The first form seems hard to regulate, as it means that anyone who is particularly active at a given time would be "point farming". The second one on the other hand needs to stop as it has filled the site with bullst far too many times.

Just remove the leader board from the site and that should eliminate their desire to point farm. If it doesn't just hide the points altogether.

http://i.imgur.com/6RLVu6L.jpg

The difference between the "grinder" and the "spammer" is in the intent of the content they post. To differentiate between the two one would someone would have to assess all the arguments in question and verify the intent by the quality of what is presented. This seems to be a pretty large task for any "moderator" to undertake.

Besides the mountain of work this undertaking would create the call of what is created to spam and what is not is always going to be subjective. Someone could intend to post something interesting but instead just post mundane topics and premises. By asserting that a poster is spamming one would be making a call on intent when the issue could be ability.

Should those with poor abilities not be able to practice and get better? Any attack on their posts being spammy may discourage them from participating in debates, this seems to be against the sites intent.

Instead of trying to differentiate between those who grind and those who spam I think another route is needed that is less of an accusation towards posters and more of how the machinations of this site work.

If changing parts of this site is not an option due to financial/personnel reasons are we only left with discerning intent of the posters?

If changes are able to be made to the inner workings of the site I like the idea of a post not getting a point, only votes up getting points. This will keep the excessive posting down. Debate creation should not get points unless enough exchanges have been made on the debate.

Of course this can still be abused by multiple accounts used to up-vote and create exchanges in the debates. But isn't finding multiple accounts easier than deciding another's intent and ability?

The issue then would be shared computers and the like. I know this is not a perfect solution but is it a better solution to what we have now?

Hate plagiarism! If they ban it for exams, why not ban it here??

I don't care if people get points for actual debate dialogue, as that is the point of the site. When people are just writing bollocks to aggravate people or cause people to dispute with them just because they enjoy it or to point farm it is annoying. I don't mind good banter here and there but not constant bullshit chat.

The accumulation of points simply for a high point score is related to some causes of plagiarism as discussed in rule #1.

In keeping with the establishment of enforceable rules, the partial solution to rule #1 and the answer to rule #2 point farming might be the following:

No points are awarded automatically by the site. All points are awarded by fellow debaters. In connection with this rule the next rule's discussion concerning multiple accounts for one user will no longer be allowed, when point farming is detected.

The "grinder" is truly fine, because it's hard to regulate. If it was a huge problem, you could do what some other sites do and put up a 'post limit,' i.e. you can only make 3 new debates a day, or 50 comments, or something, but that seems unnecessary to me.

The "spammer" is clearly hurting the site,a nd has no intent of stimulating discussion or debate. In my opinion, they really should be controlled in some way. The only positive impact they have is increasing site traffic temporarily, but ultimately, that would easily dissuade newcomers from joining.

I know that I personally would much rather see one person hogging the site with legitimate content rather than seeing significant portions of the site filled with spam.

Can someone tell me why people waste their time trying to aquire points? What good are points? Can you get money from points? Is it all about ego's?

I could care less if I never get one point. I'm here for one reason, and that is to try and help prevent the bankruptcy of America, fiscally as well as morally.

There are people who put actual thought and time into their arguments and they deserve actual points. But why reward people who spam on purpose with no thought or effort? I think this is honestly unfair.

Part of the reason why I do not return to CD as much as I use to is that when I do stop by the check it out every now again, more times than not the majority of debates I see do not seem to make much sense and appear to be a simple grab for points. It would be nice to clean up the site a bit.

I saw nothing in the argument that mentioned the copying of arguments to point farm. When a person is incapable of creating his own debate because of a total lack of ability or knowledge, then why should he be able to get points from copying another's argument?

If you can't even take a stand against that, then this argument will do nothing to stop anything.