You make some very good points, but I think it’s a fool’s errand to try and clean up this place. Best to just keep to “the rules” yourself and ignore those who don’t. BTW, you do a very good job of keeping your cool and trying to stay reasonable. I don’t always agree with you on subjects, but I always appreciate your posts.
Anyway, it’s very easy to get caught up in the emotional aspect of these debates, and a real struggle to keep a respectful tone. Still, I find it much easier to just focus on debating with those who are trying to keep it respectful and honest.
This sounds like a line from a classic western or something. You’re the wise old man at the bar in the rundown town and I’m the young deputy or something. It makes me want to say, “I’m just the fool for the job!”
I agree though. I guess I wanted to state the principles so that I remind myself of them, and to encourage like-minded posters to keep doing the same. I do think stuff like this can snowball, and pretty soon everything is just a little better.
Anyway, thanks for the compliment. I’ll try to live up to it.
My main issue with GD is that some people come in to win debates, not to illuminate their own ideas and listen to those of others. I quite often feel I’ve been out-argued and/or shouted down, but not that my ideas or concepts have been overshadowed by better ones. Great Debates as a Bill O’Reilly experience.
Make it a Sticky, as far as I’m concerned. There are too many angry, self-righteous, uptight, myopic, nitpicking, I’m-right-you’re-wrong posters here, and it really casts a pall over this place. I mostly just come in to read now, rather than contribute, because it’s too exhausting and just not worth the effort to continue in many of the debates here.
And, I think what Richard Parker’s guidelines do (let’s call 'em guidelines, rather than rules, shall we?) is help create a more learning atmosphere for the readers and lurkers (which, rest assured, is a lot), rather than a carnival of lambasting. Save it for the Pit.
Add another one: people stop posting the same old tired refuted shit. I’m looking at all those lunatics who think AGW is some sort of world-wide conspiracy.
I love, love, love these suggestions and this OP. Having just (finally) gotten the courage up to start posting on a regular basis, and feeling pretty unsure of what’s appropriate, etc., I bookmarked this thread and will use it to try to be a better poster.
Way to do the Gandhi thing, RP, and try to be the change you wish to see in the world. I’m in, and will do my best (and would appreciate being gently told if I’m unknowingly doing something entirely inappropriate and boneheaded!).
But can I use sarcasm, hyperbole, and other tongue in cheek foolishness if I add smilies? ;):p:D
The idea behind a "debate’ is that you get an argument presented to you, and then you rebut it. It wouldn’t make a great deal of sense to refuse to rebut a bad argument simply because it’s horribly bad. After all, someone purportedly believes it. Isn’t this cite about fighting ignorance?
If it is about that, then the wrongest of opinions and thought processes necessarily require refutation. While it may not be the case that the wrong will come to see they’re wrong, we can’t be faulted for at least not trying.
However, letting them go on thinking that whatever they’re presented is true by way of our silence does a disservice to them, the purpose of this cite and the nature of debate. To at least not even try to assuage their ignorance, it would seem, is to swallow the purpose of great debates for the sake of style over substance.
Otherwise, we might as well call this “post your batshit crazy thoughts without fear of rebuttal”.
It’s reasonably common that people don’t address an argument for a few reasons: they agree with it so it’s not particularly helpful. After all, it’s no fun to sit around with someone who says, “I like grapes”. Really? Me too! And then to talk about liking grapes for the next six hours.
Or, it’s so utterly stupid that it’s hard to pick where to begin. Or the person is so utterly intentionally wrong that to reject their arguments would require far more time and effort than just ridiculing them. And the ridicule would be more effective anyway, since these types of folks are immune to knowledge, but sensitive to any perceived persecution.
I agree with many things you present though. I just don’t think this bit is a particularly good idea if you still want this place to be called “great debates”.
Your phrasing does a lot to highlight your position in this matter. You sound like one of the people who just can’t let something go unchallenged, who can’t stand strangers being wrong on the internet. If someone posts their batshit crazy thoughts, and nobody rebuts them, so what? It’s not like they’re being appeased in any way, they just won’t be addressed.
It would be more accurate to call it a policy of “post your batshit crazy thoughts if you feel like talking to yourself and being ignored.”
Now is the point where I’d redirect you to what the purpose of a debate forum is. It is, oddly enough, about debating. Sometimes in debates, people come up with some really stupid shit. And this site is specifically about the quest to stop ignorance, even if there weren’t a great debate section. So, I’m not really seeing your argument that on a site dedicated to the idea of stopping ignorance, we should let it go unchecked.
Again, this is what I’m talking about. For folks like you, the flow and overall quality of the debate doesn’t seem to matter. Your view is that any and all ignorance must be addressed, that we must not “let it go unchecked.” That attitude is how we end up with unreadable threads with multiple quote-and-response replies that spend an inordinate amount of energy addressing the dumbasses and not enough energy furthering the debate in a constructive manner.
As an example, read through the thread about the white firefighters Supreme Court decision. What began as a fairly interesting thread about the case and what it meant degenerated into pointless, unrelated sniping about whether or not black people were less intelligent than other human beings. Modding could have certainly been better in that thread, but the people who were willing to repeatedly take that thread off the rails deserve blame too.
I like your guidelines, Richard Parker, and will aspire to follow them on the rare occasions that I post here. I doubt you will be successful in changing this forum much, but you don’t know unless you try. I appreciate the attempt (as do others, I am certain).