Hyper

I finished getting my voting and topic badges. I tried creating a new Ultrarated debate, but it seemed to have consumed my badges without creating a debate. Not sure if it's just delayed, but letting you two know.

Apologies, this came up at a poor time for me (as in I'm being buried by exams) and I thought this would start later than it would. Would it be possible to start this on Monday or so? If not, then obviously I'm fine being replaced.

I'd like to join this one too, but I'm not sure if I have the time to handle two debates at the same time. How will the scheduling work with the second round of the previous tournament?

Ego, to an extent, drives many competitive activities. It's not an inherently bad thing - by definition, it means a person's sense of self-esteem. Ego is the reason why I try to make myself a better person each day.

You can make an argument that any sort of competitive system distances itself from casual forms of the same activity, but that's a truism. We can strive for equality of treatment, but that's not synonymous with equality of opportunity; the easiest way to achieve the latter is to restrict people's options as much as possible so that only the most accessible options remain, yet that brings no tangible benefits beyond achieving an ideal.

People who want to debate informally can do so, while people who want to debate formally now have a place to do that. And as mentioned before, growth within one aspect of the community benefits the website as a whole.

I don't have a strong stake in this, I'm just someone who debated a lot in the past and enjoyed doing so. But I joined the site specifically because it was the only place I could find with a system for formal written debates, and it would be nice to see it stay.

What stakes? You literally lose nothing but time. If you lose.

It seems like you answered the question yourself, to an extent. If the only stakes behind formal debate is the time you put into it, then by what metric does it create a sense of superiority over informal debate? Similarly, if rating is truly meaningless, then how does it create the impression that some people's ideas are more valuable than others?

A formalized system has unique and compelling advantages. Furthermore, the value of such a system comes solely to what the participants get out of it, and I don't see a compelling reason to deny that opportunity.

I don't particularly agree with the premise that a competitive system is incongruent with a thriving community. For starters, a community can prioritize things other than absolute retention or numbers. For example, if this website was a general-purpose forum for political discussion, I'm sure it would have more people, but it would also stray from the fundamental purpose of this site: to be a place to foster civil debate.

The main value of debate comes from the skills it teaches. In a few years, you might not remember what happened in your 15th debate here, but the skills you put into researching, analyzing, and engaging with the topic will remain. Thus, a website about debate ought to encourage that.

Fundamentally speaking, the educational value of debate comes from an organized and competitive format. It forces a higher level of rigor in research and discourages bad argumentation by virtue of two values. First, fairness - having a set format, a balanced topic, relatively neutral judges, etc, distinguishes a debate from a competition over who can make more misleading points in a louder manner. Second, accountability - an outside judge to adjudicate a debate in a competitive context forces people to truly engage with the topic, since making biased points that don't engage with the other side is an easy loss. I've had many debate rounds which I've won, yet changed my mind on the topic as a result of said engagement.

That's my justification for why formalized debate is good. Could it perhaps take away from the informal aspect of debate? I don't particularly think so, considering that it's not like there's a limited pool of resources to share between both - instead, they're mutually reinforcing, because they're part of the same growing community, with significant overlap regardless. That aside, the current system doesn't imply any sort of hierarchy; organization or formality has no association with moral value, and it'd be a leap of logic to say so.

That's true, of course, and it's not a particularly important feature. Still, a system to keep track of debates would reduce clutter considering most are ones I'd only want to revisit once.

Having a way to bookmark debates would be nice, I have a few which I'd be interested in voting on over the next few days.

I see, thanks. I'll join anyway, might as well give it a try.

I'm interested in joining (new to this site, but I did irl debate for a few years so I know the basics). How long will the round times be? I'd prefer one week to allow for more thorough research but understand if that might be a bit long.