A message to the users of Edb8

Blackflag: Elo is not supposed to be a measure of skill. If you have a 50% win/loss ratio and a good Elo, then that would imply you've only ever debated high-Elo opponents. If you've won half your debates against a high-elo opponent then that's pretty darn impressive.

Blackflag: Popularity bias is fixed with voting moderation. You just have to have a mod that is actually willing to get dirty with removing votes. Airmax is far to subtle with his voting methods. If you award someone a point and say "you spelled poop wrong" , one point to con for grammar, it would stick. It's getting improved on since aaron took over, but there is a line that even aaron is forced to abide by. If he had his way, only viable votes would stand, and there would be zero vote bombs. You can directly tell when a vote is cast with the intent to alter a debate.

How do you fix it? Have a mod that doesn't care and is willing to remove a vote even if the user gets pissed off. Tell him why his vote was bad, why it's not acceptable and remove it. No offense to chuz again, but that is why his vote was removed on that debate. Bluesteel was starting to go towards that method and it pissed off people because they could not just say " i vote for con because of (x, or y). They were actually required to present a reason and explain it in detail. If you move towards that method, then you have a solution.

Why? "Oh my God somebody wrote their DDO Elo score on their profile, I'm ditching the site!"
It is easy to say this when you personally reject the consequences of a visible ELO score. I believe I made a thread about it somewhere.

Mikal: 1. Interested but difficult

2. We have this already

3. No point, might as well make all features available from the start

Mikal: There's a rich-html editor for your biography (add images, different sizes of text etc), and you can change the settings of your theme and make that public. For security reasons I don't want to give full html control over that page, however.

admin: I am personally volunteering to help you if you decide to do it. If you edit the site by acknowledging other sites scores, I will personally help you improve traffic on here and even work with you on site improvement.

I think the method you had is the most viable. Open a DDO account for now, have people message you, and then transfer it on here via a category on your profile page

(2) I can edit my page with HTML? Like a background, pictures, music, etc?

Blackflag: Do you have a solution towards elitism and popularity bias besides "words of discouragement?"
I do. Vote feedback. It's been edeb8's solution since day 1.

How do you fix it? Have a mod that doesn't care and is willing to remove a vote even if the user gets pissed off. Tell him why his vote was bad, why it's not acceptable and remove it. No offense to chuz again, but that is why his vote was removed on that debate. Bluesteel was starting to go towards that method and it pissed off people because they could not just say " i vote for con because of (x, or y). They were actually required to present a reason and explain it in detail. If you move towards that method, then you have a solution.
Lol, wait until you find out about Edeb8's policy towards judging. Admin made me believe that removing judgements isn't good for the site, and I agree. We differ on judgement which seem to be created with the intent to troll

admin: I get the security reasons, porn, etc, violates your sites rules vias the distrib. I wish there was a way around it though

admin: I do. Vote feedback. It's been edeb8's solution since day 1.
I forsee the same problem. People are just going to give judges good feedback without thinking, just like they make important judging decisions without thinking. Still, I like judge feedback, it does help a little (not a lot)

Blackflag: I would disagree with that, but i'll make a conclusion on that when I see it.

Blackflag: Actually I see this already. No vote is removed so you rate the vote, and give feedback for why it's shit. I agree with this other than removing the vote in the process if it's bad enough. Leave the vote up but have it not count, and use the judge feedback to improve the vote.

Chuz Life: We are NOT required to vote against our personal interests on EITHER site and we are permitted to pick and choose the debates we might WANT to vote on. The vast majority of members do the very same thing without even thinking about it. It's one of nearly a hundred reasons for what the elo scores are such a farce.
Several things with this:
1. Edeb8 attempts to improve this by clearly communicating expectations for judges
2. Edeb8 *tends* not to attract members who vote in a biased way as frequently
3. As evidenced by our high average feedback score.

Edeb8's average feedback score, which I've been internally tracking for some months, is VERY constant around "exceptional" - far removed from "Biased" or "Vote Bomb"

admin: I actually like the system you have in place for judging. The vote judging ranking, basically makes vote bombers looks like bloody idiots if they do it consistently.

Blackflag: You did. In fact I believe we had a debate on this. You ended up forfeiting.
When you wrote this I almost considered writing my DDO debate history on my profile. Just so you can bask in how LOW my Elo score is

Mikal: It would be even better if admin implemented the extra point for certified judges like we once talked about

Blackflag: Define that for me?

Mikal: Certain judges who are reputable and have a high judge rating could apply for some sort of on-site certification that granted them an extra point for their judgements.

Blackflag: That is viable if it's used properly. It's a great way to offset shitty votes

Mikal: I've always had a problem with "bad enough". Like, is this a disincentive to giving detailed feedback? Can it be manipulated to remove votes some in-group doesn't like?

If a user gives routine bad judgments I have a talk with them about their future on edeb8 usually. I've done it once or twice.