Zone1 The need for a Formal Debate forum?

[konradv]

I see my post was transmitted through. But what I didn't say was that by my senior year, when I posted the school name, at minimum there were gasps of "Oh shit". Sometimes, the opposing team just looked at the judge and said "Forfeit". My two A little ass school kicked schools like Andover Academy and the Bronz Science Institute's ass. The county literally threw money at me, paid for travel expenses and hotels all over the country. I put more trophies in the trophy case than a decade of sports teams. And I developed a team that would continue to dominate for years after I left. I would get a case of beer, sit at the airport, and have them watch those big private schools with the five figure tuition land in their private jet and tell them, "We are going to kick their ass". And we did, time and time again. I mean when you go to a school that has "tractor days", and yet you dominate the national debate circuit against some of the finest schools in the country, well nothing is more satisfying.

I hope your inferiority complex has improved over the years.

 

[Natural Citizen]

Well, just asking a question here, what is wrong with that? If you want to invite some like minded folks to comment on something...I don't see the harm in it.

I personally like that they created the 2nd Amendment Forum since it limits the amount of "Someone got killed by a gun in country X so we don't suck so badly" excuse threads. I say have more opportunities for folks to self-segregate.

I tend to look at things through the lens of intent. For every action, there is intent. Always.

Most of those invite only threads really only served to provide a platform to spew statist/authoritarian propaganda without any real opportunity for any meaningful semblance of challenge to the (or to provide meaningful, relevant) terms of controversy. It defeats the very concept of functional debate.

And the reality is that people knew that and took advantage of it.

I think someone had mentioned human nature previously in the thread.

Think about the USMB platform itslelf. There really is no established goal or mission statement. The reality is that it's always gonna just be a bunch of arguing because that's the only real incentive that most folks have in coming here. That said, why encourage the means to do so unchallenged? It's just bad judgment.

That's my thought on the invite only thing anyway.

Now. I get OP's sentiment with regard to this other thing he's talking about. I really do. I'm a big fan of meaningful, functional dialogue. But I'm sorry, I simply do not trust the judgment (or intent...especially intent) of some of the mods and in no way is it wise to empower them to decide what is worthy topical discussion and what is not. Again, they're just volunteers out of the same pool as everyone else. Why do political activists/commentators volunteer to moderate dialogue? What's to be had by it? Think about that. And, again, what makes their judgment any more competent than anyone elses? What's the motivation to volunteer, aside from wanting some kind of control over the direction of the board? I can't think of any. They don't get paid.

And I don't even really like referencing them in a collective way, honestly, because that's not really fair, but a couple of bad ones just naturally stink the whole thing up, observably. And how do you get the bad ones? Well...bad judgment on the part of those who decide. Or...depending on the parties involved...intent....

But...somebody's gotta say it. Otherwise it will never get said. And silence on the matter is almost always interpreted as approval or acceptance. Which only leads to more of it.

Anyway. I'll say this and I'll shut up about it. If this country itself ever does go down the path to rank choice voting, make no mistake, the omnipotent majority will absolutely insure that a principled statesman will never again have his or her name on a ballot, because the omnipotent majority is fully aware that the principled statesman will always challenge the omnipotent majority's judgment in a decision making setting, and ultimately challenge whatever program they're trying to run for their own benefit/agenda. And they donlt want that. Huh uh. You're gonna get the slimiest of the slime every single time until eventually that's all you have left. There's no doubt about it. It's the nature of things.

That may seem like I'm veering off-topic with that last thought there, but really I'm not. Not really. Just have to think things through a lot better before just jumping into things impulsively. That's lacking in society as a whole, unfortunately. It's a process of continuing growth...or decline, depending on the nature and intent of who is charged with making the decisions.

 

[flacaltenn]

That's not true.

I opposed the idea.

But I had/have no interest in ''brawling'' with anyone on here.

What that 'invite only' thing turned into, predictably, was a bunch of people who didn't actually want any kind of meaningful opposition to their views and who only wanted confirmation of their own perspectives (which were extremely limited as I recall)

That whole concept was basically just a form of consensus cracking. Which just means starting a thread on what may be a critical topic of discussion, except with an extremely weak premise and no substantive proof of claims made. And there wouldn't ever be a requirement for that since an invite only tended to only invite people with the same agenda and remedial debate skills even if they did have an actual opposing view in the mix. Which they never really did. That in itself devolves into forum sliding (keeping a thread on top). Which is something else entirely but only compounded the problem since it is the natural course of the former.

You and I and everyone else WILL NEVER KNOW whether it would result in echo chambers or not. Also will never know if the topics chosen were "weak" in any way. Because out of the 3 or 4 attempts to DO Invite Only -- TWO were threads of mine. And I did them as kinda examples of how it should go. Even 1/2 the people I invited were no-shows. And I CHOSE the groupings for BALANCE and demonstrated ability to DO discussion at any level of moderation.

It was the outrage and negativity that scared folks off. An "experiment" is an experiment. This one largely failed because of lack of interest. And ALTHOUGH you had strong "feelings" about what evils were about to transpire -- I never accused you of being a person opposing an experimental idea just BECAUSE you dislike rules or love to brawl.

BTW -- back in 2008 and 2012, (maybe 2016) -- we posted "echo chamber" forums for advocates of their presidential candidates. Had one for each Repub/Dem/Libertarian candidate. Didn't see the world come to an end and moderation was able to keep the "other sides" out of each with only moderate effort. The simple was -- if you weren't FOR the candidate and couldn't resist taking a swipe -- you pretty much got ONE POST to do that.

 

[flacaltenn]

Most of those invite only threads really only served to provide a platform to spew statist/authoritarian propaganda without any real opportunity for any meaningful semblance of challenge to the (or to provide meaningful, relevant) terms of controversy. It defeats the very concept of functional debate.

All FOUR Of them? Not really a great sample. And since I authored 2 of those with a BALANCED invite list -- there really was not adequate data to MAKE judgements on the efficacy of the idea. It died for lack of interest.

 

[Natural Citizen]

All FOUR Of them? Not really a great sample. And since I authored 2 of those with a BALANCED invite list -- there really was not adequate data to MAKE judgements on the efficacy of the idea. It died for lack of interest.

It's not true that there were only four of them.

While only four of them may come back in a forum search result for thread titles containing the key words ''invite only,'' I specifically recall several invite only threads that do not return a result in a forum thread title search.

And we likely disagree a great deal on what surmises ''balanced'' in the scope of topical dialogue.

If the scope of one side's argument is blue and the scope of the other side's argument is red, what are you really trying to balance?

 

[flacaltenn]

The very worst of such you coddle and protect, hold to a lower standard than any others, offer a special welcome on the poster's personal page, and use as a reference for evaluating the very definition of racism, itself.

Pretty hefty list of accusations there. Maybe we need a "Special Counsel" to investigate all those "racist coddling" wrongdoings. I think you'll find that I've voted to perm ban more racists from this board than you've ever met on USMB.

 

[flacaltenn]

It's not true that there were only four of them.

While only four of them may come back in a forum search result for thread titles containing the key words ''invite only,'' I specifically recall several invite only threads that do not return a result in a forum thread title search.

And we likely disagree a great deal on what surmises ''balanced'' in the scope of topical dialogue.

If the scope of one side's argument is blue and the scope of the other side's argument is red, what are you really trying to balance?

I'll take a pass on the autopsy of the "dead idea" and let that rest. But OBVIOUSLY for a couple hundred years the "red and blue" sides DID discuss rationally and honestly -- outside of election years.

I dont think political extremism is uncurable. Call me a dreamer. But I've changed foxholes multiple times in my life. I KNOW how most of the "sides" think and what they value. And my CURRENT assessment is -- it's NOT the adherent of those 2 parties who are unretrievable -- it's the PARTIES THEMSELVES and the power structures they've forged into our legislative/executive/judicial branches.

That's why I work weekly to GET Independents elected. People who will not pawns of Dem or Repub leadership.

 

[flacaltenn]

That's more than just a good idea, that's an absolute necessity...hard to go off topic with that requirement in place.

We lost a bit in terms of post context when Xenforo forced us to choose between just the LATEST post and EVERY post in the history of that sub-thread. Used to be -- USMB could see 6 post exchanges back in every quote box. NOW -- there's only ONE -- and even the post that SPAWNED that reply is missing. Dont know how Xenforo thinks that's a GOOD thing for a message board. They try to sell this same pkg into multiple applications.

Without that post history right there in front of you -- you have to "go fish" to find out what the previous replies/posts were and most people wont even try to do it. Even on retarded Twitter, they have better "post history" than we offer now.

Made me mad -- but that's life. So "quoting back" how it started is a GOOD way to get around that if you have the energy and patience.

 

[Natural Citizen]

I'll take a pass on the autopsy of the "dead idea" and let that rest. But OBVIOUSLY for a couple hundred years the "red and blue" sides DID discuss rationally and honestly -- outside of election years.

I dont think political extremism is uncurable. Call me a dreamer. But I've changed foxholes multiple times in my life. I KNOW how most of the "sides" think and what they value. And my CURRENT assessment is -- it's NOT the adherent of those 2 parties who are unretrievable -- it's the PARTIES THEMSELVES and the power structures they've forged into our legislative/executive/judicial branches.

That's why I work weekly to GET Independents elected. People who will not pawns of Dem or Repub leadership.

Well, let me put it another way.

How many times have we recently seen the trend of ''hey, we need a parent's bill of rights?"

How many times do we hear about ''Hey, we need an Internet bill of rights?"

Or whatever other different flavor of bill of rights?

Well eh scuse eh mwa, but what's wrong with the bill of rights we already have? I think it about covers things pretty darned good. Why establish new ones? Who benefits from that?

The only reason I can see that anyone would want to coercively try to popularize the notion of those compartmentalized bills of rights is if they have some problem with the original bill of rights that they feel limits their ability to control the terms of controversy with regard to the critical issues of the day.

All that's going to accomplish is a blatant disregard for the original bill of rights.

And it's all down hill from there. It empowers the people who would otherwise be strictly limited to their delegated authority.

So I've already signed up to post on here once. I agreed to the terms of service already. Have I been perfect? Of course not. I've probably got around ten warnings in my time here.

Why on Earth would I want to further empower mods, who are, again, just volunteers from the same pool as the rest of us and who have their own biases to have the ability to compartmentally approve my posting privileges or the power to approve the actual topical content for that matter?

It's the same concept as the bulletpoint bill of rights phenomenon that people are falling for.

Actually, it's akin to the time the SCOTUS gave themselves the power of judicial review when it was no place to be found in Article III.

Or like saying that, hey, government isn't doing its job to our liking so what we need is more government. Heh heh...

 

[Dogmaphobe]

Maybe we need a "Special Counsel" to investigate all those "racist coddling" wrongdoings.

That would be lovely, thank you.

I am only too happy to share what I know.

 

[Billo_Really]

That's more than just a good idea, that's an absolute necessity...hard to go off topic with that requirement in place.

They made us do that in speech class when we were doing formal debates. It forces you to know your opponants point of view. Because if you don't know your opponants point of view, then you don't know what you are responding to.