Policy Debates

You can do policy debates on the site now. Here's the format:

Aff - 8000 chars
Cross-Examination
Neg - 8000 chars
Cross-Examination
Aff - 8000 chars
Cross-Examination
Neg - 8000 chars
Cross-Examination
Neg - 4000 chars
Aff - 4000 chars
Neg - 4000 chars
Aff - 4000 chars

Same sort of interface as LD debates

admin: Ok, great.

Swear I posted something here.

When are we going to add more roleplay formatted debates. I know congressional debates and UN debates have been asked for by people other than me (although I have pushed pretty hard on those congressional style debates)

Right now our only roleplay format is parliamentary, and those are pretty fun, so I'd like to see more like it.

Crow: Parliamentary, despite the name, is not a roleplay format.

We have good reasons for not prioritizing those two, including:
- the fact they don't work well with our existing platform
- the fact they have consistently been unpopular with site members
- the fact other sites already facilitate these formats very well

admin: the fact they don't work well with our existing platform

Every full fledged proposal was to my knowledge an attempt at making these roleplay formats work with the site. Krit and me both argued for a sort of country representation which could be easily done by simply adding another identifier on profiles and on UN debates. Congressional debates would of worked by slightly changing the format and structure, and adding affiliation to the debaters like in parliamentary debates.

- the fact they have consistently been unpopular with site members

You might say that, but I remember congressional debates being advocated twice, and UN debates being advocated three times.

It also needs to be considered how many dedicated congressional and UN debaters all around the world who would find something like this really neat.

Finally, one of the missions you argued for the site was to attempt to make it the best debating site possible. This would certainly help.
- the fact other sites already facilitate these formats very well

I can't name one site that allows people to host a UN or congressional debate online. Even if one does exist though, why can't these formats exist here as well?

Crow: I can. Might be worth checking out MUNA Intl. My friend Bowen Shi I believe helped establish their platform for MUNA outside of the normal qualifying circuit. One thing that sets MUN apart from other formats is that there is a clear single international organization that regulates the entire format and controls it. Although the same is true of, for example, the NDSA, the fact that LD etc are relatively unsupported on the internet is the only reason why we make exceptions there. The organization owns the format and they have their own offering that works well. I'd wager that if you actually did MUNA then you'd agree it's not necessary because a good offering already exists. And I know that very well because I hung out with a bunch of current and committee MUNA debaters two years ago and asked them about it.

Your last proposal, for Model UN, was (if I remember correctly) to simply allow each side to name a country to represent before the debate. That's:
1 - Already possible, and
2 - Not what model UN is

And I'm fairly positive it's not particularly popular here because:
1 - We did a survey and it was the least popular kind of debate, tied with congressional
2 - It's on the feature page and doesn't have too many upvotes, and
3 - I'd hardly call you and Krit particularly representative for numerous reasons