Group Debates?

[winstonjen]

How about 3-on-3 or 2-on-2 debates? Would that be a viable option? It may be harder to organise than 1-on-1 debates, but they could also be much more interesting, because there would be input from many different people.

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

Hi winstonjen,

I can't really speak for all the mods, but I'm rather ambivalent towards the idea of "tag team" formal debates. They can be headache to moderate and keep track of and I don't think it would be that different from what we see in the regular fora anyway (i.e. multiparticipant debates). I like to keep things simple -- not only for us mods but for the readers too.

However, Peter Kirby made a suggestion earlier that I would probably grant an exception to. He suggested a 3 way formal discussion. That's where 3 debate proponents take different positions on an issue and discuss, contrast, and compare their views to the others. It would be like a YEC, OEC, and theistic evolutionist discussing their perspectives in a formal discussion on creation/evolution.

If you'd like to see more formats, check out Suggestions for debate formats. (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60770)

Hope this helps,

Jason

[Silent Dave]

Speaking for myself, I wouldn't mind moderating 2-on-2 (or 2-on-1) debates, so long as such debates were tightly structured. But any more than that would probably be impractical.


Dave