The site will be taken down on 1 August 2009 12:01AM.

In the meantime, I henceforth release all materials on this website to the public domain. Feel free to redistribute, modify, and/or remix these materials for any purpose. Attribution is not required.

(Mini news story: The user usafkid1121 has announced his resignation from DDO, and has taken credit for the odd type of vote bombing that occurred a few weeks ago.)

In the thread Text Formatting in Debates, prominent user s0m31john announced a third-party script, which allows users to format their text in debates with bold, italics, underline, block-quotes, and colors.

The script runs off the Mozilla Firefox add-on Greasemonkey, which users must have installed in order to convert debate markup (e.g. [b][/b], [quote][quote], [color][/color]) into the desired format.

Many users have applauded s0m31john’s efforts, including Volkov, mongeese, Logical-Master, and patsox834. RoyLantham, for example, raves, “Good idea. I don’t see why everyone has to use it.” Two users have complained who do not use Firefox, and PoeJoe has shunned the use of third-party software, but the response has been generally positive.

Only time will tell if this add-on takes off.

(The information presented in this article has been submitted by a source who wishes to remain anonymous. The text has been rewritten to hide the source’s identity.)

I was browsing around the Internet, Googling random words and phrases, when it suddenly struck me to Google for information about Phil, the owner and lead developer of DDO. To my horror, I come across a page that lists one “Cameron Clifford” as a “top executive” of MyCar.com,[1] which is a website Phil once owned but has since sold.

I started to Google information about this Mr Clifford, and found some interesting information. The following are some brief bullet points that summarize the information I obtained through my research.

• Mr Clifford was a fundamental force behind the release of MyCar, and was even listed as “Vice President” (along with Crystal [Phil's wife]) and the head of “Business Operations”.[2]
• On Mr Clifford’s portfolio website, a resume can be downloaded.[3] In this resume, Clifford appears to have been not only crucial in the building of MyCar but also HomeBuying.com, another of Phil’s websites. This is important, because HomeBuying.com is the model to which many of Phil’s new websites are built off of.[4]
• Mysteriously though, Mr Clifford all-of-a-sudden vanishes. Compare the company photo for DateFree (one of Phil’s later sites after MyCar but still before DDO),[5] with the photoshopped company photo for DDO.[6] Something fishy is going on.
• Phil is known for reusing materials on his websites. Compare the DateFree forums with DDO’s.[7] Or look at the little tiny pictures he shares across DDO, DORK, and the Inc websites. Or compare HomeBuying’s layout with the Inc websites.[4]

Conclusion: Why is it that production suddenly slowed down when this Cameron guy left? Could this be why v3 was so delayed and why we no longer get any new features? Could it be that Phil simply does not know how to code? That he is a businessman, and not a website maker?

If you don’t buy this conspiracy, that’s OK. At the very least, you can get a kick out of hearing Phil’s voice,[5] and knowing that Phil doesn’t go to church.[8]

Sources:
[1] http://portfolio.com/…
[2] http://dateauto.com/…
[3] http://cameronclifford.com/resume.doc
[4] Compare the screenshot of HomeBuying found on WebCorp’s website with the layout of Loans-Inc (one of Phil’s new websites).
[5] http://prwebpodcast.com/…
[6] http://debate.com/…
[7] http://web.archive.org/…
[8] http://web.archive.org/…

“I’ve been oddly votebombed over the last few months. It’s not a suddenly I have zero wins type of obvious votebombing but it very specifically keeps me below #1. If I am two below the top place and add three wins with additional debates, I will quickly be voted down to keep me under that line and LogicalMaster in #1. Not in my most recent debates but in debates going progressively older. It’s an interesting phenomenon,” said Tatarize in the thread Odd type of Votebombing.

Suspecting a group of people to be involved with a massive leader board conspiracy, Logical-Master and Kleptin agreed.

To test his hypothesis, Tatarize vote bombed Logical-Master’s debates to find that someone quickly counter-vote bombed LM’s debates. LM cited a debate of his that he said was once 28-28 but which quickly became 35-49 in his favor.

LM then noticed votes being deleted (probably because of the vote bomb removal system, this reporter suspects). Soon after he quickly vote bombed himself to find that his work was being undone.

Kleptin bombed LM and boosted Tatarize to find that his work was also being undone. Not only was his work being undone, Kleptin writes, “but they did it very, VERY quickly and dropped Tatarize even lower than he started out at. This is very strange.”

Then LM, for real, started getting vote bombed.

In response to all this, Tatarize deleted his account and posted two debates that he claims “[are] impossible to accept.”