Notice anything different about forum posts?

Hint: look to your right.

You can now thumbs-up a forum post (the universal edeb8 equivalent of +1ing)

Hey, anyone remember when this subforum had only 2000 posts, like, a month ago? #edeb8rising

admin: I hate this feature. It literally signifies nothing, but at the same time is a tool to promote ego and harassment. Pretend I just insulted you and got 10 thumbs up. Yep.
Not a big fan of it if I'm having a debate in the forums either. It makes my opinion's feel invalidated if the person I'm debating recieve's more thumbs up.

I like it. It just saves all the short posts where all in doing is saying that I agree with the op.

yeah, DDO should have this too IMO.

This site is selling out. I want less social features, more scholastic feeling. This is a debate site, not facebook.

Blackflag: I don't think social and scholastic need to be at odds. I'm keen to add more scholastic features too.

Also, who exactly am I selling out to?

BTW, the next 2 features on my list are featured debates and hiding past judges in voting period debates.

admin: This site is by far more scholastic oriented, but has a more "Social setting".
I want to log on this site and feel I'm surrounded by intellectual people with an intellectual platform in front of me.
I feel we are doing little as a community to promote that intellectual spirit.

On DDO, the truest words I ever heard someone say were "This site should be a community of intellectuals who can debate and learn. Not an alternative to twitter" (Obv paraphrase)

admin: I think this site would fare better if we fully dedicate ourselves to one image rather than trying to put on two cloaks.
We might be suffering a bit of an identity crisis.

Also, who exactly am I selling out to?
It feels like this site evolves more into DDO each day. We should stop trying to attract that market. There is a market in serious intellectuals, and I don't think they would come to here or DDO.

Blackflag: The way I see it, anyone who wants to debate and learn should be free to use this site. Edeb8 won't compete with twitter if we tried. If people are not into debate, they will not join a true debate site. They won't join some random forum just because they can +1 a post. I think the site decided this the moment we decided to implement "twitter-style" debates, despite my initial hesitation.

I also don't think thumbs-upping a forum post takes away from any intellectual spirit, but happy to see whatever initiative you have in mind.

admin: They won't join some random forum just because they can +1 a post
Let's ignore the +1 thing for awhile. I'm making a forum about it anyways.

If people are not into debate, they will not join a true debate site
That's the problem. This isn't a true debate site. Can you debate? Yes. Can you have good debates? Of course.
Does this feel like the kind of site that is for debating? No, it really doesn't. We need a more intellectual image.

I also don't think thumbs-upping a forum post takes away from any intellectual spirit, but happy to see whatever initiative you have in mind.
I think we should start simplifying the site. Scrapping up a lot of the things that we don't actually need, and focus on making one product. A good debate.
We are trying to do to many things, and it distracts us from our initial purpose. To create the best debate possible.

I think we should change the name, promote more scholarism and competition, and start removing social features to create a bare bones debating site. That doesn't mean we need to scrap all the cool things we've done. We just need to minimize everything but debating. None of the things on this site ring "professional debating".

Blackflag: I think we should change the name, promote more scholarism and competition, and start removing social features to create a bare bones debating site. That doesn't mean we need to scrap all the cool things we've done. We just need to minimize everything but debating. None of the things on this site ring "professional debating".

That would really be a different site then. Edeb8 was founded on the very idea of making the most advanced debating site in the world. Hence why we had so many new features even when we launched.

You're not the first person to suggest this. Basically the rule is that anyone is welcome to the edeb8 source code to start up their own version of it with complete control (so you can take away any features you don't like), and any updates/bug fixes to the edeb8 site they get for free too, under 2 conditions:
1. Attribution - the site must clearly identify itself as being based on edeb8.com
2. Profit share - if the site makes a profit, then 25% of that must be paid to me (which I will use to fund further development of edeb8, which in turn benefits the derivative site)

I think it's a pretty generous license.

Speaking as somebody who's spent a lot of time professionally debating though - I'm pretty proud of this site.

admin: I'll make a model, so count me in on your offer.

Blackflag: You do know that this is a feature that doesn't exist on DDO right? #firstintheworld