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[New] Formal debates


Saru

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A new board has been added to the forum this morning entitled "Formal Debates", this new section will allow members to participate in structured 1 vs 1 debates on any topic of choice and to do so without requiring a debate organiser to set it up.

A 'formal debate' is essentially a structured debate between two people advocating opposing viewpoints. Unlike normal discussions, formal debates will be purely one on one, other members will not be allowed to enter a debate and post while it is running. Each participant of a debate will need to take it in turns to post an introduction, a set number of main body posts and finally a conclusion.

Full details on how the new debates board will work can be found in our - Formal Debates FAQ.

To start a new debate click the "Debate" button underneath any post made by the member with whom you'd like to debate or select the "Challenge to 1v1 debate" option from their drop down profile menu.

The new debates board itself can be found here.

As this system is very new there might be a few bugs here and there so please let me know if you find any.

Thanks. :tu:

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This is cool... looking forward to the first debate. ^_^

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I may have read & or understood it wrong(?) Apology in advance if so.

But isn't this debate system going to create flaming & or tension within the two parties participating?

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Thanks for that, Saru. This will be pretty cool. First bug though - the links don't work :)

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Thanks for that, Saru. This will be pretty cool. First bug though - the links don't work :)

Think i just challenged you PA to test it out but i screwed up in the process? lol!

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But isn't this debate system going to create flaming & or tension within the two parties participating?

Structured, formal debates are designed to encourage civil conduct, ad hominem attacks are disallowed and responses should be based on the merits or otherwise of the opponents arguments. There is far less potential for flaming and personal attacks in a formal debate than in a normal discussion thread.

Think i just challenged you PA to test it out but i screwed up in the process? lol!

Did you get an error message, what happened ?

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Structured, formal debates are designed to encourage civil conduct, ad hominem attacks are disallowed and responses should be based on the merits or otherwise of the opponents arguments. There is far less potential for flaming and personal attacks in a formal debate than in a normal discussion thread.

Did you get an error message, what happened ?

No the same page came back at me after i filled it out challenging PA?

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Did you fill in all three of the text fields ?

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Did you fill in all three of the text fields ?

No just the top 2...I'll try it again with you...

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You need to fill in all three fields before it will create the debate otherwise depending on which field you've missed out the debate will either have no title or one of the two participants won't have any side of the argument to advocate. ;)

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I haven't received any debate confirmation message yet. And the links at the top of the page are still broken :(

Edited by Paranoid Android
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And the links at the top of the page are still broken

I was having a look for those but couldn't find any that weren't working, which links do you mean ?

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Formal Debates FAQ.

The new debates board itself can be found here.

Neither link works. I'd guess it's still set only to allow access to particular User-groups????? Just a thought,

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I'd guess it's still set only to allow access to particular User-groups?????

Ahh your spot on, that should be it fixed, try it now. :tu:

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Cheers, problem fixed now :) Having a look around the section now.....

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Lol, I was looking at a topic today... Saw the debate button... and I just said "Wow!"

What made you think of the button Saru? (Tis good, not bad)

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Its an offshoot from our old debates system from a couple of years ago, we've had a few people recently interested in 1 on 1 debates so it came from that really. Having a 'Debate' button was a quick and simple way to give members access to the system without having to have a debate organiser setting up every debate manually.

Oh, and it's your turn to post an introduction. ;)

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Its an offshoot from our old debates system from a couple of years ago, we've had a few people recently interested in 1 on 1 debates so it came from that really. Having a 'Debate' button was a quick and simple way to give members access to the system without having to have a debate organiser setting up every debate manually.

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I think it would be useful if there was some way to label the posts position in the debate. For instance, the introductions would show up with "(member name) introduction" marking the post. Or the body posts could be noted as "(member name) body post 1 of 4" (maybe repeating the member names is redundent since its already displayed next to their post). However, I think it would be cool to have the posts postion in the debate displayed somewhere like the header along with the date and time of the post. Dunno, just an idea.

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Members are encouraged to write 'Introduction' etc. above their responses however there's no facility to do this automatically unfortunately.

Usually as long as the introduction and conclusion are clear then labelling the other posts shouldn't matter.

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