A message to the users of Edb8

I have recently left DDO due to an altercation I had with another user. I forced max to close my account for good, which was my choice. This situation is partially my fault and I don't see myself going back to DDO for quite a few reasons. (1) It is a time sink (2) There are quite a few members I dislike greatly (3) Juggle is not willing to cooperate with the site. I have no intent to be active on here, but am posting this because of the debate I had with larz a little while ago. What larz did was prove that edb8 has an amazing platform, and he is willing to work with the user base to incorporate new ideas and updates into the site .

The problem with Edb8 and why I believe he lost that specific debate was that DDO had a mass populous and had room to negotiate and target specific areas of users. Having a marketing back round, that is optimal in achieving views on a website. You have to build your site organically and the more viewers and users you have that click onto the site, the better chance the site will boost it's rep organically .Since larz is doing all of this for basically free, he does not have the money to invest in advertising and using pay for methods, to drive this site the way most people do. It usually relies on people using paid for methods, which then in turn affects the organic hits on the site.

I'm saying this with no intent of being an active participant on here, but that could change. Edb8 as a whole has better features on DDO in every conceivable way. What it is lacking is the community building aspect. The site president of DDO just left and almost everyone on there is complaining about juggle just doing the min requirements and even back busing google, just to get around updates.

A note to larz and the rest of the site. Quite a few members on the site are very annoyed with DDO and juggles unwillingness to cooperate with them. If you ever wanted a chance to build this site up via organic methods, now is the chance to do it. Show people why this site has better features, and take from DDO the one thing that makes it valuable. The community presence. If you transfer the users from DDO to here, this site will exceed DDO in every conceivable way.

I highly recommend that you show juggles unwillingness to help or work with the users of DDO is a very negative impact in a effort to draw membership on here. Having spoken with larz on countless occasions, he has did whatever it took to make sure this site is optimal and functional. I will always hold to the fact that DDO is a better site, but that is strictly because of the community. Get the community, and this website will blow up organically.

Take that path and the chance you have because of what juggle has done. I know of quite a few prominent members that will probably come here soon, follow up with it.

Mikal: @Ore_Ele left, by the way.

Mikal: We need you here. At least we won't abandon you like the ddo tards.

My advice to admin is to set up a elo system that honors the elo of every other debate site and calculates the wins and losses with a good formula. Honor wins for proof of real life debates, and honor wins from other websites. You get your views, hits, and prob tons of new members

Mikal: Personally, if Edeb8 became another DDO, I'd leave.

Which is ok, these things happen and I understand that. I'm only saying this to explain why I personally won't be going out of my way to persuade people over to here.
My optimal Edeb8 would have about 30 active members on it - and by active, I don't mean the forums.

At the moment it's hard for someone comfortable with the DDO lifestyle to be happy here, so those that do make the switch are really invested in the ideals of this site and will help it grow in the right direction.

I appreciate the advice and the sentiment though. I think the aspirations of Edeb8 are just different to DDO.

Mikal: Quick point about Elo.

The edeb8 Elo formula honors the Elo system of chess, tennis, and RL debate. DDO is the only other site I know of that has an Elo system, and their system is basically an approximation of the same, with an additional instigator advantage.

I'd be happy to communicate this better I guess.

Mikal: I highly recommend that you show juggles unwillingness to help or work with the users of DDO is a very negative impact in a effort to draw membership on here. Having spoken with larz on countless occasions, he has did whatever it took to make sure this site is optimal and functional. I will always hold to the fact that DDO is a better site, but that is strictly because of the community. Get the community, and this website will blow up organically.
I agree with this to a point - there are many great users on DDO, but then there are also many users whom we kinda don't necessarily want to attract, or at least make them behave slightly differently here. It's good to see word is out there about edeb8's offering and people know about it. We're just about to start the WODC, which is always a good oppertunity to show DDO members our featureset and that there is an alternative community all could have fun on.

For what it's worth, DDO used to be a place where intelligent people could debate serious issues and have a good time doing so. Due to the elo system (in my opinion) and the way that multi accounts and other rules violations were tolerated, it fast turned into an elitist ran popularity contest where anyone who challenges that group doesn't stand a chance of getting a fair or sincere consideration of their views in any debate or forum. Mikal was a huge part of that mess and he was one of the main reasons I left DDO.

I had higher hopes for EDB8 at first but those are starting to fade.

Maybe it's time to give FaceBook another go.

Personally, I like the much smaller pm setup on ddo, where the pms are neat little lines

it fast turned into an elitist ran popularity contest where anyone who challenges that group doesn't stand a chance of getting a fair or sincere consideration of their views in any debate or forum
I second that sentiment

ButterCatx: By "smaller", do you mean the way DDO's layout kinda squashes PMs into a small space?

admin: Actually I am with buttercat here. It would be nice if messages lined up against each other like in the chat/shoutboxes

Blackflag: Still not understanding what you mean sorry. Like - you want messages to be side by side? or what? Messages already do align vertically.

Chuz Life: As a longstanding member of DDO (since mid 2010 anyway), popularity contests have always existed there, LONG before Elo. The problem was always that SOME members were not interested in formal debate, and of those that were, most didn't know how to judge, particularly in the early days before there were RFDs.

My hopes for edeb8 is to avoid attracting the sort of people who aren't too interested in competitive debate. People can still have fun or be silly here, but the point is to FOCUS on the debating aspect. And to that point, you haven't given edeb8 a chance , since you've never done a debate. DDO is a forum-driven community. The aim of edeb8 is to be a debate-driven community. Hopefully this means there isn't so much of an in-group. And I don't think there is. Very few judgments are ranked as unfair-- constructive judgments dominate the site. That's the aspect of edeb8 I'm most proud of.

#giveedeb8achance

admin: You have to scroll up to see new messages rather than down

The problem with Edb8 and why I believe he lost that specific debate was that DDO had a mass populous and had room to negotiate and target specific areas of users. Having a marketing back round, that is optimal in achieving views on a website. You have to build your site organically and the more viewers and users you have that click onto the site, the better chance the site will boost it's rep organically .Since larz is doing all of this for basically free, he does not have the money to invest in advertising and using pay for methods, to drive this site the way most people do. It usually relies on people using paid for methods, which then in turn affects the organic hits on the site.
So I tell this to admin all the time. He too comes from a marketing background or something like that.
I had a dream that Lars implemented some sort of paypal donation feature for advertisements... or was that a dream

Blackflag: Maybe I could chuck this into the site settings somehow. I'll add it to my list.

admin: I think you'll find most people would prefer it as a default setting

Blackflag: I'll focus on implementing it first. Then we can talk about whether it should be a default.

admin: You haven't given edeb8 a chance , since you've never done a debate

I don't need to participate in a debate here in order to make observations about the debates, comments and votes made by others. Do I?