update on the email

So I got a reply:

The file was written by Sherry Hall, who also wrote it at the camp.

Wow, really? That’s it… I deserve more than that Stefan. After contemplating a very rude email back – I simply wrote this:

So why charge $10 for it if it’s available for free at the NDCA site? Or why not just take out the part that may not be in the camp files and sell it as an addendum for less?

I just know my students would be “gullible” enough to buy a Verification file in addition to downloading the UNT file – and not necessarily seeing the similarities.

I guess I just don’t agree with this type of business style.

Georgia Forensics 1, Planet Debate 0.

Filed under: daily blogging, debate, email, planet debate, stefan

calling planet debate out – part 2

you can read part 1 here: http://jmill.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/planet-debate-can-suck-it/

But here’s part 2 – its a letter via their Contact Form I filled out tonight. We’ll see their response.

What are the differences in these files? I would put a lot of money that these files are the exact same based on their TOC’s alone. If this is the case, as a respectable company – I advise you take it down and stop trying to take money from students.

If no action is taken, I will not mind calling Planet Debate out on local forums and blogs.

“Planet Debate” File

UNT File

Promoting a healthy community,

Jeffrey Miller
Fayette County HS
Assistant Director of Debate

If these files are not the same, they need to change it to exclude the part in the UNT file. Ugh.

Filed under: daily blogging, calling out, debate, files, planet debate

planet debate can suck it

So I need to blog and complain about something realllllly bothering me.  Planet Debate, Inc.  Several things bother me about this website.  I’m not going to link you to this worthless piece of crap because that would help them, and they don’t need help.

1. All about money: They are all about money.  In a summer where all the camps have been publishing video lectures for free – Planet Debate makes you pay $ 10 to watch their lectures.  How does that help the community? How does it help a dying activity which economics have hurt so incredibly much.  Oh but don’t worry their tournaments are free!  You want to know why the tournaments are free and not their lectures?  The lectures money directly goes to their wallets.  The tournament money would just go to the school’s budget.  But guess where the money for both of these come from?  The debate community.  I don’t see how you can justify a free tournament (which can only attract a few amount of people in the community) and then charge people for lectures (which affects the whole community).
2. Rip off camps: Camps publish their files for a couple reasons.  Some of these reasons are to get feedback from their evidence production.  How do camps find out people get the files – probably by some tracking device on their websites to see how many times a page was visited.  Guess what Planet Debate does?  They download the files and host them on their own server.  Then, they use that to make their numbers better.  Don’t believe me – here’s a direct quote on their site – ON EVERY PAGE:
   

   But Who’s Counting?
   71 Video Lectures
   1,009 Photos
   84,911 Database Cards
   2,348 Downloadable Files
   1,567 Free Files
   781 Pay Files
   61,056 Files Downloaded
   49 Audio Lectures
   13,200 Web Research Links
   3,509 Bibliographic Entries

   Who’s counting? They are. They are downright using institutes across the country to make themselves look better.

3. Georgia Forensics Creates a Solution: I saw this problem, so I created a solution.  A page to aggregate all camp lectures & files.  We didn’t take them onto our server – even though we easily could have.  Instead, we linked the viewers DIRECTLY to institute’s pages.  This way the institute still gets a record of the downloads.  We also host the ENDI lectures.  We could charge Emory for this.  We could charge the community for these. Do we? Nope.  Do I need money? Yes.  Does my debate team need money? Desparatley.  But yet I still don’t charge.   This solution was actually asked for by the community on Cross-X.com, so we answered by giving the community what they wanted.  A person from Planet Debate confronted me about it.  He mentioned, why put evidence in three locations – GFD, Planet Debate, and NDCA’s open evidence.  I wanted to ask him, why does CNN, Fox News, MSNBC exist?  I’m sorry that different news outlets exist.  I’m sorry that our news site is more effective than theirs.  I’m sorry ours is more organized.  I’m sorry we address community issues and try to solve them.  I’m sorry we don’t put our numbers & stats above the community.
4. Stealing Coverage: This first happened at NFL Nationals.  Brandon had put together a ton of stuff on the Public Forum debate field and full elimination coverage.  Well, Planet Debate “sponsors” Public Forum at Nationals.  So yes, they should have been providing top coverage – well they failed.  They had a person there NOT DOING ANYTHING but promoting their site… but again, promoting their site is more important than assisting the Public Forum community.  They took all of our work without crediting us with at all.  They didn’t change formatting at all.  Any misspellings were still there.  That’s low.
5. Stealing Ideas: Recall the aggregator idea. Guess what Planet Debate published the next day?  An aggregator of their own.  I called them out on this via twitter – no response.  They once again used the same headings as us – except they changed all the links to the planet debate files.  Way to go! Steal an idea, make yourselves look better.. but wait, nothing has really changed with your motive.
6. New Politics Research Tool: WOW, Way to insult the community.  James Herndon gave a FANTASTIC lecture on how to research politics – seriously I’ve been involved in the community for almost 8 years – and I learned stuff from it.  Stuff that will help me research politcs hopefully better than most.  This lecture is available for free from georgia forensics & ENDI.  They’ve created a tool to have articles on politics automatically on their page.  Sure this could be useful, but research shouldn’t be handed to people.  The one thing about the politics DA that makes it unique is that the research can be tough – especially to find good politics cards.  Not only are they trying to dumb down the community – but they are just using it to market all of their politics files.  Why do I say this?   To reach the news aggregators, you must first scroll past their politics files of the last four or more years. Way to go and trick the community into thinking you’re doing something helpful – you’re just using it as a ploy to garner more cash for yourself.
7. Doesn’t care about advertising content:  Check the ads on this page out – it’s the only link I’ll post.  What goes around comes back around.

Okay I feel a little better. I may make this a reoccuring topic in the blog – as per the war between gfd & pd has just begun.  Operation Call Them Out is underway.

Filed under: daily blogging, planet debate, skeezballs