I was thinking it might be helpful to have a forum category that is more serious with moderated debates. Perhaps someone could post requests to debate and if another user agrees they will both post their arguments in a thread that only they can post in. It might even make sense to have a moderator to keep them on topic. Any thoughts? Would more formal debates be a good thing for the forum?
The forum scarcely lacks debates as it is. I’ve only been here a week or so and I can barely keep up with it!
-Jon
This is exactly my point. There isn’t a whole lot of structure and it is hard to get all the important points. If it was more formal and wasn’t spread across multiple threads it might be more valuable for the readers. Also when it is 1 on 1 or atleast has agreed upon participants there won’t be as many of those off-topic random posts diverting the debate away from the main point.
Yeah that’s what really has me bent out of shape over this place: it’s just way too informal. I mean damn, anything goes: debauchery, profanity, ribaldry. My heavens I have to keep my smelling salts handy most days the things I see here.
Seriously, the site has a structure in place for private debate. Or you could always just exchange hotmail/yahoo addresses. Better yet, exchange addresses and carry on your debate with dignity and refinement on good correspondence stock.
I think that a private debate forum would be useful (along with that Philosophy forum that was talked about a while back). The Objectivism Online forums have 1, and it seems to work pretty well.
I’m thinking of starting up a website for this very idea: structured, regulated, one-on-one debates. Most of the arguments that go on in this forum (and anywhere for that matter) are very inefficient. People don’t define their terms, they talk past each other, they ignore questions, etc. For these reasons I would be very surprised to see a debate where one person wins and one loses.
The only one I can think of is Walter Block vs Nathianel Branden, where Walter was converted from communism to a free market position. I also remember Hayek wanted to have a “grand debate” between the leading free marketers and state-socialists, but it didn’t work out.
Just an idea:
Now that everyone can make groups, it would be possible to make a Debate Group for people to join if they wished.