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My vision for Edeb8

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Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 4 2014 11:42 AM
Let's begin with a little background. I have big aspirations in life. Some being political and others being personal. When reality finds me, I have none of the skills needed to fulfill my dreams or goals. Two big one's being influence and confidence. I've always felt like becoming a "Strong" speaker was the way to accomplish that pursuit. What better way to become a strong speaker than debate, right?

Well that's exactly what I thought. I consider myself intelligent enough to adapt my opinions to the most logical arguments. If I could become good at conveying my opinions, I could gain influence. When I'm good at something, I have confidence. To me, that was convincing enough for me to pursue debating. Except there were a couple challenges on the way. Biggest being that I wasn't good at debating, and the first place I found to test my skill was debate.org.

The problem with debate.org, was that I didn't feel others there were good at debating, which even if they were, there was no way to improve, but try to adapt from the select few strong debaters. Unfortunately I didn't learn much, and to this day, I choke up when speaking in public, and have trouble explaining my opinions to other people. If I ever get in an argument, I usually fall apart under scrutiny, even though I'm confident my position is stronger.

This is a fundamental problem in my life, and for awhile, I started to lose hope that there wasn't a solution. Luckily, I found edeb8. When I first signed up, I became disinterested, due to a lack of full understanding on the features this site has (I think others run into this predicament). When I came back, and started reading some of the debates done by NZlockie and Admin, and looked at the feedback and resources available, I became addicted to this site.

I relished the feedback I received doing debates on this site, that I just had to do more. Debating Admin was a thrill, because I learned so many new techniques while facing him. I read all of NZlockie's votes, and was surprised at how much I was learning. Suffice to say, I would be honored to be coached by either one of them, but I would also be honored to share this learning experience with others.

My vision for edeb8, is a center, where people can learn. Learn to speak, learn to argue, the list goes on and on. Some people may even learn to think differently, or change a view or two along the way. The only question, is what can we do to make edeb8 the perfect center for learning and improvement?
Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 4 2014 11:45 AM
A bit of an advertisement, but I would be very open to the idea of being coached full time by a capable user on this site. I would take the relationship very seriously, and would put a lot of commitment in improving and taking advice.
whiteflame
By whiteflame | Oct 4 2014 3:40 PM
Blackflag: Debate.org is a great place to encounter a diversity of topics and get a lot of experience. You can get some tips as well, but on a debate-by-debate level, there is only so much you can learn using that system. You either have to develop deep contacts with good judges, or be very independent to improve substantially, and even then the process is slow and arduous, since you're usually only getting feedback on the outcomes and little to no help between debates. Edeb8 can certainly fill that need more effectively, and that's at least part of the reason I came over here - the system on debate.org feeds much of my need for debate and judging, but none of my desire to coach. So consider this my first effort on that end: I would be happy to act as your coach.
Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 4 2014 3:46 PM
whiteflame: Great! I think we're lars is working on some coaching group as well (not completely sure on that one), but I would love for you to be my coach. You were one of my favorite and most respected debaters as far as I can remember.
Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 4 2014 3:48 PM
whiteflame: I think you have to apply from this page.
http://www.edeb8.com/coaching
nzlockie
By nzlockie | Oct 4 2014 4:18 PM
Thanks for the compliment! I would definitely not consider being anyone coach at this stage as the only time I've done debate was when we did it at high school as part of our English ciriculum. I joined this site because I like discussing different points of view and I get sick of Facebook arguments where people just state their opinion over and over.

I'm enjoying learning what techniques seem to work and it's been quite fun to see how much strategy there actually is in a formal debate, but I am most definitely still learning myself.

I hear what you're saying about edeb8 though csareo, it IS a good place to learn and hone you skills since everyone here is genuinely interested in debate as opposed to simply venting their opinion on something.


admin
By admin | Oct 4 2014 6:00 PM
Okay... let me pose a related question.

What sort of stuff can I do, as the person behind the site, to support this vision that a lot of you share? Thinking here in the long term, of course, so feel free to suggest crazily big ideas.
I'm the main developer for the site. If you have any problems, ideas, questions or concerns please send me a message.
Let's revive the forums!
Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 4 2014 7:48 PM
I was this guy's coach and I asked him what he wanted to learn. He ignored my PM so I quit being his coach.
nzlockie
By nzlockie | Oct 5 2014 7:41 AM
admin: I think the primary thing you can do is to continue to provide a platform where this type of interaction can take place.

1. Keep Edeb8 free of Polls and Opinions - which, based on DDO and CreateDebate, seem to attract a large number of people - but not necessarily debaters. Keep the focus on the debate. The social aspect will take care of itself.

2. Keep tweaking and refining the existing system here to make debates mirror real life as closely as possible, while at the same time taking advantage of the online medium.

3. The WODC was really cool. I think Edeb8 is probably still too small for an internal comp but it'd be great to challenge a small group of debaters from one of the other sites again. Each time we should make every effort to get some of the debates taking pace on here, which will expose the site to a number of new players.

4. Some of our competed debates have been pretty cool. It'd be a great exercise to somehow bring in a group of respected debaters and have them independently judge these debates. The best thing would be for you to recreate the entire debate and somehow restrict the judging to only those invited judges. Or maybe you just need to indicate that in the header. The new version of the debate should not be rated, so the original scores remain, but all existing judgements should be removed.
Maybe there's even a way that all judgments only become visible once the voting period is over.
(If you think I'm looking for vengeance on our flag debate and the one about kids not being allowed outside - then you're right. ;) )
admin
By admin | Oct 5 2014 7:43 AM
nzlockie: Fear not - no polls and opinions here. :)
I'm the main developer for the site. If you have any problems, ideas, questions or concerns please send me a message.
Let's revive the forums!
Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 5 2014 8:02 AM
admin: "no polls"

*looks at Rainbowdash appreciation society*

admin
By admin | Oct 5 2014 8:12 AM
Blackflag: I see groups differently, because they're isolated from the rest of the site. It's not a big section or even visible to non-members. And you can only have one in a group at a time. I can guarantee you nobody will join edeb8 over something like that.

The reason those exist is largely because I want to encourage people to use groups more for niches or subjects of interest. Originally Csareo suggested the forum OP should be allowed to attach a poll to their forum - this is sort of delivering on that with a better compromise. So now nobody can complain about either seeing polls around the site or there not being polls on edeb8.
I'm the main developer for the site. If you have any problems, ideas, questions or concerns please send me a message.
Let's revive the forums!
Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 5 2014 8:15 AM
admin: Just my thoughts, but in general, there aren't a lot of debaters, especially online. Trying to attract debaters is futile, as DDO reels them in far faster than we can, and many choose to stay there rather than here, for whatever reason. What there is a lot of, are people with strong opinions who like to argue a lot.

We all agree we don't want to attract non-debaters to this site, but it seems if we want a larger community, we're going to need to convert people into debaters.
Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 5 2014 8:15 AM
admin: I imagine you and your girlfriend (or future spouse) saying this in your NZ accent (I'm aware this is in Australian :(



Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 5 2014 8:16 AM
If only there was some cool incentive to debate here rather than DDO.
Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 5 2014 8:17 AM
Blackflag: Frankly I really hope you do not find it. I will finish there so as to not violate the personal attack rule.
admin
By admin | Oct 5 2014 8:21 AM
Blackflag: (which isn't actually a rule strictly speaking, just something one needs to be careful about)

I'd like to think the incentive to debate here is simply that this is a superior platform.
I'm the main developer for the site. If you have any problems, ideas, questions or concerns please send me a message.
Let's revive the forums!
Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 5 2014 8:23 AM
admin: That too, but not exactly the kind of incentive I was thinking about. The platform is far superior, I just can't fathom why people choose to debate there.
Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 5 2014 8:24 AM
best thing would be for you to recreate the entire debate and somehow restrict the judging to only those invited judges. Or maybe you just need to indicate that in the header. The new version of the debate should not be rated, so the original scores remain, but all existing judgements should be removed.
I'm just going to state this again, there should be several judging systems for debates, in which the judge chooses which style to use.
All NFL or AD approved. People like Whiteflame and Bladerunner love making quality judgements, and I think their should be a better platform to do that.

For example, if you do the standard score card, which has multiple categories, the decision should still count for three points.
Blackflag
By Blackflag | Oct 5 2014 8:24 AM
Blackflag: *there
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