Editorial policy
What the numbers on this site are, and what they are not.
Every number on this site is an opinion. It is the judgement of the people who run OnlineDebaters about how somebody argued in the debates listed on their profile. It is not a measurement, it is not a finding of fact, and it is not a qualification anybody holds or lacks.
We say this first because it changes how the rest of the site should be read. A score of 40 for Rebuttal means we think that person answered opposing arguments poorly in the debates we watched. It does not mean they are stupid, dishonest, unqualified, or bad at their job. It is a view about a performance, formed from material you can go and watch yourself.
Reasonable people will disagree with plenty of these, and we would rather be argued with than quietly relied upon.
Only material that is public and that we link to. In practice that means recorded debates published by the participants themselves or by the channel that hosted them, embedded on the debate's page so you can watch the same thing we did.
We do not score private conduct, unrecorded appearances, things somebody is alleged to have said off camera, or anything we cannot point you at. If it is not on the profile, it did not go into the number.
This matters for more than tidiness. An opinion with its basis on display can be checked and contradicted. An opinion with a hidden basis is just an assertion about a person, and we do not want to be in that business.
- Logic
- Is the reasoning sound?
- Knowledge
- Does the person understand the subject?
- Argumentation
- Can they build a strong case?
- Rebuttal
- Can they effectively attack and answer opposing arguments?
- Persuasion
- Can they make people accept the case?
- Clarity
- Can they communicate it effectively?
- Etiquette
- How do they conduct themselves?
- Consistency
- Do their positions and principles hold together over time?
Two of these are easy to misread, so they are worth spelling out. Etiquette is about debating conduct — interrupting, talking over, misrepresenting an opponent's position. A low score is not an accusation of harassment or abuse. Consistency is about whether positions hold together across debates. A low score is not an accusation of lying.
If a metric on a profile reads as an accusation of something we did not mean, that is a fault in how we have written it and we want to hear about it.
People appear here under the name they debate under, to identify them. Nothing on this site implies that anybody named here endorses it, is affiliated with it, or has agreed to be listed.
Profile pictures are used at small size for identification only, taken from the person's own public channel. Videos are not hosted here: they are embedded through YouTube's own player and stay under the control of whoever uploaded them. Take a video down on YouTube and it disappears from here too.
If you are the person in question and you would rather your picture were not used, say so and it comes off. That is not a concession we argue about.
Money paid to this site has no effect on any judged metric, on the overall score, or on whether somebody is listed. The rankings can be sorted by backing, and that column is labelled as such, precisely so that the two can never be confused.
Nobody has ever paid to be scored differently, and if that changes this page changes with it.
Scores are revised as more debates are watched, and they are revised when we get one wrong. Anybody can ask for a correction, and anybody profiled here has a right of reply that we publish alongside the profile.
We aim to answer within 14 days.