Debate: Hamumu-Style!

[BlastOButter42]

Debate: Hamumu-Style!

What this is:
It’s a game. There’s one team against another team, each trying to prove their side of a topic. Team members work together to write a response to the previous team’s post, and the panel of judges awards points to the posts by each team based on certain criteria, like how convincing it is and how well it addresses the points in the other team’s last post. This is supposed to be thought-provoking and fun at the same time, and once it gets started it could be quite interesting.

I first got the idea a few months ago, when I started thinking about how to have a civilized debate between many people. It seems that much of the time when you try to make a thread about something people like to argue about, everyone starts posting their own opinions and it soon devolves into a confused mess of people responding to something several pages ago and/or completely ignoring everything else that has been said.
But this never happens with a two-person argument, because you always have to respond to what the other person is saying. So, I thought that it might be possible to style a multi-person debate like a two-person debate, with two teams of several people arguing against each other. This is what came out of my idea.


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The topic for this first round is whether or not the benefits of nuclear power outweigh the problems.
Team 1 will be arguing that they do (i.e. that nuclear power is good).
Team 2 will be arguing that they don't (i.e. that nuclear power is bad).

Teams are made up of 3-4 players. If more than that number of people want to be on a certain team, then I will randomly pick 4 people to fill one team. If there's still room on the other, you can argue for that side if you want. Teams work together to produce a one response to the other team.

Anyone can sign up to argue either side, or to be a judge. The full rules are below, and you should definitely read them, especially the scoring criteria part.

Team 1:
Roland
Mr. Onion
Hammer Up!

Team 2:
Ryuinfinity
Connor S.

Judges:
CheeseLord
Julian
Sillyman

Team 1 is now full, but if you sign up and would prefer to be on Team 1 I'll move Hammer Up! to make room, since he doesn't care which side he's on.

[BlastOButter42]

The Rules

Teams
Teams are made up of three to four people (this may change depending on how many people sign up, but for now, three to four seems about right). Each team is arguing for one side of the topic.
When you sign up for the debate, indicate which team you’d like to be on. If one side of a topic is a lot more popular than the other, it may turn out that more people want to be on a certain team, but to keep things balanced each team will have approximately the same number of members. If there are too many people for one or the other team, the team will be filled at random from the people who want to be on it. If there is space on the other team and you are okay with arguing for that side, you can ask to be put on the other team.
When working on a post, team members can communicate among themselves however they want. (Google Docs, which lets multiple people work on one document at once, is very good for this kind of thing.)
When the team is ready, anyone can post the team’s official response, but all team members should have worked on it and agreed what they want to say.

Official responses
The team to post first will be chosen at random. From the time that this is announced, this team will have 72 hours (three days) to post why they agree with their side of the topic.
Responses can be as long as the members think is necessary, but not too long. Please don’t bore us to death here. They can say whatever team members think will prove their side and get them the most points (refer to the scoring criteria below).
While the game is on, there should be no other posts in the main thread except for the official responses.

Judges
There will be a panel of anywhere from three to five or so judges that will read the official responses and award points to the team that posted it based on the scoring criteria, below. If you want to be a judge, post below and say so.
Judges should PM the mod (me, for this first round) their scores for an official response before the next one is posted. At the end of the debate, each team’s points will be totaled up and the team with the most wins.
Judges must be as impartial as possible. Even if you think one side of the topic is better than the other, this must not affect your scoring. If you don’t think you can be impartial, let me know and we will try to find a replacement judge.

Scoring criteria
Each judge will score each official response based on these criteria. Awarding the maximum possible points for a criterion indicates that the response satisfies that criterion exceptionally well (far beyond the standard response); awarding 0 points indicates that it does not satisfy that criterion at all.

• How convincing the post is. This can be a very subjective criterion, so judges should be careful when scoring posts in this category. But posts’ arguments should be persuasive, sound, and free of flaws and logical fallacies. 0 to 6 points (33%).
• How well the post addresses the points in the previous team’s official response. It’s not a debate if each team just keeps asserting that they’re right; teams also have to show why the other team’s position is faulty. To do this, they can’t just ignore what the other team says – they must disprove the arguments in the other team’s last post. For the team that goes first, this category is not valid; the scores for their other posts will be averaged and added on. 0 to 6 points (33%).
• How engaging the post is. Again, these posts shouldn’t bore us to death, or this won’t be much fun. Using interesting, engaging writing and humor get you points in this category. 0 to 4 points (22%).
• How well-researched the post is. Teams don’t have to spend hours researching information for their post – this is supposed to be fun, after all. But the teams should know what they’re talking about, and, if appropriate, say where they got important information. 0 to 2 points (11%).
  

In addition, judges may subtract one point for each instance of the following:

• Grammatical mistakes. This isn’t the top focus of the game, so judges should be lenient here, but if there are many annoying errors in the post they can subtract points.
• A factual mistake, but only if pointed out by the other team in the next response. It is each team’s responsibility to make sure the other team hasn’t been making stuff up. If the first team says something that’s not true in a post and the second team points out the mistake in their response, judges should indicate the appropriate number of points to subtract from the first team’s score in their scoring PM for the second team’s response.
• Overly argumentative or uncivil behavior, and bad language. This is supposed to be a friendly game, not a shouting match. Be civil, or you lose points.

Be warned: this is very much an experiment, and many things could change based on how things go. (Or, maybe no one will be interested and it will just fade into TM oblivion).

[Julian]

I judge! Yay!

[Roland]

I'll join Team...

1!

[Sillyman]

I am more than willing to judge.

[Coolguy]

May I ask exactly what types of things are being debated over? Is it silly things like pirates-vs-ninjas and such, or more controversial things (like that old creation-vs-evolution, or some of the political ones like McCaine-vs-Obama and such)? Because if it's the second, then fair judging would be impossible (since most people already have their own decisions on those)! It's like having a trial where half of the jury members already decided what they'll be voting before even entering the court. The first example you showed (about nuclear power) is okay since I doubt everybody has already made decisions on that, but just make sure you don't get too controversial!

[Roland]

Ack, I hope we're not arguing about something to do with US presidency...

XD

[Mr.Onion]

I join Team 1.

[Ryuinfinity]

I may have sorta left Hamumu, but I love debate! So I join team 2!

[CheeseLord]

Originally Posted by Coolguy

May I ask exactly what types of things are being debated over? Is it silly things like pirates-vs-ninjas and such, or more controversial things (like that old creation-vs-evolution, or some of the political ones like McCaine-vs-Obama and such)? Because if it's the second, then fair judging would be impossible (since most people already have their own decisions on those)! It's like having a trial where half of the jury members already decided what they'll be voting before even entering the court. The first example you showed (about nuclear power) is okay since I doubt everybody has already made decisions on that, but just make sure you don't get too controversial!

That's the reason it's being scored more on technical criteria than subjective points. Yes, there's still some, but the panel of judges is designed to get people on both sides of the issue. I like judging because I make a point of seeing the merits of every side of every issue (within reason, of course).

[BlastOButter42]

Originally Posted by Coolguy

May I ask exactly what types of things are being debated over?

Originally Posted by Roland

Ack, I hope we're not arguing about something to do with US presidency...

The first topic is about nuclear energy. Perhaps I should have made the font bigger in the first post.

Originally Posted by Coolguy

Because if it's the second, then fair judging would be impossible (since most people already have their own decisions on those)! It's like having a trial where half of the jury members already decided what they'll be voting before even entering the court.

As CheeseLord said the scoring system I developed will hopefully reduce that aspect. You're not saying "Team one wins" because you agree with them, you're giving Team 1 points based on scoring criteria, which should be roughly the same for each judge, whether they agree with that team or not.

I picked nuclear power because I thought it would produce a pretty even balance of people's opinions, so one team wouldn't be full and the other empty, and also because I think judges should be able to be pretty partial on this type of issue.

[BlastOButter42]

I still need at least one more person for Team 1 and two more for Team 2! Tell your friends!

[Roland]

I'll be going for like 48 hours. Yeah, just sayin'. But I'm still playin'.

[Ryuinfinity]

Considering I left Hamumu, how can I really play? Just an imponderable question for you.

[Mr.Onion]

Because you left precisly one minute before your post here? And noone asked you to play in the first place?

[Ryuinfinity]

Notice the team 2 players list?

[Mr.Onion]

No, I didn't.

[Connor S.]

I join whichever

[Hammer Up!]

[insert Connor's post here]

[BlastOButter42]

Originally Posted by Ryuinfinity

Considering I left Hamumu, how can I really play? Just an imponderable question for you.

It sure seems like you're here to me!
You signed up, so I put you on the list. If you're not going to be visiting Hamumu anymore, I can take you off the list if you want. But, you don't even really have to visit Hamumu to play in this game, since you and your team members will be writing your posts together privately -- you could do it without visiting Hamumu at all, like by e-mail or with Google Docs, as I suggested in the rules. When you're done any one of you can post it. (Though hopefully you would at least come and read the other team's post.)

Connor S., I put you on Team 2 (the "nuclear energy is bad" side), and Hammer Up!, I put you on Team 1 (the "nuclear energy is good" side). If someone else comes who would like to be on Team 1, though, I'll move you to Team 2 to make room for them, since you're okay with either team, okay?