Debating!

[semper]

Well considering the scale of the forum, AND the healthy amount of people who actually like to DEBATE properly, making intelligent points, that contain much merit and force, then why is there no forum, solely for debating?

I believe, it wouldnt be such a BAD idea to have a society within the forums, similar to 'respect!', where people have teams, say of four people per team. (A Team captain, and three speech makers.) Competing against others.

We can have one debate a week, and have an inter-forum competition going on, allowing bets, with odds on different debating teams. An ultimate prize...well..i dont know yet..leave that down to Admin should he support!

I would suggest a council of three judges, obviously not the BEST debaters, but id happily sit up and judge these things, as I am the main mon...(lol...maybe not.., but its my idea so sner..)

We could have rules of conduct ie..

Stage One: Team A Presents introduction to their side.
Stage Two: Team B Introduces theirs.
Stage Three: Team A puts forward their arguments.
Stage Four: Team B is allowed to counter, but each person may only make one counter.
Stage 5: Team A can re-counter Team B's counters. Team MUST conclude their argument.
Stage 6: Team B Puts forward their arguments.
Stage 7:Teams A may counter, same process from before.
Stage 8: Team B may re-counter. Team B MUST conclude.
Stage 9: Other debating teams may set forward and ask questions.
Stage 10: Judges decide who has made the most meritable arguments.

Rules: May Not turn into a continual argument. Each person is allowed two posts PER stage. unless the other team is making their preliminary arguments or introduction, in which case only that team are allowed to post.

All topics are to be chosen by the judges, and will obviously revolve around the game, MOST likely. (ie. Who would win, the replicators or the wraith?, though that wouldnt get to much attention)

The latter stages of the competition would be, say for example more philosophical debates, and without a shadow of a doubt, the last debate would have to be concerning the existence of God and religion. Everyone would love that..or MAYBE even, whats is the best scenario (Sg-1, SA or even Star Wars and Star Trek!)

the debates would HAVE to be at set times..say each stage being about 6-12hours long, to make sure everyone in a team has a chance to post due to time differences etc etc..

To further this. Obviously it would have to be a seperate part of the forum, to avoid spam, id say viewable by the entire community, but only postable in by members of the group.

Each Team would get two marks, for each part of the debate. So this would be presentation/conduct of argument. (points for planning and orgonisation basically) this would be a mark out of 30, second would be content of argument. The second part would be divided. A mark out of 20 for the intro, a mark out of 20 for the preliminary arguments made (take the two highest of the judges marks), and then a mark out of 30 for counters/contradictions.

that gives a total out of one hundred, where people would be given a grade. S = 90+ A = 80-90, B = 70-80, C = 60-70, D = 50-60, U = 0-50. The highest score wins, regardless of grade.
These will also be the rankings for the teams. So lets say..for example...

ETL, replijake, BW and STI are on a team, against Osi, myself, Spacey and come_forth. (that would be very interesting..) lets say that ETL's team get a B grade, and Osi's get an A (cos we rock..) so at that point, wed be the A team, and ETL's would be a B team. Depending on how many teams there were, well we could in theory get heats (like the premiership and league 1 etc etc) from this..

Obviously the use of threats for ingame will result in immediate booting from the competition, no debates on that, and will be very largely shunned by the community. If you cant hack the intelligent points, withdraw, dont be a big girl and use threats.

In the results of a tie, the team captains will have to go one on one. If you use WRONG information. (lets say you said the battle of waterloo was in the late 10th century for example) Your team will lose 10% of its points per mistake. So you godda know your crap! (thats why we will have a week before each debate to do research etc so that you can KNOW whats goin on.) If the judges dont notice the mistake, then your all good. (unless of course someone rats you out.)

Insults will NOT be tolerated, obviously, and insulting someone will result in your team gaining 0 points for the first tier of judging (orgonisation etc etc..)

So what do you all think? It could be FUN!?

[Fear Of The Duck]

interesting... the most interesting...

questions:
1. can each stage be 24hrs long instead of 12? were i am earth doesn't turn that fast
2. how do we appoint the judges?
3. how bout announcing the topic and then assembling teams? (not everybdy is interested in "Who would win, the replicators or the wraith?"). after the debate there'll be the prize for the winner team but points will be gained individually (total gained by team/ppl in the team) and from time to time we'll reward the best guy and zero the counter.

[semper]

judges would be voted for and would be static, but id make it mandatory that I am a judge, purely for the fact I have no in-game account, I have no real social loyalties except to two, who I doubt will take part in this, and otherwise, well I cannot be threatened and am smart and know a crap load about most of the things people would debate about, and I was in a debating society last year. I am known around this forum, weather I am loathed or liked, people know i dont generally talk BS and know I do have an idea what I am on about. (im not trying to toot my own horn..but I did anyway!)

Stages, i suppose could be 24 hours long, we could change some, then that way we have an entire week for the debate to occur.

Well there is the problem with debating. You can only really have two teams. One part for, and one party against a motion, or arguing for the main points of view. (ie. Atheist/theist...wraith/replicator, star wars/star trek, abortion/no abortion, euthanasia/ non euthanasia...you get the idea.)

We would have to announce the topics a week in advance anyway, to make sure the teams had time to prepare.

If we get, lets say, only 10-20 people, then we could cut it to personal debates or even pairs and have individual scoring, but if we get, lets say 24, then we have potentially 6 teams of four people. Which would be enough to last the debating section maybe 7 weeks or so which if ya think about it, would take us right till christmas and then well, we can have another round in the new year!

[Almost38]

semper ur awesome this is a GREAT idea

[smooshable]

I'm up for it.

[semper]

excellent..we just need more now..lol. oh and forums support!

[Obsidian311-]

id be willing to be a judge but i am to hot headed to actually debate... i would end up massing the wrong person for the wrong reasons lol.

[semper]

lol..well.. that could be a problem!

[Come_Forth]

Cool idea

[Forum]

from nov 1 onwards, baszy can make this kind of thing happen....
it'd have to be in its own section, self moderated...but i see no reason why it could not be so...

[Co-Administrator]

Good idea.
Just pm me the whole idea when you have a final version and Ill work out something.

[semper]

yay! lol.

[SSG EnterTheLion]

Unless you have robots judging or people who don't know any of us, bias will inevitably rear it's ugly head. I rest my case when cheats are considered heroes on this forum.

[semper]

as we can have neither, surely it is better to have the slight bias, then not have the feature all together.

You are right, bias points of view are inevitable, but thats a factor we have to let go. We do it for the moderators, for the admins, for things like the xfactor and pop idol. So why not here?

[Zeratul]

even robots would be biased... biased towards their creator...