Someone recently mentioned Kirk1Adm somewhere. This made me think about the old plans for the arena. Such an arena would be a place for announced, focused debates for and against a specific explicit motion, with two posters going up against each other, rated for the actual value and persuasive power of their arguments. I might be wrong, but in retrospect it seems to me that because Kirk never showed up for the fight, we sort of lost the whole larger idea of having an arena in the first place. If so, I think that might be shame. Perhaps it would be worth giving the concept another try, in the spirit of improving Wordforge? I'm not sure it would bring back or attract new posters, but I have some hopes it could raise the general level of debate for those of us who are here. I am almost certain it would raise the level of debate as compared with the shitfest we're in for Monday night.
I assume you're talking about a room with no flaming/trolling? Problem is that we know each other too well. For instance, anyone who gets stuck with gturner knows he's going to get lies and spin. Anyone stuck with Dinner knows he'll get insults and screaming. Anyone stuck with Dayton., well....I don't even need to say it.
More than that. I'm thinking have only one contest at a time, on one motion and between exactly two people. Possibly have a kind of audience poll at the end, or two, one at the start and one at the end.
Pretty much what Kirk1adm did. When he found out he couldn't poo fling, or smear, and had to stick to formal rules of debate, and back his shit with evidence and logic, Brave Sir Robin bravely ran away.
It's no because you don't need a special room to do it. You've got the Red Room and you've got the Green Room. You can't agree among yourself and the other person to not respond to any other posts in the thread but only each other? Why the need for a special room?
I think it doesn't work because that's not why any of us are here. We enjoy Red Room style debate, which involves a mixture of data, logic, emotion, invective, strawmen, and derailment. Sure, that gets frustrating now and then, but who really has the time or desire for a proper Lincoln-Douglas style debate, especially when the other person might not be able to respond for a few hours. Wordforge is more about conversation with chaotic debate thrown in. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but I doubt many would want to participate. And though it's fun to laugh at Kirk1Adm, his mistake was in agreeing to do something he didn't actually want to do.
Agreed. A specialized room of an already specialized room would be pointless. It would hardly get any use, and when it would get used, I figure most posters would either quit long before either side was satisfied with the argument, or just descend into circular arguments that would never end. I sure as shit wouldn't moderate it as any kind of rule enforcer. I find most debates tedious as they are, and how often do people here give a shit when they're called out on something they've said in the past? We have posters here who would say one thing in one post, something else in the next post, and deny the content of the previous post, even as you quote it for them verbatim. TL;DR - No, it would be a disaster, no one would actually use it as designed.
Oh yeah, I hadn't even considered the moderation requirements. And just imagine the Helpdesk threads, as there would always be somebody convinced that the moderator had unfairly advantaged one of the participants. Fuck that.
