A more "open" debate forum

[Jebus]

This is something that I've run into. In debate/politics/current events, the debating is very limited, and Hooker likes to close things that can be debated but don't really fit in.

You might say that GD is where all of that should go. But GD is filled with "ogm liek h0w b1g r ur shoos?" type posts, and a good debate would either be lost or filled to breaking with morons.

So, I would like a forum, or at least sub-forum, for any and all debates, unless they have a designated forum. For example a debate on religion would obviously go in religion; music in music, and so on and so forth.

But when you get a thread about, say, whether teens are having sex at too young an age, there is no "perfect forum" for it. Or if you have a debate on "How much television watching a day is healthy?" then it may not be wanted in TV/Movies.

This would essentially be a misc. forum, for debates only, when you don't want them to get too spammy, or want a real debate.

[Stephen]

I think that if you make that post in the debate forum but recognize that there are many elements to the debate and ask that they all be allowed, the mods should be alright with it. Problems arise when people bring religion into an otherwise economic debate, or things to that effect, but if you specify ahead of time that you expect many of the threads arguments to be religious, ethical, moral, economic, political, etc then the mods will realize that it's not going off topic at the first mention of God. Let me know if you have any trouble with this, and I'll look into specific cases for you.

[Jack]

I'm somewhat against a subforum like that. I know that the GD mod staff is on a mission from god to restore GD to all of its former glory. And part of that is to get some good discussion and debate going that doesn't necessarily fit into other areas of the forum.

But as for not getting your threads pwned, listen to Stephen.

[ShadowGandalf]

heh I'm a big advocate of rejoining Politics, Religion, and Philosophy.

However, that will probably not happen.

Therefore...

"Debate" will be primarily Political
General Discussion will be primarily other arguments...

[HookerBodyShots]

The thing is, Zero... It is up to moderator discression as to where certain threads belong. If I closed or moved a thread, it is because I honestly feel it is too {insert adjective here} to be in the Debate forum. Any mod has the power to do that. I can create a poem, yet it could end up in Debate. Moderator discression.

As for the new forum? ...No way. Yeah, the GD has some awful threads... But guess what? If a thread sucks, DON'T POST IN IT. Simple as that. Then, you can create a good GD thread and people will post in it. Simple as that. It's really not that big of a deal. All misc. things go into the GD.

[Stephen]

Well sometimes I think that moderators have to realize that just because a thread could exist in a different forum, it needn't be moved. Sometimes a politics thread has a religious slant, but that doesn't mean that it should be moved, closed, or guided back pure politics. There is a crossover between a lot of these fields, and we have to allow that. If you need to justify that to yourself somehow, think that "Debate" should include all valid forms of debate and if that means that you have to touch on a little Descartes and Jesus to make your political point, that's okay.

[Molotov]

I think Stephen Kenny hit the nail on the head here. This "open" debate forum basically seems like it could really have only two or three threads, especially because people tend not to respond to situations where there are no parameters.