>The recent debates here on the thread have me thinking. Why not create a debate forum here?
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>Someone could post a topic, say 'Abortion - right or wrong', and then 2 or more people could agree to debate the issue.
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>Each debater would agree on a moderator, who would be neutral and only serve to set up parameters, such as "You can only discuss abortion" or "Your entry must be no more than 400 words" and would also decide on a timeframe.
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>The debaters would then research the topic from their selected viewpoint and submit their entry to the moderator who would review it and then post here in the UT.
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>One immediate benefit of this is it would be easy to read the entries as they would be typed in a document as opposed to following threads.
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>Anyone interested in this idea?
'Formal' debate clubs use such rules, right? They also have contests and there even are world championships. Winners do not win because they are right, but because they applied the debating rules better than the opponents. I guess those who have had (kind of) formal training in debating techniques are also often 'winners' in weblog and forum spaces. But I also think a debate club/forum is another league than a weblog/forum that invokes a lot of debate.
What I personally don't like about the debate club is the hierarchical organization type. I.e. people are invited to be the moderator/judge or take seat in the jury. Who invites who? On what grounds? 'Neutral' can only apply to whether or not debating techniques were used correctly. But even those decisions can be disputable. As an example, the judge might decide that a remark should not have been made because it was an
argument from authority where the debater was actually only trying to bring in an expert's opinion.
Tell you what might be worth an effort here. Someone invites someone else for a chat (this is possible already) and nobody else than the invited person can react in that thread. But other people can give positive and negative points to each reply. Not much work for Michel Fournier and may be fun.
Groet,
Peter de Valença
Constructive frustration is the breeding ground of genius.
If there’s no willingness to moderate for the sake of good debate, then I have no willingness to debate at all.
Let's develop superb standards that will end the holy wars.
"There are three types of people: Alphas and Betas", said the beta decisively.
If you find this message rude or offensive or stupid, please take a step away from the keyboard and try to think calmly about an eventual a possible alternative explanation of my message.
