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I’ve started a little project which will make this relevant again.
I don’t want to spill the beans just yet, but I could really use some more best of the best debates to look at.
Dat’s all I’ve got to say right now.
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Best Debates by Subject
Posts
Total:
54
Bones's abortion debate with Whiteflame was excellent on both sides.
A couple of classics:
Congressional term limits. Two top tier debaters in bsh1 and blamonkey, very close debate.
A classic on violent revolution and political oppression back when both Undefeatable and MisterChris were at their peak.
9 days later
Here is probably the one that I liked the most from Bones and Savant (anarchy debate):
83 days later
All the debates listed here (save one by request of a participant) are now backed up into the thing I'm working on.
I've set myself the goal of rejecting my perfectionism and share it next week, so stay tuned!
As promise (and probably noticed in the announcements), that project is officially unveiled!
Debate and Argument Tactics (DAT for short) is live!
WikiHappy holidays,With the unfortunate pattern of debate sites in mind, I’ve started something of a museum for this site and any others, hosted by Miraherze (it’s a wiki host). It can serve other purposes as well, so long as they’re adjacent.I’ve only briefly run a single wiki before, and that was not an ambitious project like this. So expect suboptimal design and structures. I’m also wholly open to it being massively changed around in ways I cannot predict (the goal of any wiki is really collaboration; heck the goal of debates is often much the same).The site is named Debate and Argument Tactics, and may be found at:
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@Barney
"Formal online text debate is a dying art. This project is in large part to serve as a museum for the best of it, made by users of sites such as DebateArt.com."
Really?
I'd never really 'looked before to see what it's popularity 'ever was in the history of the internet.
I'd think enough people value self knowledge to value debate.
Debate is a grand way to gain information on a variety of subjects,
Whether by researching oneself or reading other's arguments.
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@Barney
I clicked on the red ' disscussion ' page and will create an account later, so my IP address etc is not so exposed to public. After that, maybe still best to use VPN to avoid maintain privacy/security on such a public setting as wiki. I dunno.
Yes, DArt is public, just not as general used by larger set of general public. I dunno. Cant hurt to use VPN there or here
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@Lemming
I hope you’re right. I may have turned into a pessimist regarding this issue.
I can say for certain there’s less formal online debates now than there was about ten years ago (when I got pulled into this hobby), but for all I know the that may have been a fluke; likewise the current low activity could be the outlier.
I have nothing against the intro page being altered to be upbeat.
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@Barney
I'm not against the downbeat,
It's just the 'idea of debate not having a strong following surprised me.
Though it might be a small niche, and then being 'formal debate, a smaller niche again.
I 'like the opportunity for some resolution of an argument between two people, myself.
By means of a fixed number of rounds and voters.
Debate.org and DART, don't have a 'huge following right now I admit.
I've always assumed that 'other formal debate sites were more active, and less active, but I've never looked about.
. . .
Debate seems such a timeless concept though, one reads about debates in Plato or Mencius.
10 days later
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@Lemming
I modified that bit to be less downbeat, instead referencing the repeated trend regarding these sites instead of the sport as a whole.
That said, feel free to edit that page into something even better.
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@Barney
Are there any other debate wikis?
If not, 'could be a popular site.
If it gets filled out enough..
Lot of work though, I imagine.
Even just using more famous historical political debates.
But internet, even with debate sites not the most popular item, has a glut.
. . .
Interesting as well, something I often thought reading old Debate.org debates, was how one could see the shifting popular held opinions on various subjects over time.
Gay marriage or gays in the military as example, when one combed the Debate.org debates, one could see a shift in tone over time, as well as what years they spiked as topics.
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@Lemming
The closest thing is what amounts to a category at wikiversity (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikidebate), which seems useful, but so laser focused in scope that it doesn't do it for me (they host just the contentions and objections, without study of underlying fundamentals of why those work or not; such as logical fallacies).
There was a time I mistook RationalWiki for the natural place to hold most (not to say all) debate and logic information, but they're opposed to even the amount already hosted there (the Kritik guide I co-authored started as what was to be a page there, but was rejected for being too far removed from their intended scope... not to say I blame them, the mistake was on me).
And there there's of course some good resources specifically for Lincoln-Douglas debates. I like formality, but there's something about LD that feels somehow too formal for my tastes. I suspect it's much the same for most users here, who are here instead of sticking to LD debates.
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@Barney
The wiki is a good idea. Idk how accurate the AI summaries are though. This one basically fabricates arguments for Pro.
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@Savant
Unless AI gets a whole lot better, I hope summaries written wholly by it become an outlier. Still, they served well enough to get a barebones operation going... A much as I've had continued fights with it over such issues as identifying that the vote tabs are publicly accessible.
One good thing is that what it writes feels even-handed. But that is a problem if it's even handed with stuff it made up on a topic, instead of what each side covered.
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@Savant
This one basically fabricates arguments for Pro.
I just remade that one... Holy crap that was bad!
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@SirAnonymous
Oromagi's series of debates with ramdatt. Since he knew ramdatt wasn't going to reply, he joked around with the resolutions. There were four such debates, two of which had similar topics and therefore the same reply from oromagi. "If you want constructive information about the coronavirus, listen to Andrew Cuomo" became a debate about whether Andrew Cuomo could offer good info about construction during the coronavirus to oromagi. A debate about "WHO," as in the World Health Organization, became a debate about WHO the radio station. A debate about the now former president of Liberty U Jerry Falwell became a debate about Jerry Falwell, septic tank installer.
I've given them their own sub-category!
Plenty of other stuff will eventually end up in there too, but they really do exemplify why basic spell check is important.
Somewhat related to my previous post, I have begun added bracketed description of a single standout point into some debate titles.
I was adding a semantic comedy debate to the previous category, which crossed over with abortion debates (https://debate.miraheze.org/wiki/Category:Abortion_Debates), and it camouflaged with the others in a way that could be misleading if someone mistook it for serious like the rest of them. So "Should Abortion be Illegal in the United States of America" became: Should Abortion Be Illegal in the USA (Rap Exception).
...
On that note, I'd say the debates section is far enough along for anyone to join in.
My next goal for that wiki is building some content for the arguments section
I am also considering commonly incorporating a few symbols to do shorthand denotations of effectiveness (➕ and ➖), and logical validity (✔️ and ✖️). Or maybe use the plus/minus for pro/con and leave the strength only testified by the logical validity. Anyone have any thoughts on that?
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@Barney
Where do you end up pulling the information from when building the site?
I know Debate.org had a number of guides, and DART has a few as well,
I imagine a piecemeal of various debating site guides exist.
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@Lemming
A lot of it is my opinions (which is not to say anything needs to stay that way). I have only pulled from old guides a little so far, and those were ones I had a hand in. While the goal is partly to keep information from these sites alive, having been debating on and moderating them for so long I believe it's safe to say much of the information is distilled inside me.
Admittedly I feel a little shame that when I made the Kritiks guide I put in a ton of research, but I did not record citations. I'll attempt to add citations when I make a Kritiks page, but it won't necessarily be the same places I originally gathered that data.
One tragedy is that Imabench wrote a trolling guide, but it was on a fansite for Debate.org someone had made and kept an iron fist control of. When without notice they deleted that site, so that and other good content was lost forever. Which is why this wiki is hosted by Miraheze, because I expect them to survive; further the format allows anyone interested to step up and be an editor.
13 days later
Progress continues.
The category for logical fallacies looks good, even while there's so far only eight pages built: https://debate.miraheze.org/wiki/Category:Fallacies
One fallacy I have not seen a writeup for before is the Retro Hoc: https://debate.miraheze.org/wiki/Retro_Hoc_Propter_Ex_Futuro
Something I'm having a little fun with is renaming some of the fallacies to be more inclusive. Can't say if it'll ever make a difference, but I can try.
Since I'm using ChatGPT so much, I've added a category for the frameworks I'm building in it to then build pages with: https://debate.miraheze.org/wiki/AI_Fallacy_Framework
This week I plan to get a couple of argument pages up. I was trying to, but I needed to get some of the logical fallacies they reference in place first.
Got the first argument page in place. I cannot say it's a perfect representation as I have no feelings on the topic:
As always, feedback is appreciated; for this one particularly if there's any organizational changes (since I'm going to copy/paste this one as a base for the next argument page)
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@Barney
It's funny,
And kind of interesting,
A site full of the debate particulars of commonly seen debates.
Has educational aspect of letting people see components of a debate.