achieve.

RC3: Strict moderation, behavior, and deterrents

My opponents suggests that warnings and tone policing kill the lifeblood of a debate website. I disagree. Debate websites are very niche in general, we are appealing to a smaller population of people who likely aren't used to a website of this nature. Assuming someone's only debate experience comes from other social networking platforms, it is fair to assume they might act similarly here as they do here. Warnings are a good thing, they aren't a slap on the wrist. They let the user know what standard we are trying to accomplish with the website without overtly banning them. A steady progression of moderation is an informative process. If I am fine dining in another country and don't know the proper etiquette, someone informing me of wrong practices would act as a service to me, so I can engage in something I want to engage in, in the correct way. People want to be here, so they should  want to appeal to the site Code of Conduct. They agree to that when they become a member, just like in my example I agreed to be apart of a fine dining experience. 

Lastly my opponent thinks social punishment is a better correction for bad behavior. I think this idea is backward thinking in nature. It draws me back to the ADOL point. Do we want to witch hunt people with strange opinions, or do we want to encourage debate on a debate website? I'll let the voters decide what they think. Good luck to Mikal in the voting period! I had a ton of fun. 

Sources: 

1: https://web.archive.org/web/20141008191657/http://www.debate.org/debates/Applejack-is-Best-Pony/1