The state of edeb8

With the "state of the union" type presidential speech probably inspiring many Americans, I thought I'd explain how I think edeb8 is doing, what's working, and what isn't.

As many will be aware, edeb8 makes public a wide range of statistics about the site. These are available to view here: http://www.edeb8.com/stats

In its core mission, to be the most advanced debating platform on the internet, edeb8 remains relatively unsurpassed. Many of our core innovations are now stable, and have not needed any bug fixes in a long time. Compared to other debate websites, edeb8's members tend to be slightly older, but are otherwise typical of the debate website audience. Analytics reports affinity categories for some users, indicating that the average edeb8ers are technophiles, news junkies, avid readers, political junkies, movie lovers, and TV lovers. Which is awesome.

In the past few months, edeb8 has seen exceptional member growth. We're almost on 700 members, which is more than doubling what we had this time last year. That's great for the site, and I intend to continue efforts to promote more people to check us out with the badges thing.

People are also marginally more likely to "have a go" at doing debates now. It's great to see some really interesting debates be held on this site recently.

I've noticed that not a lot of users are making use of the features and bugs section. I highly recommend this as it is helping me to plan stuff for this site: http://www.edeb8.com/feature-request

There also could be improvements in two areas. The first is avoiding forfeited debates. Any suggestions on this, as per usual, would be more than welcome.
The second is in judging. I'm going to make an official announcement now: coinciding with the next feature rollout, there will soon be an "accredited judges" program that will hopefully inspire many of you to improve your judging skills!

Finally, and this is probably the most obvious to many users: groups and forums. It's true, they're pretty much dead. I have confidence that despite this, our improved presence in the debate sphere can carry this site forward for a time. However - I'm thinking about ways to improve this, as it clearly is a problem. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

I have a lot of confidence in edeb8 going forward, and I'm proud to work with it.

Cheers!

admin: With the "state of the union" type presidential speech probably inspiring many Americans
Lol no, Obama has a less-than-half approval rating.

admin: only problem is that there aren't very many active users. Debate.org is somehow more active despite how retarded their moderators are.

admin: The first is avoiding forfeited debates. Any suggestions on this, as per usual, would be more than welcome.
Delete them. If first-visitors see that a lot of debates are forfeits, they will be discouraged to spend energy in a debate - thereby contributing to this site's desolateness.

admin: The second is in judging. I'm going to make an official announcement now: coinciding with the next feature rollout, there will soon be an "accredited judges" program that will hopefully inspire many of you to improve your judging skills!
I don't think that's the problem; people already know how to judge. But the forfeitures are discouraging people from coming to this site. They prevent people from doing debates. And if they don't do debates, they likely won't judge them.

Krazy: We already don't put such debates on the homepage etc for non-logged-in users.

Trouble with deleting them outright is that some users may nonetheless want the points etc when somebody forfeits to them.

admin: But then again, you know this site better than I do; so I could be way off base. But that is my impression of this site - the forfeits.

admin: Oh

admin: Anyone can see all of the forfeited debates under "completed debates". And that's likely the main culprit. That could be the reason that this site had a huge spike in membership, while having declined activity in forums simultaneously. And they shouldn't care about points. Winning debates just for the sake of the points itself kind of steals from the debating experience. It's a nice fringe benefit, but that shouldn't be the focus. But oh well. To each their own.

Lol having someone forfeit in a formal debate in real life would be quite funny.

Krazy: My team had to forfeit a debate once half-way through in real life because one of my teammates passed out. Had been drinking heavily the night before. Was pretty embarrassing.

admin: LOL! Wait, so one guy on your team went unconscious, so the entire team had to forfeit?

Krazy: Yes because we have reply speeches in New Zealand, and although he'd done his first speech, he was still due to give a reply.

admin: Just saying. Because I've seen a debate where it's 3 against 1, and it seems like the guy by himself won the debate lol. Although, it wasn't a super formal, championship-like kind of debate that you probably go to.

Because if your team went on with a lower number of debaters, and then won, it would look really good. And really embarrassing for the opposing team.

Krazy: You need to register beforehand who will speak in what position(s). Since we'd already registered him as the reply speaker for that debate we were screwed.

admin: And he didn't show any symptoms lol? Usually when people drink that much they're completely out of it and tipsy. How did he get through the first speech?

Krazy: It was a hangover like thing, not a drunk like thing, if that makes sense

admin: Ah, I see.