Starfleet Jedi

In the discussion of the new SDN Coliseum section, I suggested that if there's enough interest for a debate section here (of whatever degree of formality) that I would add one.

I am largely assuming that we would be talking about debates of similar form to my earlier debate with Sothis, but I'm also open to suggestions on how such a forum would be best structured.

As Opecoiler pointed out, the SDN Coliseum partly addresses the concerns of those who have had complaints about SDN. I am willing to consider the possibility of a debate section that has completely different rules from the rest of the SFJ forum sections.

Do you really think there would be that high a demand for it? I mean people here aren't going to clash with each other to the point where you actually want to go head-to-head with someone specific on a specific topic. Well, not so much that you'd need a separate forum for it, in any case.

Perhaps just create the possibility that you can have these sorts of debates in the normal forums, where only two people are permitted to post. For Sothis and your own debate, it seemed to work rather well.

No, no point. If people want to adress one's claims in particular, they can already create a thread that way, or use mails, and act like grown ups and deal with their stuff on their own.
It's not like there seems to be a particular high demand there either, I think the forum in question would remain fairly empty.

Besides, these practices may encourage a mentality which focuses more on the person than the arguments.

I'm seeing some desire for this in the poll, but not many people giving good reasons for having one.

I suppose it is a good point. If we're going to have a formal debate section, who would be using it with whom? I've demonstrated my willingness to engage in formal debate, but I'm not interested in hounding people to meet my challenges.

I think it's worth creating if we had several bookings lined up, but if there's no pair or team or what-have-you interested in engaging in any particular debates while here, there's really no point in creating an empty forum section. So if you really want it, get a willing debate partner and a topic and drop me a line either in PM or in this thread.

Maybe wait a bit and look at SDN's coliseum, to see if it works for them.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Maybe wait a bit and look at SDN's coliseum, to see if it works for them.

• SDN and SFJ may share some topics of discussion, but they're very different places with different people; what works there may not work here.
• Their section has already been open for three and a half months, and it had one debate thread, which ended two months ago.
• Even if things pick up over there, and even if we've had some of the regulars here express a willingness to engage someone else in a formal debate, we haven't seen anybody interested in a formal debate with anybody else in particular since Sothis came and had his (short) formal debate with me.

There's clearly support for the idea of a formal debate section, but there's just no booking. If I have a thread or two to put in the section, I'll make it. If not, well, we have a lot of different forum sections as is. I'm actually tempted to reorganize and merge some of the smaller low-traffic sections.