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Debate's rules
Topic Started: Jan 5 2012, 07:48 PM (56 Views)
Gaius the Mediator
Administrator
Ah, debates... the main goal of this forum. The debates here are theme free: from the weirdest things to the most important world topics.
I was thinking of doing it in a format that will give you members full authonomy. Like, for example, let's say that Member 1 and Member 2 disagree about Abortion, and they wish to see whose arguments are best. They'd first create a topic with the title: "Member 1 X Member 2 - Abortion", being it composed of 10 posts only. In the case, their posts would be:
A- Members' initial considerations about the subject (2 posts)
B- First reply (2 posts)
C- Second reply (2 posts)
D- Third Reply (2 posts)
E- Final considerations (2 posts)
Each member would have 5 posts in total. This could be used for any subject. There would be, of course, a limitation of characters to use. There is a community on Facebook doing something similar, but the debates are in Portuguese only. For example, I think around 2500 characters should be sufficient for each intervention of the debaters (giving them a total of 12500 characters divided in 5 posts). The winner will be decided by the people watching the debate in a following votation.
Then, you may ask: Hey, Admin, but what if other people wish to debate the same theme? Or if those same guys want to debate more?
That is no difficulyt. You people may revisit the themes and subjects over and over again. You'll have the freedom of doing that no matter how many times you do it. Sure, there must be also respect to your adversary in the debate. If we see that a debate has too much "ad hominem" on it, we'll have to close it.
Oh, and if you wish a three, four or even five-way debate, you can do it. Though I myself would only advise 3 people at max to debate at the same topic.
We will also be organizing debating championships, so that you people may keep sharp. Premiations will be defined during the organization of the tournaments.
Anyway, in summary, the format of the debates is, for now:
A- Create a topic with the following title model: "Member X vs Member Y - The Theme"
Ex: "Bob vs Tom - Republicans or Democrats?"
B- Each member will have 5 posts, consisting of: Initial considerations (Introduction, as you wish), first reply, second reply, third reply
and final considerations (Conclusion)
C- Limit of characters per post - 2500 (You may include whatever you wish, being it pertinent to the debate, but you can't pass the characters' limit)
D- Winners will be decided by other members's votes
E- Ad hominem (personal attacks) won't be tolerated.

This is it. If you wanna change something (Number of replys, limit of characters, add other rules), be free to speak your mind. We have time enough to spare on building this up. The only things that won't be changed are the topic title's format, the form of deciding the winner and the No Ad Hominem rule.
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Xuan Zhongda
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Sounds like a good idea, but...

Why the character limitation?

With the limited amount of replies, I think people may end the debate feeling as if they had a little more to say. I know how long your debates with a certain individual got very long. On the flip side, it does prevent them from getting unnecessarily dragged out and turn into a circular or hardly related argument.
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Gaius the Mediator
Administrator
Xuan Zhongda
Jan 8 2012, 05:48 PM
Sounds like a good idea, but...

Why the character limitation?

With the limited amount of replies, I think people may end the debate feeling as if they had a little more to say. I know how long your debates with a certain individual got very long. On the flip side, it does prevent them from getting unnecessarily dragged out and turn into a circular or hardly related argument.
Because, as I said, people might make as many topics as they wish to debate again.
And, the limitation may be discussed. Even thus, I wouldn't give more than 5000 characters. For example, the Quote system, that spends a lot of character, may fall in disuse, as it will spend needed characters
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