[Discussion] Coliseum Policy Ideas

[ray245]

In regards to the coliseum thread, I find that an academic excerise can be good for this forum. After all, this is a forum that encourage people to excel academic wise.

Conduct a monthly coliseum debate using different styles. Some of them can be an academic excerise, to test people's debating skills as compared to the motion. Sometimes, we are too caught up in defending the motion, that it gets very personal. Some motion can be scientific, some can be political, some can be social and philosophical and so on. Sometime, the debate will ask you to defend your personal stand, something you will be asked to debate against your personal stand. Other times, you will be given a motion without any prior knowledge.

When you are debating against your interest, and knows that your opponent actually support your views as a person, it helps the board in many ways I think.

The senate needs to make a list, of when and what are they going to debate. Instead of observing the discussion on the board to come to a decision ( if you do things this way in my opinion, nothing will be done) , make a full and detailed list of when and what the debate is going to be before hand.

It seems that the senate is divided over what kind of coliseum should it be, should it be a parting shot section? I don't think so. You don't invite a person to a coliseum to get flamed one on one and proceed to ban the loser. The impact of losing or getting embrassed by losing a debate in that section will only scare people off.

Example:

January : Scientific debates, motion selected and choosen by the Senate or Mike, debating for your personal stance.
Febuary: Political debates, Motion taken from the public discussion board, debating against your personal stance
March : Economic debates, selected motion, debating side choosen at random by the senate (you may or may not debate against your personal stand)
April: Humor round debate ( April's fools, we know that the mess is up to something, so we can join in the fun), person who made the funniest arguments wins the debate
May: Sci-fi fantasy debates, motion selected, against your personal stand.
June: philosophical/ moral debate, motion taken from discussion board, for your personal stand.
July: Scientific debate, motion taken from discussion board, debating against your peronal stand.
August: Political debates, Motion taken from the public discussion board, debating for your personal stance
September: Economic debates, motion taken from the public discussion , debating for your personal stand.
October: Sci-fi fantasy debates, motion selected, for your personal stand.
November: Political debates, Motion taken from the public discussion board, debating side choosen at random by the senate.
December: Economic debates, motion taken from the public discussion , debating side choosen at random.

Special round debates: hosted together with the official debate, if an issue not related to the type of motion in that month was getting interesting and is heavily discussed by the forum. Can request for permission. And a history debate as well, forgotten about it. The anarchy-liberalism debate can be defined as a special round debate.

Basically, set up a guideline and deadline for a debate, and open these debates to the public. Winners get a title while losers will not get anything, unless the choose to conduct themselves in a improper manner.

I think the guideline can be changed, but essentially, we need a guideline. When I am orgainsing class or friends outing, it is impossible to get something done, unless you set up a deadline for that event early on, and stick with it. The momment you don't have a guideline or a deadline, the Senate will continue to discuss about the coliseum and we will never see another clash of the titans debate.

I have posted this in another thread, and trying to get the senate to come up with a set of timetable or guideline to move forward.

I hope the senate and members can restart their discussion and propose a timetable or a guideline, if not, the Coliseum will never be active.

The 'Debating Arena' I have seen in many other areas has many active and formal debates because there is a set of guidelines and rules.

[The Romulan Republic]

I like it in general, but suppose one wishes to do a science debate in, say, August? And suppose you can't find anyone with the time, knowledge, and interest to do a debate on the topic for that given month (or any topic at all). Also, how many issues won't fall convieniantly into one catagory?

[Lusankya]

I like it in general, but suppose one wishes to do a science debate in, say, August?

I believe that's what the "special round debates" that Ray mentioned would be for.

I think that Ray's proposal has merit. If we find that monthly debates aren't getting enough support, then we can always cut it back. I think that monthly sounds reasonable, though. And by voiding the requirement that people be debating in favour of their own stance, I'm certain we'll have more interest than otherwise.

Part of the problem has been that we've been looking for people who actually support both sides of an issue, and in the case of the Prop 8 one, at least, it fell through since Kodiak changed his mind. If, on the other hand, we do a "creationism vs evolution” debate and I'm told to defend creationism regardless of what I think, then it doesn't matter if I change my mind or not - my job isn't to say what I think. My job is to point out that monkeys don't turn into people, so therefore evolution is wrong (though hopefully I'd use a better argument).

[The Romulan Republic]

Actually, one could point to the intellectual value of debating the other side, even if you find their views stupid or reprehensible. Debating against your beliefs might help you see the other side's arguments, and flaws in your own. Which would make you that much stronger a debater in the future.

Also, this way we can open up new possibilities for discussion of things that are rarely brought up due to an overwealming consensus on the board and perhaps fear of getting flamed simultaneously by 50 different people. Which could help combat the stagnation problem I seem to recall hearing about in those "what's wrong with the board" threads.

[irishmick79]

It's a good start, but before we start jumping into suggesting debate topics, I think we need to establish a general mechanism for how debates should flow. Also, how are these events going to be judged? What kind of scoring criteria should we use? Should scientific debates have a different scoring criteria than political ones? The idea is that we should first establish some sort of standard approach to debates so we can have transparent judging and can offer more constructive feedback to debaters.

I think a general format could look something like this:

Round 1: evidence - debators list major sources they intend to cite during their arguments
Round 2: opening statements
Round 3: Cross-examination
Round 4: Rebuttal
Round 5: Closing

You could extend rounds 3-4 as much or as little as you like. This is meant to be a general framework rather than a hard flow, so there should be a lot of flexibility here. As far as judging goes, you could score each round on a scale of one to ten or something like that, but I would like to see the forum's reaction to this idea before proposing any kind of language for scoring criteria.

[The Romulan Republic]

How was the winner of the first (and so far only) coliseum debate determined?

I suppose we could have the Senate vote on the winner, though with all the complaining about the Senate lately, I doubt this idea will be very popular.

[irishmick79]

How was the winner of the first (and so far only) coliseum debate determined?

I suppose we could have the Senate vote on the winner, though with all the complaining about the Senate lately, I doubt this idea will be very popular.

To my knowledge, Wong made that determination based on Voluntaryist's unique style of ignoring the rebuttals of his opponent. The first debate was more of a show trial than a real debate.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

How was the winner of the first (and so far only) coliseum debate determined?

I suppose we could have the Senate vote on the winner, though with all the complaining about the Senate lately, I doubt this idea will be very popular.

The first Coliseum debate was between an experienced, knowledgeable debater and a lolbertarian with a hard-on for the Wall of Ignorance and the Broken-Record. The outcome was certain at the beginning of the debate. That one was done, more or less, for shits and grins.

[ray245]

When you are debating against your personal stance, it is simply preparing you for a real debate. As an opposing member in such a debate, you have to think of the best argument the other side can bring.

And use that as a basis or standard to judge how strong that argument is. Other than that, it trains you to find a way to convince an uneducated or neutral audience.

To judge a debate, you can judge as an uneducated person. If a person maked a extremely flawed but convincing argument on his side, and the other side is unable to tear down that argument properly, then that flawed argument will stand.

On a side note, an idea for a special round debate can be this:

Let the champions of many debates (say winning 5 or more rounds in the coliseum?) face against each other and convince the other person to change his personal stand. This type of debate will be a long debate, and required an extremely skilled debater to do so.

A title can be given for the winner because it requires a special kind of debater to accomplish a near impossible feat.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The issue with some subjects (for example scientific debates) is that unless you are debating pure theory (string theory vs quantum gravity, phenetic gradualism vs punctuated equillibrium, kin selection vs multilevel selection) where the theoretical issues have not been hammered out by either side yet there isnt a whole lot of debate worth having. What am I going to argue? That alchemy is a science?

I suppose you could argue minutae of Life History Theory and whether or not a bed-hedging model or An Optimization model is best for explaining observations in a given system, but debates like that will not be very accessible for lay people unless I were to host pdfs of papers cited on my personal webspace.

[Coiler]

I really don't think that the "winner" of a Coliseum debate should be officially determined. We already have too much of a "win at all costs" culture, and simply showing each side's arguments and letting the viewers decide for themselves would be more democratic and more fun, in my view.

[Braedley]

The sign of a good debater is when someone can make arguments against what he himself believes, and make you believe him. This is also why the person that knows both sides of the coin will usually win. This should make it obvious that I support the use of opposite side debates as laid out in the OP. I also agree that a monthly schedule will help. Perhaps announcing the combatants a month to a month and a half in advance (mainly for preparation purposes) while another debate is in progress will help garner attention as well.

[irishmick79]

I really don't think that the "winner" of a Coliseum debate should be officially determined. We already have too much of a "win at all costs" culture, and simply showing each side's arguments and letting the viewers decide for themselves would be more democratic and more fun, in my view.

Point taken.

Still, I think you can have a group of people render fair judgement on the strength of one claim or argument against another. If you break down an argument into several different elements, like logical strength, elequence, or supporting evidence, you could have judges render scores in each of those categories and add them up into a total score. With a system like that, I think you could get a fairly evenhanded evaluation of a debator's performance.

Hell, you could set up a panel of judges for the Coliseum, rotate the members in an out regularly, and I think you would avoid the 'win at all costs' attitude and give interested posters the opportunity to give feedback to each other on debating based on performances.

[Hotfoot]

Why not have a panel of judges vote on the subject, and both contestants get some sort of prize for putting on a show, while the winner gets a nice bonus for being declared winner? Losers get the option for the title "Gladiator" and the ability to, I dunno, brag, while the winners get the option for the title "Emperor's Favored", or something similar?

[Coyote]

We've got a lot of things on our plates right now, with regard to coding for access to Edit; new mods, etc.... but every so often we bandy about the idea of having some sort of visual "award" system to show debate acumen... sort of like a row of ribbons & medals on a military uniform.

It'd be nice if we could do that for the Coliseum, maybe an award with a sort of "sunset date"-- maybe it lasts for a year. But an award for "arguing the opposite side" as a separate award, and one for good debate that ends with a win.

Like the "seniority stars" and "senator bars" we used to have. Or something for SIGs.

[ray245]

Which means the judges needs to be very unbiased, and cannot walk into a debate. They must not let personal feelings get into the way.

[Hotfoot]

Which means the judges needs to be very unbiased, and cannot walk into a debate. They must not let personal feelings get into the way.

You're never going to completely get rid of bias, that's why we have multiple judges, to mitigate bias.

[CarsonPalmer]

I know I'm sort of a lurker, but I think the "soft debates" have the greatest potential in the Coliseum, and don't have to be necessarily "soft". Like Alyrium said, a real scientific debate can be pretty inaccessible to a lot of outside observers, but, for example's sake, a debate on Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis would be in-depth and nuanced, but a non-history major would still be able to pick up and follow along.

Obviously, a debate on Frederick Jackson Turner would be pretty America-centric, but my point is that you can have academic debates in the "softer" fields that outsiders can still follow. Those are the debates, I think, that would have the most potential.

[ray245]

Which means the opening house needs to open up a debate and sets up the case and some basic history in regards to the debate.

[irishmick79]

We've got a lot of things on our plates right now, with regard to coding for access to Edit; new mods, etc.... but every so often we bandy about the idea of having some sort of visual "award" system to show debate acumen... sort of like a row of ribbons & medals on a military uniform.

It'd be nice if we could do that for the Coliseum, maybe an award with a sort of "sunset date"-- maybe it lasts for a year. But an award for "arguing the opposite side" as a separate award, and one for good debate that ends with a win.

Like the "seniority stars" and "senator bars" we used to have. Or something for SIGs.

That would be a great idea for the coliseum. Is that even possible with the new board software?

[Guardsman Bass]

Could you send an existing argument between two members over a subject over into the Coliseum from another thread? What I mean is, say Poster X and Poster Y are arguing over the merits of sanitation spending in the Southwest. They're pretty much the only people who have a real bone in the fight, and it hasn't turned into a flame fest. Could Admin then say "This is going into the Coliseum", at which point the debate goes into the Coliseum with posting access restricted to only those two members?

Part of the problem, at least, seems to be that we can never get an actual debate started due to time commitments, lack of decision over issues, lack of different positions of certain issues, etc.

I don't know about the "Judging" thing - that adds another layer of time commitments over the above.

[irishmick79]

Could you send an existing argument between two members over a subject over into the Coliseum from another thread? What I mean is, say Poster X and Poster Y are arguing over the merits of sanitation spending in the Southwest. They're pretty much the only people who have a real bone in the fight, and it hasn't turned into a flame fest. Could Admin then say "This is going into the Coliseum", at which point the debate goes into the Coliseum with posting access restricted to only those two members?

Part of the problem, at least, seems to be that we can never get an actual debate started due to time commitments, lack of decision over issues, lack of different positions of certain issues, etc.

I don't know about the "Judging" thing - that adds another layer of time commitments over the above.

With the judging, I kind of envision it to be something anybody can do who's following the debate. If we come up with some kind of scoring standard, it shouldn't be that hard for judges to assess what they see based on that standard.

[The Guid]

I support ray's idea of a timetable, but I find it a little restrictive. Could we not just set a date where a match must be set up by? And have maybe a back log of willing people to take part? This will keep it regular but without saying that certain types of debates happen at certain times, which I think will be counter productive as there may be a science debate that someone will wait to post for a few months.

[ray245]

If you don't put up a restriction, NOTHING will be done. The Senate will simply spend another year trying to find a 'good' debate.

You set up a deadline, open it up to the public and let the senate choose two debaters by a certain date.

Announce the entry submission and say when will the registration date end.

The timetable isn't there for the members, it is for the senate to get things done.

[Coyote]

If you don't put up a restriction, NOTHING will be done. The Senate will simply spend another year trying to find a 'good' debate.

You set up a deadline, open it up to the public and let the senate choose two debaters by a certain date.

Announce the entry submission and say when will the registration date end.

The timetable isn't there for the members, it is for the senate to get things done.

We can't make people be interested in a topic. Real motivation derives from the people who would be the participants; see the set-up with Bubble Boy and Alyrium Denryle over Intelligent Design...