Over a conversation on an instant messaging app, nico presented an idea on a form of debate that may be interesting, and potentially fun. Within each specialized forum, like “World Events & Politics”, and “Religion”, teams could be formed to have debates over issues. Teams would consist of 3 to 4 people of a common side, and would pick issues to debate against other teams. For instance, a team who supports Bush in Iraq could debate a team consisting of people against him. Each side would post points in separate colors, which would be set up to represent different viewpoints. To set up the different debates, either a team could arrange it ahead of time, or a team could post a topic as an open challenge, and let people take it from there. The threads that are supposed to be team debates could be labeled as such, but we’d have to rely on people knowing what’s going on and not posting in the team debate threads. There was some talk of starting another forum, but the laziness of people spreading out to other forums is an issue. Any input/support would be appreciated
I think it will be almost impossible to keep people from "kibbitzing". You could employ color-coded text for each team's posts, and hope the "peanut gallery" has the sense of decorum to at least refrain from "masquerading" as a team member... Perhaps the team members could confer among themselves outside the forum, and post the result of that discussion, with the actual post under the name of each team member in turn. Another forum sounds drastic at this stage. If the effort happens to take off, and suffers from too many erroneous posts, that might be a solution. Looking for victims - I mean volunteers?
The main workaround for that is to have the teams established, to avoid other members from joining a team. Maybe have a team list included in bit of text at the top, or bottom of each post, but after a few rounds, the different teams should be obvious enough, like nico is on this team, or tiassa is on that team. We all know that for some reason people like to jump in on threads around here, make a post that doesn't make any sense, and the jump out. It would have to come down to respecting the debaters.
Let's say I am on the capitalist team I would be using blue. Now if I were on the socialist team Red At the top of the threads there should be a sticky which proclaims all the teams and a brief to long manifesto. Then quick bios of all members. If someone is desperate enough to actually pretend to be on a team they should try to make up the left over teams. The idea is novel, it makes debates much more interesting.
Same for the religion forum. Agnostics, athiests, catholics, whatever the side, would be color coded. Maybe the first post in a thread could explain that it is a team debate thread, and have the topic of debate, with the team name, and members listed, while the second post could be the first in the argument, or they could wait until a competing team has posted their stats and agreed to debate. A potential idea, would it be limited to two teams, or more? Opinions?
Hehe.. well, you kids are welcome to be on my team... but I think I do pretty well on my own. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Hell I think Ghassan and myself could take pretty much anyone I've seen post on sciforums... well, in WEP and Religion. I think probably in general philosophy as well but he's kind of scared to post there. LOL I guess I should ask: How do you propose to discern who has actually WON a debate? I mean, as far as I'm concerned regarding relgion.. the debate that is constantly rampant has been over for some time and I'm just trying to make people understand who won. Given that this task seems virtually impossible, I eagerly await your ideas on how we keep score. If you do not want to keep score or figure out a way to find an actual winner from any given debate, what then.. is the point?
Other people have taken care of this years ago: http://cedadebate.org/ None of you will last very long under actual match conditions though.
I don't see any forums there... this looks live, I don't think you get the point. and wes, meh, i dont know either, it will get worked out in time
Debates are what normally happens on the forums anyway, aren't they? What's the advantage of formal organisation?
It's more ad hoc then formal, people group up with others of similar opinion, then they drop a thread as an open challenege to any other team, theres no rules, other then people don't join a debate who aren't on the teams, and the color coding.
why not make it simple by only 2 colours and open to all to post in using only one colour at a time and the response must be in the consideration of that concept is not the idea of winning in debate to gain knolledge rather than prove a specific point philosophy to play the game so all enjoy is the highest form of achivement winning is for those who have already lost yet play anyway in the hope of pointing out faults or errs of others if winning is the purpose of entering into a debate then you are preaching not debating remebering ofcoarse that the concept is intellectual, not to create gangs or winner in-crowds classist behaviour is retarded and an overt act of insecurity groove on all Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I say instead of teams we call them cliques and poopoo on those inferior members of the other cliques. That would be most excellent. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
