Another Horrible thread at SDN

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Post by Socar » Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:22 pm

Gandalf wrote:I disagree, there is no reason to set time limits on a debate unless it is some kind of academic exercise.
There's a reason why Mike Wong and others always preferred on setting time limits for their debates. As Mike once pointed out to Lord Edam,

A "see how it goes" approach only works if the losing party is willing to admit that he's losing, and that rarely happens. It is up to readers to determine later who they felt to be the winning party based on the exchange, and if one debater cannot make his point within the allotted time, that's as much a reflection on his performance in the debate and the validity of his point as anything else.

Moreover, while you may have enormous amounts of spare time, I do not. Unlike you, my job does not give me time to participate in newsgroups during work hours. I also have a wife and two kids to take care of. It is a major imposition on me to commit myself to one of these debates, and I simply cannot commit to an open-ended debate. Unlike you, I have schedules and commitments to worry about, hence my desire to set aside a fixed block of time for this event. I had hoped you would be able to understand this.

Gandalf wrote:And if Dragoon is using a website as a basis for his arguments than his opponent should be able to ask for help. Although the least he could do is formulate the argument into his own words rather than cut/paste.
There's a difference. If I recall correctly, they both said that they were using websites for a basis, however, that can only get you so far. Eventually, when the debate goes out of the range of what the websites cover, that's where it's up to the debaters to come up with their own argument beyond what is available to each of them already. And do note that my comment was in the context of having a time limit. If you have one of the participants that has a group of people that is actually coming up with the arguments for them on the fly, then that is an unfair advantage.

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Post by Gandalf » Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:34 pm

Socar wrote:
There's a reason why Mike Wong and others always preferred on setting time limits for their debates. As Mike once pointed out to Lord Edam,

A "see how it goes" approach only works if the losing party is willing to admit that he's losing, and that rarely happens. It is up to readers to determine later who they felt to be the winning party based on the exchange, and if one debater cannot make his point within the allotted time, that's as much a reflection on his performance in the debate and the validity of his point as anything else.

Moreover, while you may have enormous amounts of spare time, I do not. Unlike you, my job does not give me time to participate in newsgroups during work hours. I also have a wife and two kids to take care of. It is a major imposition on me to commit myself to one of these debates, and I simply cannot commit to an open-ended debate. Unlike you, I have schedules and commitments to worry about, hence my desire to set aside a fixed block of time for this event. I had hoped you would be able to understand this.

Well if you want to set a time limit to your debate that's up to you but that's something that you should setup ahead of time. Expecting someone to own upto your timings halfway through a debate seems futile. Two days with no response seems like real life concerns, if he hasn't responded in five days then accept his concession. Of course if your just going to opt out of the debate because your fed up with it, don't have the time for it or what have you then doing your opponent the honour of letting him know is called for.

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Post by Socar » Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:38 pm

Gandalf wrote:Well if you want to set a time limit to your debate that's up to you but that's something that you should setup ahead of time.
I completely agree. I was just making a statement about debating in general (but specifically for a one-on-one) debate, and not necessarily in relation to Dragoon's debate. I was just saying that it's a good way of preventing this sort of thing.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:49 pm

Socar wrote:
Gandalf wrote:I disagree, there is no reason to set time limits on a debate unless it is some kind of academic exercise.
There's a reason why Mike Wong and others always preferred on setting time limits for their debates. As Mike once pointed out to Lord Edam,

A "see how it goes" approach only works if the losing party is willing to admit that he's losing, and that rarely happens. It is up to readers to determine later who they felt to be the winning party based on the exchange, and if one debater cannot make his point within the allotted time, that's as much a reflection on his performance in the debate and the validity of his point as anything else.

Moreover, while you may have enormous amounts of spare time, I do not. Unlike you, my job does not give me time to participate in newsgroups during work hours. I also have a wife and two kids to take care of. It is a major imposition on me to commit myself to one of these debates, and I simply cannot commit to an open-ended debate. Unlike you, I have schedules and commitments to worry about, hence my desire to set aside a fixed block of time for this event. I had hoped you would be able to understand this.

Gandalf wrote:And if Dragoon is using a website as a basis for his arguments than his opponent should be able to ask for help. Although the least he could do is formulate the argument into his own words rather than cut/paste.
There's a difference. If I recall correctly, they both said that they were using websites for a basis, however, that can only get you so far. Eventually, when the debate goes out of the range of what the websites cover, that's where it's up to the debaters to come up with their own argument beyond what is available to each of them already. And do note that my comment was in the context of having a time limit. If you have one of the participants that has a group of people that is actually coming up with the arguments for them on the fly, then that is an unfair advantage.
Which is quite funny, because if a person's spare time is so scarse, then why insist on a tight reply schedule, when this is exactly not going to let people find time to reply accordingly.

It's like, err.. dude, I have such pressure RL related, so let's add more pressure, shall we?

That's absurd.
Last edited by Mr. Oragahn on Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Socar » Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:55 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Which is quite funny, because if a person's spare time is so scarse, then why insist on a tight reply schedule, when you this is exactly not going to let people find time to reply accordingly.

It's like, err.. dude, I have such pressure RL related, so let's add more pressure, shall we?

That's absurd.
No it's not. The whole point is so that it doesn't turn into some kind of completely open-ended debate, where one party has to keep checking back day after day when there are no replies. Eventually, a lot of people are going to stop checking back, and if all of a sudden the other participant posts a reply, which goes unread, then it looks to everyone else as if one side left the debate and conceded, when that wasn't actually the case. Do note, that in the case of Mike Wong's debate, that they also wanted to keep a limit on how many replies there were to be as well, because he didn't know if real life things were going to pop up.

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Post by Dragoon » Fri Feb 02, 2007 9:14 pm

He had plenty of time over the last few days to reply, imho. Before it took him (at most) a day to get back to me. I don't want to have to keep checking back every day, expecting a reply when I'm not even sure if he's still in the debate.

Another reason I'm setting this up now is because if he's just waiting for his friends at SDN to come up with a counter-arguement, then there's really no point in debating him anymroe because he's not debating on his own, which is blatantly unfair.

I use sites as a basis for my arguement and I did c/p one section because to do otherwise would have taken too long. I did cite the website and provided credit saying "Thanks to so-and-so for providing me with this resource, etc."

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:40 am

Socar wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Which is quite funny, because if a person's spare time is so scarse, then why insist on a tight reply schedule, when you this is exactly not going to let people find time to reply accordingly.

It's like, err.. dude, I have such pressure RL related, so let's add more pressure, shall we?

That's absurd.
No it's not. The whole point is so that it doesn't turn into some kind of completely open-ended debate, where one party has to keep checking back day after day when there are no replies. Eventually, a lot of people are going to stop checking back, and if all of a sudden the other participant posts a reply, which goes unread, then it looks to everyone else as if one side left the debate and conceded, when that wasn't actually the case. Do note, that in the case of Mike Wong's debate, that they also wanted to keep a limit on how many replies there were to be as well, because he didn't know if real life things were going to pop up.
It is absurd, and if I were in such a position, I would tell the other pissy guy to fµck off right now if he would not pleased cause I wouldn't reply almost live to his latest interventions.

It goes against common sense to establish tight periodical schedules when you're actually running out of time, and you can't tell what tomorrow will be made of.
One clearly does not have, nor needs to check everyday to see if the other person has responded. Check every three or four days, or each weekend for example. That's a good start if one debater has informed the other that he can't allow much of his spare time to be spent on such trivial activities.

You'll reply when you'll have time, and that's simply the way it will go.
People have, I hope, personal lives and social activities. You're not going to hang around, check every hour with obstination to see if the other person has considered replying as soon as you posted your 20000 long caracters rebutal.

After a reasonnable amount of time, several weeks or even months, if there's no sign of activity, then you can consider that the discussion is closed.

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Post by Socar » Sat Feb 03, 2007 3:32 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:It is absurd, and if I were in such a position, I would tell the other pissy guy to fµck off right now if he would not pleased cause I wouldn't reply almost live to his latest interventions.
It isn't absurd at all. The whole point was that Mike was home sick and had some time off. But that wasn't permanent obviously, and he didn't have time to stretch out the debate indefinitely. I'm not sure what you mean by "reply almost live to his latest interventions" but there's hardly anything unreasonable to setting a 2 or 3 day post time limit to make sure one side is not just trying to stall.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:It goes against common sense to establish tight periodical schedules when you're actually running out of time, and you can't tell what tomorrow will be made of.
Hardly. If I'm about to engage in a debate, and I know I have other concerns creeping up, then I KNOW I don't want to let the debate go off forever, because eventually I KNOW I'm going to have to leave it, probably for good. Hence why they set a specific number of exchanges that would be made, within a certain time limit.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: One clearly does not have, nor needs to check everyday to see if the other person has responded. Check every three or four days, or each weekend for example. That's a good start if one debater has informed the other that he can't allow much of his spare time to be spent on such trivial activities.
Having a three or four day post limit between posts is fine, but when you start leaving it to every weekend, eventually either A. the discussion is going to go off the radar completely or B. the discussion gets pushed off the main part of the forum. Sorry, but if one of the participants can't be bothered to respond on any sort of regular basis, then they shouldn't have gotten involved on a one on one debate in the first place, especially when one challenges someone else to a debate. There is no problem with setting pre-debate stipulations before the debate begins if you know something's up.
Mr. Oragahn wrote: You'll reply when you'll have time, and that's simply the way it will go.
People have, I hope, personal lives and social activities. You're not going to hang around, check every hour with obstination to see if the other person has considered replying as soon as you posted your 20000 long caracters rebutal.
No, but I'm also not going to keep checking back once a week for some half-assed discussion. If one party needs to temporarily drop out temporarily, that's fine, but to just leave it going indefinitely like that is stupid, and quite frankly, rude to the other participant.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:After a reasonnable amount of time, several weeks or even months, if there's no sign of activity, then you can consider that the discussion is closed.
Months? I'm not going to check back after a month, especially on a forum where the topic is probably long gone, mixed in with most of the other clutter. There's a difference between just a casual discussion online and an actual debate like one that Mike was having. I haven't even seen the debate Dragoon is having, but if the situation is at all similar, than requesting time restraints isn't unreasonable.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Feb 03, 2007 3:05 pm

Well, we clearly won't agree on that. I don't see the problem to add the thread as a favorite link somewhere.
Telling me that you wouldn't check for the thred after a month when you're willing to check it every day or two days strikes me as odd.

As far as I'm concerned, I have absolutely nothing against necromancy as long as this is served by constructive argumentation.

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Post by Socar » Sat Feb 03, 2007 6:03 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:I don't see the problem to add the thread as a favorite link somewhere.
I currently have about 250 links in my favorite menus. I'm literally involved in dozens of debate threads (some one on one, some not) over multiple subjects per week. If someone is taking a month or months to reply, and I don't even know if the debate is still going on, it's gonna slip off my radar.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Telling me that you wouldn't check for the thred after a month when you're willing to check it every day or two days strikes me as odd.
Because when a debate is active and I'm currently thinking about the subject, then I have an actual incentive to keep checking. I still think that if it takes that long for someone to reply, they should have the decency to just say they need to temporarily drop out of the debate until they have the time to debate on a bit more of a regular basis instead of leaving their opponent to do this guessing and checking game. I find that it is quite convenient when both sides can come to a mutual agreement on some time restrictions before hand.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:As far as I'm concerned, I have absolutely nothing against necromancy as long as this is served by constructive argumentation.
Unfortunately, there are way too many forums out there that have specific rules about how old a topic can be and still be revived, no matter what the reason.

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Post by Dartan » Sun Feb 04, 2007 4:14 pm

I think Dragoon's problem with the time may be that the only reason the guy isn't replying is that he is using the time to get his buddies at SDN to come up with arguments for him instead of coming up with his own.

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Post by Socar » Sun Feb 04, 2007 4:22 pm

Dartan wrote:I think Dragoon's problem with the time may be that the only reason the guy isn't replying is that he is using the time to get his buddies at SDN to come up with arguments for him instead of coming up with his own.
Actually, they had finished typing up their responses on SDN quite a while ago. Days before he finally got around to sending his response to Dragoon, so either the guy is lazy, busy, or there's more going on than just at SDN.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Sun Feb 04, 2007 5:28 pm

Actually it was common for certain pro-Wars people on the old STrek-v-SWars.Net forum to wait a long while to reply while they went back to SDN to get help in their replies (they would start threads in the SDN Pure Trek forum usually). In several cases they took 3-4 weeks before they would reply. I forget exactly who, but finally someone discovered what they were doing on SDN, and called them out on it.

But don't be suprised if this sort of thing happens here in Dragoon's case.
-Mike

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Sun Feb 04, 2007 8:39 pm

I'll offer a more pleasant possible explanation:

Perhaps this fellow - who described himself as not having a very strong scientific background, IIRC - was simply taking the time to fully digest and then select the arguments that he was to use. Make them his own, so to speak.

On a side note, I'll say that if you're truly pressed for time, set a hard limit on the size and possibly number of posts within the debate, and then a looser limit on scheduling those posts. If you're posting no more than once per day, and the posts are limited to (say) no more than 1,000 words, it won't take too much time.

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Post by GStone » Sun Feb 04, 2007 11:43 pm

Perhaps this fellow - who described himself as not having a very strong scientific background, IIRC - was simply taking the time to fully digest and then select the arguments that he was to use. Make them his own, so to speak.
You're being overly generous. In his first post, he asks for help with the "mess". He's been pasting both sides again and again and the thread's on it's 7th page. Off hand, I don't think he's even asked 'when it comes to (area of science), how does blank blank work?' There's nothing to indicate he's even wanting to learn anything with any abstract thinking. He's just trying to be a sponge of other people. I doubt he's even trying to fact check what that lot is telling him. He's probably just going by the 'well, this bit seems like it could be right' method.

As far as debator status, he hasn't shown being able to achieve anything above record-n'-say greeting card.

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