| I have a suggestion: time-specified debates between two (or more) parties, with rules. Something like this:
(1) There seem to be enough moderators that one could be a judge for any particular debate, making sure the rules are enforced and the debaters stay on track. The judge would make the final decision as to who won.
(2) Rules could be posted here or an Internet website with debate rules could become the official rules.
(3) The debate would start and stop at a specific time, such as Tuesday, start at 12:00 Eastern Time and end after 1 hour (or whatever). The parties to the debate, as well as the judge, would have to agree that they will be here at that time (speeds up the process if everyone agrees to be available at the specified time).
(4) The topics could be posted by the moderators and volunteers could choose sides, or one person could challenge one or more others (with teams or one-on-one).
(5) There would have to be a way to establish who won.
(6) The winner gets free access to Volconvo for one month (lol). Or, the loser could be required to donate $5 to Volconvo, or whatever -- it would be cool to have some sort of prize (or penalty).
(7) The participants (team captains, if using teams) would have to agree to who the judge would be. In this way, biased judges would not be invited to judge future debates, upping the quality of the judging and the debating.
(8) Judges would have to know the rules so they could point out rules violations during the debate, subtracting points.
Sounds like a lot, but I bet once it was set up, it would be easy to manage and participate in. It would likely increase the quality of disussion in general on the entire forum, as well.
~ zynner |