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Recent Debates and Forfeits

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nzlockie
By nzlockie | Mar 13 2014 3:26 PM
Am I the only one who reckons that ALL forfeits should automatically result in a fail?
From what I've seen we basically always award the win to the person who doesn't forfeit anyway and the few times that someone might actually forfeit a round and then return to the debate probably doesn't outweigh the number of times they forfeit and simply leave.

This has come to my attention because of the "Recent Debates" section. It looks really bad when someone new to the site clicks on them to see what the site is all about and finds a ton of half finished debates.

I was thinking that if ALL debates ended in an instant win to the non-forfeiting member, then nobody votes on them. (this is the way Edeb8 is already configured)
That should make it reasonably simple for Admin to code the recent debates section to only show debates where someone has voted. Someone will only be asked to vote when the full debate is successfully concluded, thus making the site look better!

What do we think?

I've been thinking this for a while but it was finally prompted when I saw this post on DDO:

"Probably the best attempt at making a site I've seen from users here. It doesn't seem to have died at least and it looks like it has some advantages over DDO. ALL THE DEBATES I SAW WERE FAILS and the I agree it's less user friendly. I might join but I don't even spend much time on here so I don't see the point."
(Caps added for emphasis)
admin
By admin | Mar 13 2014 4:23 PM
nzlockie: Yeah, I saw that too. Always good to get feedback :) .

Rolling out a new site update in a couple of days (sorry this is taking so long between updates this time - trust me it'll be worth it!) which, among other things, will mean that autoforfeiting is enabled on new debates by default (though I'll keep the option to turn it off for now), and autoforfeited debates will no longer show up on the Recent Debates thing. Those things already go a long way towards overcoming this problem.

"That should make it reasonably simple for Admin to code the recent debates section to only show debates where someone has voted."
What if a debate has zero votes and there are no forfeits though? This wouldn't be fair.
I'm the main developer for the site. If you have any problems, ideas, questions or concerns please send me a message.
Let's revive the forums!
nzlockie
By nzlockie | Mar 13 2014 5:18 PM
admin: mate you do plenty on this site, no need to apologise for time between updates.

Sounds like you've got this issue under control. I like the idea of making auto-forfeit the default better than my suggestion.

Love your work!
Pinkie
By Pinkie | Mar 18 2014 3:36 PM
nzlockie: He does so great! Keep it up Lars, expescally with "The Great Debate.org Exodus."
Please excuse me as I'm not super creative when it comes to forum signatures.
Pinkie
By Pinkie | Mar 18 2014 3:36 PM
Pinkie: Omgosh, how did I manage to make such a terrible typo?
Please excuse me as I'm not super creative when it comes to forum signatures.