Site name change proposal

People dont want to debate. People want to win debates.

However, mathematical logic guarantees that in any group of people where each debates each, average victory rate of above 50% is impossible. So the most likely case is that at least half of people are mostly losing debates, less likely that most are merely not winning and getting tied results.

In any win lose competition, average win rate cannot be lower or higher than 50%. It means that half of debating population has no any chance of having win rate above 50%.

World of mathematics is a depressing and crushing world.

the only exception to this is majority farming minority for wins. So for example, 6 debaters are only debating against 4 debaters and getting constant wins against them.

But in any "everyone debates everyone" competition, such as similar case in ultrarated, the output will basically always be one half of population mostly losing. And such is the case on leaderboard too. You could draw a line on half of leaderboard, and the bottom half is pretty much gonna be mostly those with rating 1500 or below.

The principle holds mathematically true because number of wins can never be greater than number of losses.

And it already showed itself to be true in ultrarated. Ultrarated leaderboard has about 50% of users at rating below 1500, and the reason why principle shows so true there is because its random and everyone debates everyone.

When everyone debates everyone, output of that can only realistically be 50% of people mostly losing. The other option is having mostly ties, but that rarely happens in debating.

Simply put, in order for one group to have mostly wins, some other group has to have mostly losses.

When it comes to any "win lose tie" competition, it is literally a zero sum game.

For each +1 (win), there is a -1 (loss) somewhere.

And because of this principle, the system acts vampiric.

Debate art had same problem. It relied on winners farming losers, but once losers quit the site, the winners are left stick with no one to farm, but each other.

The system is simply designed in a way that there must be someone, some group, ready to endure mostly losses, for system to work at all.

And I am afraid that any system relying on vampirism is essentially a bad system for at least half of people in it.

I have similar critique of capitalism, the vampirism of resources.

"The Pareto Principle", is a different area. It is built on assumption that 20% of people in top tier are most competent ones, thus they produce the most wins.

Maybe you could say that 20% of people on leaderboard have 80% of wins, but that's a different area to unavoidable vampirism in all competitive systems.

I like debating too. I just understand what Taoism first understood about all competition. It's a zero sum game.

There are some types of competition which make everyone in it stronger, but any "win lose tie" system is essentially built upon what Karl Marx described as vampirism.

Vampiric systems are described as "self draining systems", because one part of system gets drained for another to progress.

Now, a lot of video games in multiplayer are designed on vampirism, but the ones which are not sometimes have more players. Roblox is not designed on vampirism, at least a lot of games in it are not.

the math doesnt lie.

there is a famous joke in Bosnia about this (joke might get lost in translation) :

-Why are these people running?

-Because the first one gets huge reward.

-So first one gets huge reward, but why are the rest of them running?

My biggest issue with vampiric systems is that they are designed to punish participation. Even under ideal elo conditions, about half of people will sink. the only way majority of people can be rising is if they all collectively farm minority or share rating gained from farming minority, so that minority would have to lose a lot.

Vampiric systems face an unavoidable problem, because they are designed in a way that one can only grow if another sinks further down.

Its a true zero sum game. It always results in 50% average win rate.

Its a concept a lot of modern multiplayer games abandoned, mainly because about half of players are guaranteed to face burnout from having mostly losses.

If you still think its not a zero sum game, take a look at ultrarated leaderboard:

6 debaters with rating above 1500

3 debaters with rating 1500

8 debaters with rating below 1500

So only 6 players progressed in elo, 3 remained where they were from start, and 8 have reduced in elo.

It is a zero sum game no matter what type of match up you use. the amount of wins can never be greater than amount of losses. Amount of gained elo can never exceed amount of lost elo.

this is why some modern systems use separate elo gain or loss for win / loss. the player who wins, for example wins 12 elo while the one who loses only loses 5.

the reason why these systems were even put in place is because game designers pretty much noticed that about half of players have elo in the negative from starting point.

When its a zero sum game, whatever one wins must be lost by another. So its not possible to progress without someone else losing their progress.

Stock trading is also zero sum, but that doesn't stop people from participating.

Gambling is below zero sum, yet it doesnt stop people from participating. However, people would participate more if they didnt lose on average.

But we are not gambling nor stock trading. We dont really have a brand which can compensate for zero sum system. Its why I have been saying for a long time that zero sum system (current elo system) is very bad for small sites and small communities.

Its a system for those who can afford to lose players from burnout. It doesnt work well for small communities, because it guarantees about 50% of people are being punished for participating.

And while they are not losing anything "real", no one really likes watching their rating sink. I would actually probably keep better rank on ultrarated if I never do another ultrarated again after I reach good enough rating, because past that point I can only go down in rank.

there is a reason why virtually all games out there which have zero sum system also have other systems such as match up system and team fights to compensate for zero sum. Its reason why in those games, even worst players can have close to 50% win rate. Because someone who is ranked "grandmaster" aint gonna be playing against someone who just started a game few days ago or someone who has low rank.

But I propose a more simple positive elo system which simply doesnt punish participation.

It's also true for forums. Not many people post political forums on here anymore besides me.

But it's probably going to change. During the 20th century, America didn't die, but it changed. It went from isolationist to global power. This website used to be Debateart.com. But people prefer Mafia forums to Debating forums now. Maybe call the website Mafiacraft or something. It's what you prefer. You can still debate on here, but the whole reason why Mafia is even on here is because a long time ago, people found debating boring, so they added something else. I just never lost my 2021 debating spirit like what most people here did. Do that, and make Mafiacraft before debating/forums on here because it's obvious that this website has changed it's pourpose:

Forum doesnt have any rewards for posting. I would be perfectly fine with some virtual currency being in forums. It doesnt have to buy anything useful. Just so I can show off my virtual money.