You really think an exclusive little club is good for the dope?
Gosh, you could win every debate you started. Invite all your friends, and even throw in Alan Colmes for fairness and balance. No ignorance allowed!
magellan01 said:
If the problem is the quality of debate, I think you would be better served by stronger moderation than by limiting participation.
That is a valid concern. Those with a minority opinion will often be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of opposing responses. I’m not sure what the cure to that problem is. Everyone wants to contribute there little point and join in expressing their position, even if it’s already been said a dozen times.
That seems like a guaranteed way to stifle debate. “Christianity - evil or good? No mention of the Crusades or the Inquisition.”
I don’t think this would be a problem. Or, if it were a problem it would quickly be self-correcting. If one set up a debate like you mentioned, with unreasonable restrictions, no one would want to participate.
Similarly, to address Fear Itself’s fear (:)), if the people invited didn’t represent a fair cross section, people would choose not to participate in that debate. The OP would quickly learn the r=error of his ways. I have zero interest in stacking the deck in my favor. I’d more exclude certain posters that I feel have derailed similar discussions in the past.
Might I suggest that if you want to have a “private debate” where you can pick who participates and what they may or may not be able to mention, you might want to get a blog.
I don’t see it as an exclusive club. I see it as inviting a different group depending on the debate. For instance, I could see inviting Bryan Eckers and Miller (for instance) into a debate discussing SSM, as they’ve expressed an interest in that before and have made good contributions. But they might be the ones invited to discuss term limits. People could also ask to be included. I’d be inclined to grant the request if one of the invitees chose not to participate and the numbers could be kept down.
If this idea worked and people wanted to be included in future invitee lists, they could let that be known. Those posters who might not get invited due to their style or ability to debate reasonably would have incentive to improve.
I’m not interested in doing that. I think it would be a great forum and would help the overall boards. And I’m not as interested in restricting mentions as I am with having it by by invitation only. I could lose the comment restriction if people feel that is too onerous.
I think this would quickly devolve into partisan groups inviting people who they think the can win a debate with, with lots of deck stacking and one-sided conditions-pretty much the way a lot of radio programs and television shows work.
If that was the case it would fail miserably, you’re right. But, for instance, I know that if I was setting up a debate, the invitee list alone would point to how serious I was. I would definitely choose to have the deck stacked against me. If I tried to stack the debate, people would simply choose to not participate, and I’d look like I was trying to gain an unfair advantage.
cricetus is claiming that you are so enthusiastic about kissing ass that you you are actually engaged in anal lingual sex with the staff.
If he pulls that trick again in this forum instead of the BBQ Pit, he is going to earn himself a Warning.
[ /Moderating ]
As evidenced by the miserable failure of Rush Limbaugh. Many people are attracted by a one sided venue where there views are not exposed to rigorous scrutiny.
Someone who is deemed “not worthy” to participate is excluded. And as perhaps altruistic your motives are, I can see this as ripe for abuse. There are already ways exclude people from discussions, including not responding to their posts or putting them on ignore.
Another thing that occurs to me is that some folks still pay to support the site and excluding them from some aspect of the board doesn’t seem quite right.
OK, how about this. MPSIMS is a horrible name for a forum and over time it has dissuaded a huge portion of the membership from ever stepping foot in there. Beyond that, combining the two into a General Discussion board would free up the annoying internal debate of whether a thread is better suited for IMHO or MPSIMS.
There are people who do like a one-sided debate. But not everyone. Proof of that is that there are people here who will argue from a minority position. They can be the most interesting discussions. But if the debate is to one-sided, it devolves. I have been involved in such threads, trying to field questions by twenty people, with just one or two posters on my side. There is a point at which it becomes too much work, especially when some posters come in and degrade the debate, often in the same ways, time after time.
What I don’t think you’re fully appreciating is that it is often, given the slant of this board, that a discussion takes on a Rush-like tenor. For instance, how many posters can you name that are against SSM.
- MPSIMS always seems to be a pretty busy forum to me.
- In all the years I’ve moderated, I have yet to see a thread in IMHO where the OP claimed that it was placed there because she/he was displeased with the acronym “MPSIMS”.
- In fact, I don’t recall seeing any threads in any forum where the OP made that claim.
The point is, none of those who are against SSM are officially “uninvited” from speaking on the subject.
You claim that you would never abuse such a forum, but realize that you wouldn’t be running this forum, and you wouldn’t be the only one starting “debates” in this forum.
The big difference is, the slant of this board is not due to any artificial construct like limiting contributions to those who are invited. Anyone is free to post in any thread without regard to their political bent. Reality has a liberal bias; the free market works!
This is insufficient. I’ve done just what you suggested. It results in a poster demanding their questions be addressed, and then others saying like, “how come you’re not answering so-and-so?”, implying that you’re unable to. Never mind that I’m already fielding as many questions as I possibly can. Those people then get frustrated and inject animosity into the thread. Fact is, most of us have jobs, lives. The lopsided nature of debates makes me often chose not to post due to the size of the commitment I have to make. I’m sure this is true for others who hold a position that is not embraced on the SDMB.
But they wouldn’t be excluded from any aspect of the board. They just might be restricted from participating in a particular thread. If they find it interesting they could ask to be able to participate. As long as the debate wouldn’t become too lopsided, based on the participation of the invitees, they could be included. I think this idea might get more people to want to engage in debate, again, particularly those with minority views.
I’m sorry-what?
And this is exactly the type of attitude that colors some of the debates—unhelpfully. No one seriously believes that this board doesn’t lean left—you just admitted that yourself—it’s just a matter of degree.
But if you are so confident in your position, why wouldn’t you be willing to engage in a fairer debate. If you’re so obviously right, you should be able to argue from even a minority position. It sounds like you just like the comfort of numbers. And I’m not even suggesting that the number get flipped, just that they be less lopsided. And that some of the less helpful posters be left out of a discussion. For instance, does it really help a discussion on some aspect of the military to have a poster come into the thread and just post off-topic nonsense that all people in the military are murdering scum?