Suggestion: Serious Discussion and Debate?

[parallelzero]

The thing is I just find it weird to see rational discussions flooded by "whatever" threads in OC. I mean seeing the usual "End of the World" threads alongside the Haiti Catastrophe one is just. >______>

Well our members are immature, but they aren't stupid enough to not be able to tell the difference between something srs and something not. I don't think because something annoys you as an individual is justification to do something like add another forum. XD;

Pffttt...One is for the LEETZ the other for the Poor guys. XD

Maybe you people in TCTI should stop being such "Poor guys" then. =x

 

[THIRTY-SIX]

… My point being why would your opinion of both threads not be equal? They both can be discussed maturely… but then again you just displayed an example of how we can't have a debate forum.

 

[Feign]

What's so bad about banning the immature users?

You gotta love the subtle debaters though, that eventually stick out to the ad hominem.

 

[Netto Azure]

… My point being why would your opinion of both threads not be equal? They both can be discussed maturely… but then again you just displayed an example of how we can't have a debate forum.

Yes they can. But the problem is the issue usually stems from a premise that cannot be quantified. :/

 

[Percy Thrillington]

If I've learned anything from the course of PC's history, it's that you can't take a Pokemon forum and make any addition that comes to mind work. If you want to go somewhere with a debate forum, go there. But, as it stands, there will never be one here.

It's true, we encourage that debates go in Other Chat. But, you know what? Almost all of the time, threads with a debatable nature end up closed eventually, because people can't handle the discussion maturely. PC's immature populace far outnumbers the mature one, so I can't fathom how this could possibly work without banning a good portion of the userbase. x.x

Let me first point out that he's just hit the nail on this one. There have been multiple suggestions for a debating forum since the ThunderDome was shut down and all of them have been denied. Sure, we'd all love somewhere we can debate and behave like intelligent, civil members of society, but the points against those who are pro-debating are much more obvious and much more logical.

Secondly, there is a way to ensure no one gets banned if this were to go through. Every single time this has been suggested, members have thought of a way of making sure people who are unable to debate, don't get a chance to. Age? Post count? Nah, neither of those really count; they don't personify maturity. Personal opinion from staff members? But that would take too much effort. There are hundreds of active members on PC; how much do you reckon are mature enough for a debating forum? Too much for admins to constantly be switching around users' permissions, right? Exactly. I wouldn't have the willpower to do it; I don't think anyone else would when the obvious solution is 'let's keep it in Other Chat'.

 

[The Cynic]

Certainly is a fantastic idea! Iwas thinking of starting a number of threads in other chat entitled

"Cynical" Debate: ....

It would be for serious debate only. But a proper serious discussion forum would be invigorating as well! I'm going to go through with my idea in the meantime.

 

[Luck]

We should totally have this, since 13 year old rom hackers on a Pokemon site are experts in subjects like religion or economics.
Seriously, if you want to debate, you can just use MSN :\

 

[Andrea-chan]

You guys aren't going to get this for the sole reason that PC as a whole isn't mature enough to handle a debate/mature forum.
"Oh yes, we're mature enough. All you got to do is put 5 Mods in there to watch over it", "We can't talk about it in OC, we need our own forum", "I'm 17, I know how to keep my cool in a debate". This topic comes up every now and then, for some reason people think they're mature enough to be in a debate/mature forum. Just to give you guys an example of how mature the PC members are..... we had to remove rep and replace it with post comments because people on PC would get in little groups and mass bad rep people they didn't like, and give good rep to people in their little group. And this was something as small as little green dots on your posts. And people think the members are mature enough for their own debate forum?

 

[Netto Azure]

Wow, I can see when someone is describing me. ._.

 

[Honest]

Other Chat.

In there, we can talk about 'serious' things. Like the incident on Haiti, for example. But there's nothing wrong with heartfelt, just for fun topics as well. They both belong there.

 

[.Bullet]

I don't mean to be blunt, and I simply need to ask this. Why is it difficult to keep debate topics in Other Chat? The forum description states that that forum is for all other topics that don't really have a specific place in other forums.

If it doesn't really have a place to go, and it's not something that happens often enough to warrant its own forum, then Other Chat is the appropriate place for such topics.

 

[Melody]

Hah. This is so true. Most of our members are like that sadly, so having a debate sub-forum would definitely devolve into the same spam pit that the ThunderDome did back in the day. No matter how strictly we moderate it, we cannot stop the masses of jerks who flame for fun, nor can we stop honest members from giving someone a good lambasting on one of their bad days via this subforum. This is simply a reality of the internet, and the staff and a goodly portion of sensible members, wish to keep these sorts of people away from PC.

PC is bad enough as it is when it comes to drama, I know that for a fact. Such is reality, that drama of this sort is unavoidable, but it's at a tolerable level now.

Therefore I do respect the staff's opinion of this idea, and I even recognize that despite it being a well intentioned idea, our member base simply can't effectively utilize it without causing PC to heat up by 20 or 30 degrees.

Part of the edge that PC has over other forums of it's size class is, that it's tropically pleasant weather all the time, meaning that despite all the drama that does go on, it's not so bad that you feel as if you have to act like a "extreme donkey" to be treated decently.

With all that being said, I'll give some canon advice. If you seriously wish to have some serious debate ability, you could convince a few VIP members to donate some blog entries to whatever you want to debate about, and use those to actively debate with people...within PC rules of course. That and having the hosting member act as an aggressive moderator for the discussion. It's definitely doable, and it could easily be done within a social group as well. Small efforts such as this have a much lower chance of attracting immature attention, and word of mouth can spread amongst intellectuals, thus allowing each person to invite people they know as mature to join the discussion. All of this can be done without troubling the staff overmuch about worrying about how it will affect PC's image, because it's happening in the background, instead of out in a public venue such as a subforum.

 

[Taemin]

I don't have a huge opinion on this, but I will say that.. heated debate areas rarely go well on any forum, let alone on PC. I say that because most of PC's users are younger, and I can see more harm than good coming out of a debate area on here. People start fighting, hating on eachother, and omg.. the reports that area would get. :/

Forums that do have debate areas that deal with such wide areas of issues often tend to just tick me off when I wander into them. Can't speak for everyone, but it's just the general aura of those types of areas that make me want to stay away from them. I think there would be too much fighting, and that's more work for the h-staff.

Sorry to say, but I can see it becoming a little like Gaia's debate area.. and that's a scary thought. xD;