Talk:Debate/Archive 1

policy debate coaches
moved from article due to pov, no original research, and just plain silly... Rick Boatright 02:51, 4 October 2004 (UTC)


 * ==== Debate Coaches ====
 * Debate Coaches
 * Among the greatest teachers and inspirers of youth in Policy debate is the Great Stan Lewis. His number one rule of Policy debate is: "never argue with an idiot (he will take you down to his level and beat you with experience)", and this single sentence has created amazing debaters, including the now President of Estonia, Arnold Rüütel. Of course the most wonderful of all debate teachers is simply known as teacher who teaches Classic Debate at Century High School. It has also been showing that Classic debate is the best type of debate and policy is inferior. It is now required before the people of any debate meet start to debate the must sing o wonderful Century.

Linkectomy
The list of links was getting absurd. As we all know, WP is not a list of links. I pruned the organizations in the links section down to organizations which have their own WP articles. If I missed any, please re-add them. jdb &#x274b; (talk) 06:28, 28 March 2005 (UTC)

Speed issues in Policy debate
are well covered in the main article at Policy Debate and this paragraph was POV, so I moved it to here. Rick Boatright 17:59, 2 May 2005 (UTC)


 * College debaters who participate in the format governed by the NDT and CEDA organizations tend to speak so rapidly than an audience with no debate background would find the debaters difficult or impossible to understand. The arguments are more likely to be exotic, technical, specialized, or in other ways lay-audience unfriendly, although this is not always the case. NEDA and the Great Plains Conference place more emphasis on style and substance that any informed citizen should be able to understand.

Professional on-line debaters
The section on "professional online debaters" irks me. I can't understand where any of it comes from. It reads like an essay on what a perfect debater would do, and how others would try to win debates against him/her using unrespectable tactics. Where did the two classes of great debaters come from ("professional" and "elite")? Where are the examples of people who are "professional" or "elite" debaters? In fact, a Google search for "professional online debater" finds only one hit (two for the plural). And searching for "runaround statements", etc., finds precious little more. This smacks of original research to me. Anyone else feel the same? BenBildstein 01:58, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I do. It comes from someone with a rather odd record of contribution to Wikipedia!  I agree it's POV and rather pointless and should probably be removed.  Who gets paid to be an online debater anyway? Mpntod 06:25, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, it's POV, it's silly, and I have moved it to talk from the main page until someone comes up with a source or a citation. Cite sources Rick Boatright 02:51, 4 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Professional Online Debaters


 * A professional online debater is an internet conversationalist who can logically evaluate and expand on certain subjects effectively while being able to defend those standpoints; breaking down all arguments belonging to the opposition(s). This class of debater can usually cite sources and links (the links provided are based on accurate content rather than just relying on sheer mainstream reputation) to further solidify his or her thesis. They also do not engage in the practice of having to copy and paste entire articles without providing personal expression of those articles' points.


 * Most professional online debaters can hold their own against an array of incoming opposing opinions in an intense debate consistently and successfully. They don't rely on amateur and deceitful tactics such as diversion, lying, and the usage of mutiple pseudonyms and fake personalities in order to beef up their opinions. All the points that they present are supported by truth and correlated / established facts. Furthermore, they are able to expand on those facts by using logic to form new hypothesis which are in turn supported by evidence. Amongst the group of professional online debaters, there are those who are of the elite class. The elite class, not only just rely on sources that contain uncorrupted facts, they are able to expand on their thesis by presenting their own set of illustrations (containing estimations, probable contingencies, and specific standpoints known as "pointers"). They never jump to conclusions unless, if a contingency presents a real probability of occurrence.


 * Although most outcomes of online debates are determined through amateur methods (having the last word), professional debaters are immune to the consensus of amateur belief systems. For example, when a professional debater or an elite debater defeats the opposition, he or she doesn't require to have the last word in a discussion. Instead, the wiser readers will notice that the opposition(s) have been vanquished earlier through what is known as a "checkmate" or "final counter". A final counter is a counter-attack delivered by the elite debater which was equipped with superior logic based on honest facts (usually correlated from an external link belonging to the subject of the debate and is counter-productive to the opposition's subjective points).


 * Even when the opposition has been checkmated and outsmarted, it is still possible that the defeated will continue to persist. Since the opposition's points have already been vanquished, any statement made afterwards are considered empty and unnecessary. These latter statements coming from the opposition are known as "runaround statements". Runaround statements are often used by amateurs and frauds such as "tools", "trolls", and "shills".

massive refactor
This article had accumulated a big pile of POV stuff, policy debators had reverted it into a policy article, there was a bunch of weird persona stuff, etc etc. I have cleaned it up, and reorganized to simplify the table of contents. Rick Boatright 13:10, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Canadian Parliamentary?
Canadian Parliamentary (CP) style gives an equal seventeen minutes of speaking time for each team. I believe the times should read:

Prime Minister (10 min) Member of the Opposition (7 min) Minister of the Crown (7 min) Leader of the Opposition (10 min) Prime Minister Rebuttal (3 min)

with the Prime Minister often having the option of extending the rebuttal time by one minute at the expense of the opening speech. Also, I have never heard of a team getting 30 minutes to prepare for a topic. If a resolution is "straight" it is announced and teams are given 15minutes maximum. But CP almost invariably involves "squirrable" resolutions in which the Prime Minister first proposes the topic at hand and the stands to be taken in his/ her opening speech, and the opposition members must write up their case within the speaking time. Agaibi 03:28, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Spam Links

 * Most of the external links seem to just be Spam links to local clubs, unless someone objects, I'm going to clean it up a bit. pm_shef 00:20, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
 * leave it —Preceding unsigned comment added by OoskMR (talk • contribs)


 * You'll have to forgive me that I don't value the opinion of an anon user who can't take the time to give a reason too highly. If you would like to explain why I should leave it, that's another story. pm_shef 14:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Whilst the links may well be to local clubs, etc. they very often do serve as a good resource for people wanting some or other guidance. These sites generally provide information regarding how to debate and about tournaments ==> these certainly are relevant. What may be even more useful is to categorize them by region, etc --> if there is no objection, I will feel obliged. Chris 19:01, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Debate in US of America
I was looking up discussion and found this article about debate in a complete USA context; very strange and not good at all. This article needs definitely to be completely reconstructed and rewritten. --- Arnejohs 21:53, 15 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Disagree - the article is not in need of a full re-write. Much of the issues are 'international in nature'. Look at the links... they are global!!! -- Chris Lester   talk  16:42, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Indian, tibetan formal debate
It would be nice if article at least mentioned the culture of formal debate challenges so important in tibet and india --Aryah 22:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Karl Popper debate and IDEA
Some reference to this important growth area in interscholastic debate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.158.202.38 (talk) 15:42, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Alteration to Australia-Asia debating article
Last week I made some significant changes the Australia-Asia debate as there were lots of crucial things missing: scoring categories (Matter, Manner, Method), the structure of topics (they begin with "That"), the names of speakers, how the timing system works and so on.

I have also tried to make the article as general as possible. The previous article consisted of lots of rules that were specific to a particular competition. To future editors of the article: please remember that if people want to know the specific rules of your competition they should go to your programme's website or approach you directly. This previous article did not take into account the fact that this format of debate can be used in school classrooms or at corporate functions.

Let me know what you think of the changes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.122.207.94 (talk) 00:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Discussion as a separate topic
Discussion is not the same as debate--in most contexts they can be seen as two alternative modes of proceeding. Nor is it the same as conversation: conversation is engaged in for social purposes, discussion for exchangeing information about an issue. Will someone more experienced than i tell me the procedure for removing the redirection, restablishing a "discussion" article--of course with the necessary cross-links.

it is absurd that a concept would as a heading on Wikipedia itself should not have an article.

(Was there previously a "discussion" article?: can it be reused as a starting point, instead of needing to re-create  from the beginning?   Despite considerable practical experience at both debate (both intercollegiate, and in practical matters) and  discussion, I am not the ideal person for composing such an article. However, I am certainly capable of creating a stub; there are many here who could well edit it.

The content would not substantially overlap with the present "debate" article. the present "conversation" article, imho, should be reworked entirely and I comment on it there; it would be much more practical as well as accurate to develop a "discussion" article than to adjust the "conversation" article to include the appropriate material. DGG 00:03, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

this topic is broader than the article
This article is not about debate. It is 80% about competitive debate. That's a very worthwhile topic--I was on my college's team, way back, and it gvae me an opportunity to visit new schools and places in a way that only the athletes did, it developed my understanding of the fact that other people had good ideas--that they could even outdebate me, it showed me that positions I would have rejected out of hand were actually defensible. And it was an excellent preparation for work on WP. It was similarly effective for my daughter. It deserves an expanded article, expanded in the way sports articles are expanded.

But it does have some other meanings. As I mentioned about Wiki, people debate elsewhere; they debate in real parliaments as well as mock ones; they debate in the real UN as will as model UNs. They debate in court. All of this is at least equally important in the word as competitive academic debate, and there wuld be enough for a good long article, possibly even to get divided later. All of this gets 4 short paragraphs here. (online debate is discussed here in the talk, but nott he main article.

It has a meaning in human though, in human interactions. Its varieties world-wide have been mentioned in the talk, but not in the main article. Its use in literature has not even been mentioned here. Further, it is a mode of human communications. Plato used it as the setting for his proof that the truth is not necessarily with the better debater, leading to the milleniums-long discussion of just what truth is, and the milleniums-long experiments in how to acheive justice in a society if debate was not reliable. And this gets 1 paragraph here and the much fuller discussion in argumentation.


 * This page needs to be retitled, with the other material moved elsewhere, or kept as a main page,, with the bulk of the material moved to Competitive Debate. I'm not sure which is the easiest way to organize the work.DGG 18:01, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Why is public forum debate not listed?
ted turner or more commonly public forum debate (pfd) is one recent but popular type of debate (included by the nfl) why is it not listed? BeckBoy Ak 06:14, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation proposal
Because this article is really about competitive interscholastic debate than debate in general, I propose that we:


 * Move this page to "Interscholastic debate"
 * Redirect "Debate" to "Interscholastic debate"
 * Create "Debate (disambiguation)" and link it from the top of "Interscholastic debate"
 * Move the non-interscholastic debate entries to the Debate (disambiguation) page, or, if they merit it, to articles of their own.

Thoughts? jdb &#x274b; (talk) 04:01, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's enough material to justify a new article, but some more content on simple debating would be nice. -- KneeLess 03:46, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * it makes sense to me to change this article becuase this article speaks entirely to formalised debate and does not speak to a more general defention of debate as argumentation amoung people.BeckBoy Ak 06:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Policy debate topics
Shouldn't we add some years' topics to the article? DebateKid 00:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The main article, Policy debate, does list both current and past resolutions. This particular page is only intended to provide a brief summary of each debate style; expanded detail (and resolutions) are for the individial debate style pages. Ourai  т с 23:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Desperately needs additional material on non-Western and premodern debate
This article deseperately needs some additional material on debate outside of the modern Western (post-Enlightenment) context. Debate has obviously been an integral part of human societies since the invention of language, and critical in the function of governments since their invention circa 3000 BC. I'm thinking for example of debate in ancient Greece and Rome (see for example Sophists) and the religious-instruction traditions in Jewish Yeshiva and Tibetan Buddhist monasteries http://www.thdl.org/essays/dreyfus/physicality.html http://www.tibet.org/glow/seraje/seraje6.html http://one.revver.com/watch/204853. -- 201.50.254.243 13:51, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Q: what is the significance of events such as poetry battles in such places as Africa or India? I don't know much about them (thus I ask), but it seems to me I have read of such things, where poets or story tellers from warring clans stand up and sling insults at each other in some staged, formal, impressive manner, thus defusing tensions and avoiding physical warfare. So maybe this is not rationalized, advocacy-style debate as in the West, thus not based on Western logic, but debate based on the same psychological and evolutionary human principles. I think it can be argued that rhetoric in debate or discussion is more important than logic, the endpoint is persuasion. The article talks about a lot of Western debate structures. To me the article "debate" is Western-centric, college-student, needs to have "discussion" brought back separately and the general topic expanded, as Lee Gomes writes at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118712061199497533.html

Merge
This page ought to be merged with the page that describes speech events because the two pages both describe similar events. Both are sponsored by the NFL (National Forensic League) and both oftentimes see participation from the same people. Borat55 04:55, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Speech and debate are often similar, but the two are quite distinctly two separate activities (at least up here in Minnesota). Debate, whatever the flavour, always has rounds where two teams face off against one another, and at the end of the round there is a definite winner and loser, in blunt terms. In speech events, competitors are graded side by side, and winners are decided by summing up points for each competitor; there is no direct "team A v. team B" competition. They are certainly different enough to merit two different articles, just as American football and rugby football, while similar, have fundamental differences which result in two separate pages. (At least, the differences between the two are very pronounced up here in Minnesota. It might be substantially different elsewhere.) Ourai тʃс 04:25, 1 April 2007 (UTC)


 * There's definately a call for merging this article with that on parliamentary debate, which in itself forms a large part of this article in an abbreviated form. I cannot see the necessity for two articles here since there is so much crossover. Furthermore, there is also an article on British Parliamentary Style which again involves massive overlap. These should all be merged and purged of overlap and repition.--InconX 05:16, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Merging Debate and Parliamentary debate? Maybe I missed something, but I cannot see where you are coming from. The article on Debate acts as a directory to different types of debate, certainly including Parliamentary, but the Debate article itself has sections (of the same size as the section on Parli) on Australasia debate, Policy debate, Classical debate, Lincoln-Douglas debate, and Karl Popper debate (just to hit the big ones). It makes no more sense to merge Debate and Parliamentary debate as it does to merge Debate with any of the other ones, even if the section on Parliamentary did form a large portion of the article (which it doesn't).


 * Maybe you were implying a merge of British Parliamentary Style into the Parliamentary debate article itself? I don't know much about those two, but it seems to me as if the different styles are different enough to warrant separate articles. (If you do want to suggest such a merger, I suggest you propose it on Talk:Parliamentary debate to get the attention of editors of that article, instead of suggesting it here.) Ourai  тʃс 06:36, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Debate wikia
I have requested a new wikia for containing information for debates; if you have any comments, please go to http://requests.wikia.com/wiki/Debate. Indeed123 21:22, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Simulated legislature
Can someone go over this section as it currently ends in midthought. 72.39.153.188 (talk) 07:27, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Why Discussion redirecting to Debate?
Hi. I just went to give a Wiki link as a reference to a student ... Why Discussion redirecting to Debate?

They are two entirely different things. Indeed, one of the problems with the Western Society and it contentious systems is that it does not know the difference between 'Discussion' and 'Debate' within either an acedemic or political environment?

Have you been over this before? I think it should be split.

195.82.106.244 14:11, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Try looking up 'Conversation', and it isn't Western Society's fault that the link is messed up. --Hybrid

Indeed, It isn't "Western society"s fault. This is English Wikipedia, referring to the language, regardless of where it is spoken. If you feel it is so much of a problem, change it and see what happens to your IP address' account. 70.90.61.57 14:16, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

What is debate?
I am happy with the definition of debate used here! Considering that part of the culture of Wikipedia revolves around debate it seems normal that so few comments have been devoted to what it means to debate and indeed, what debate means to people.

I feel that it is a great definition for 'debate' definition to the one used in this article. Debating in my knowledge I agree with it. to be confined to formalised discussion with 2 sides and a judge.

I would find it useful to know the origins of the word debate and how its meaning has evolved over time.


 * I agree too. The primary and most important fora for formal debate in the UK are Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and local government - together with other institutions such as political parties, trades unions and students' unions.  In terms of informal debate, the TV studio and the newspapers are arguably even more important.  Even in terms of student debate, the competitive form is by no means automatically the norm: in most UK debates students vote on the issues presented after hearing the arguments - and formal judging is very much the exception not the rule.  Mpntod 06:37, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)


 * It has also missed any reference to US Presidential Debates. History and analysis of those would be extremely interesting.  Mpntod 11:30, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)


 * I Also agree much of wikipedia is debating, yet the definition is so correct, the word debate is much different in some places, as their debates are so formal in New Zealand and online debats can have more than just two point of views

I concur in part and dissent in part - the topic is strongly organized and I think moot court is properly listed under debate. Perhaps a broad category for Debate, Moot Court, Student Legislature, etc. Mydotnet 22:21, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I feel that the current information on moot court (which has to be a form of student debating, surely? two sides arguing a point through oral submissions and each side represents a particular perspective) is a bit scarce, would it be possible for a more senior editor than I to add either a link or a See Also to the official article on mooting itself? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moot_court). This is a point of convenience for users, as opposed to added content, as I had to use the search bar to get to the explanatory article 81.154.93.40 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment was added at 15:24, 5 October 2008 (UTC).

I've removed this paragraph:


 * The expansion of Mock Court and Parli have come at the cost of the shrinking of participation in LD and Policy Debate in US High School competition since 1995. They are largely an outlet for "rhetorical styles" and rely far less on logic and competition. Also, though they do siphon from the policy community, their numbers are still so low that they often are not even given places at tournaments.

It should stay out until the declining-numbers assertion can be substantiated. The second and third sentences should be removed in any case -- they're way too POV. jdb &#x274b; 22:54, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

- Small grammar change: Should 'examine' be examines in "Debate is a broader form of argument than logical argument, which only examines the consistency from axiom, and factual argument, which only examines ...."

- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kwhittingham (talk • contribs) 02:58, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The first sentence.
"Debate (American English) or debating (British English)". What the hell is going on there? Is there a reason we are comparing a noun and a verb? Nobody uses "debate" as a verb. "debating" or "debated", but not "debate". That sentence needs changed. It implies that where a Brit may say: "I have been debating", an American may say: "I have been debate". Alan 16  talk  00:51, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the first sentence is implying that an American might say "he is good at debate" where a Brit would say "she is good at debating" - maybe someone can clarify? The need for clarification implies the sentence needs a rewrite anyway!
 * Alan16 - "Debate" is a verb and a noun. (I will debate it with you. We will hold the debate on Tuesday.) Barnabypage (talk) 10:20, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I know it is a verb, but what I was trying to say was that I don't think people would use it instead of "debating", as the first sentence implies. And although your example of when a Brit and American may use the words, I don't think that is accurate. I say this because I compared an very American dictionary (Merriam Webster) with a very British one (OED), and they both used the same examples for using debate as a verb, "debating", "debated", and an almost identical example to the one you used. I think we should just get rid of the "(American English) or debating (British English)" bit. It isn't necessary. Alan 16   talk  14:56, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I've removed the references to American and British English, as they're unsourced and your research suggests the distinction may be invalid. I've left the word "debating" in because it doesn't do any harm and just might be useful to someone searching on that particular term, though I'm certainly not going to shed any tears if you choose to remove it. Barnabypage (talk) 15:56, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Term
Is there a term for Buddhist (Gelugpa) way of debate?
 * Austerlitz -- 83.236.19.10 (talk) 09:53, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

.

As one can read here, in Tibetan there is the term "tsennyi" (mtshan-nyid), meaning definitions. I don't know yet whether it is used for the type of debate in general.
 * Austerlitz -- 83.236.19.17 (talk) 14:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

In english it is Dialectic.


 * Austerlitz -- 83.236.19.25 (talk) 15:09, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

"You can't prove a Negative" - a reminder.
Logic "A common discussion-killer is the declaration: "You can't prove a negative!" Immediately the conversation screeches to a halt and people turn to other topics. Is there really nothing more to be said? A: Fairies don't exist. B: You can't prove a negative. A: Okay, fair enough. So how do you like this pizza? Does it have to be this way?" May 27, 2009 Response from Peter Smith on May 30, 2009
 * "I'm reminded of the exasperated Bertrand Russell faced with the young Wittgenstein: "He thinks that nothing empirical is knowable. I asked him to admit that there was not a rhinoceros in the room, but he wouldn't. I looked under all the desks without finding one but Wittgenstein remained unconvinced." It is Wittgenstein here who is being obtuse and in the grip of a silly theory. Of course we can establish empirical propositions both positive and negative – for example, that there are five desks in the room and no rhinoceroses.

By any sane standard, it is just plain false that you can't prove a negative, and that supposed "discussion-killer" should itself be promptly killed off.

Response from Richard Heck on May 31, 2009
 * "Perhaps part of the problem is the word "prove", which also tends to get used when talking about such things as the existence of God. (No-one can prove that God exists, we're often told.) As our erstwhile leader, Alex George, has often pointed out, however, outside mathematics, one can rarely "prove" anything. So to be told in that sense that no-one can "prove" a negative is unhelpful. One can't "prove" a positive in that sense, either.As Peter said, more or less."

Nunamiut (talk) 02:43, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Parli and Mace Distinction
The article attempts to distinguish British Parliamentary and Mace formats on the premise that the British Schools' Mace competitions follows a different format (which I believe it does). The article goes on to outline a Mace format which is identical to the British Parliamentary (or World Universities Debating Championship) format. This is accurate too. As I understand it Mace is not one unified format, more a unified style practised over a few formats. For example, the John Smith Memorial Mace competition run by the English Speaking Union (who are also the organisers of the school competition mentioned) is conducted in British Parliamentary format which is described under the Mace sub-section. If there are no changes and no objections when next I return I will remedy, though that may not be soon. --86.40.153.3 (talk) 18:54, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Speech and Debate?
Searching for "Speech and Debate" (which is a common descriptive term of high school Speech, Drama, and Debate in my area) redirects here. Since this doesn't at all address the speech events or even link to them, it's more than a bit confusing. The Speech page does link here, as well as stating that "Speech and Debate competitions are subsets of Forensics competition," thus clearly connecting the subjects. Is the redirect necessary? And if it is, shouldn't the page at least link to Speech? I understand this is about debate in general, and not just high school/college competitive debate, but if that's so, shouldn't a Speech and Debate search redirect somewhere else entirely? Narissara (talk) 16:57, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

History of debate?
I'd like to request that a section on the history of debate be included in this article. I hope someone has information on this. DBlomgren (talk) 01:53, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Why is online debate listed so positively?
"Arguing on the internet" is pretty terrible. It is almost always down to who ever can get the most annoying children to gang up on the other person. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.70.178.115 (talk • contribs) 16:56, November 29, 2006
 * Good point. However, there are certain online debating societies, namely websites devoted to argumentation over certain issues, much like think tanks, except with debate. Such forums are often held to a very high standard, and participants can include experts in that particular field. Such debate is extremely different from most online debating, which usually end up triggering Godwin's Law. You're right; the two should be differentiated. Ourai  т с 23:03, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Arguing on the internet does not have to be terrible. Conflict resolution facilitators say that you need your group to be big enough to get a diverse set of perspectives, but small enough that everyone can participate... The internet needs both of these... the problem is the format, none of it is organized in a wikipdia style format that allows for continual refinement, but we all have the same argument over and over again, in different formats, on different discussion boards... Can we make a new section for online debate? There are two types of formats: thread type formats that have posts, and responses... a problem with this is that the subject changes so often. A new type of format has one website for each belief, with reasons to agree and disagree in separate columns. This allows a wikipedia type effort by many people to continually refine and define all aspects of the debate, outlining all the reasons to agree and disagree. This method does not feel as natural, because when someone responds, you want to jump in, and start arguing the ideas that come to mind, but with the internet, alternative forms of debate are becoming available. Algorithms could even be used to count reasons to agree and disagree. myclob (talk) 16:54, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Please don't try to say what debate is or is not "about" !!!
An early paragraph in the article ends with this sentence:

"However one large misconception about debate is that it is all about strong beliefs; it is not."

Um, no. As far as an encyclopedia goes, nothing is or is not *about* something else: that is entirely a matter of personal opinion.

But if the point is simply that

"The subject of a debate is not necessarily related to a strongly held belief of any debater,"

then that is the way to say it.Daqu (talk) 17:17, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Any one else seen this format?
The format of debate we used competitively in high school was:

First Affirmative Speech (5 mins) Cross-Examination of F.A. by Neg. (2.5 mins) First Negative Speech (5 mins) C-E of F.N. by Affirm. (3.5 mins) Second Affirmative Speech (5 mins) C-E of S.A. by Neg. (2.5 mins) Second Negative Speech (5 mins) C-E of S.N. by Affirm. (3.5 mins) Preparation Break (5 mins) Negative Rebuttal (5 mins) Affirmative Rebuttal (5 mins)

This was in the Lehigh Valley, PA area. Is this a recognized format anywhere else? Teams consisted of (ideally) 4 people. 2 speakers, 1 questioner, 1 rebuttalist. A person could have two duties expect could not be both speakers (so the team size would be 3 people). --Graatz 20:55, 16 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The Cross-ex format is an established format, though the more prevalent format is Parliamentary Debating or World Schools Style, which have 2 and 3 team members respectively. It all depends where you go - here in south afria, we do only World Schools Style at School and then Parliamentary style at university (college). Chris 19:05, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I have seen this. It is used in courtroom trials. I do not know if it has a proper name. Bon 062 (talk) 10:21, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

heartfeltedness
I'm feeling that this article doesn't seem to mention much about how debating can be done coldly or warmly, with empathy, compassion, etc. Some mention of this could be quite nice. --Rebroad (talk) 11:27, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Could someone give some references for this? Pol098 (talk) 11:37, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Debate and the 'English-Speaking World'
I'm currently undertaking a global census of debate and although my findings are only provisional at the moment, I would be confident in saying that the assertion that debate is primarily an activity in the English speaking world is simply false. There are, for example, more debating societies in Colombia than in Australia and New Zealand combined, debate is huge and growing in China, Russia and Central Europe and so forth. Although debate is overwhelmingly conducted in English, competitions in Mandarin, Russian, Spanish - although not apparently French for some reason - are rapidly catching up. I think the reality of how we think of debate needs to change and just as the Charter Nations had to surrender their privileges on Worlds Council we should change the text here to reflect the reality of modern debating. I would suggest a text along the lines of
 * "Although once seen as the preserve of universities in the English speaking world the modern debating movement is increasingly multinational and multi-lingual. Although America remains the largest and most active single debating nation it and the rest of the Anglophone nations no longer have the dominance they once had."

Nickbibby (talk) 14:36, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Let's find some references and put this in. In the meantime, the statement that it is only in the Anglophone world seems unreferenced original research, and could well be deleted, to be re-added if and only if supported by sources. Pol098 (talk) 11:39, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Debate in general or educational?
I repeat a previous, brief, section: Because this article is really about competitive interscholastic debate than debate in general, I propose that we:
 * Disambiguation proposal


 * Move this page to "Interscholastic debate"
 * Redirect "Debate" to "Interscholastic debate"
 * Create "Debate (disambiguation)" and link it from the top of "Interscholastic debate"
 * Move the non-interscholastic debate entries to the Debate (disambiguation) page, or, if they merit it, to articles of their own.

Thoughts? jdb &#x274b; (talk) 04:01, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's enough material to justify a new article, but some more content on simple debating would be nice. -- KneeLess 03:46, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * it makes sense to me to change this article becuase this article speaks entirely to formalised debate and does not speak to a more general defention of debate as argumentation amoung people.BeckBoy Ak 06:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I found the article confusing, starting with topics such as "parliamentary debate", which seems sensible, but on reading is all about a game and nothing to do with running a country. I have reorganised it to have one major top-level section on serious debate, and another major section, with many subsections, on educational debate. If anything of any weight is added about serious debate the article will become very long, and I support a split into an article about debate for decision-making and another on educational. I don't at the moment have good suggestions for the title of either.Pol098 (talk) 23:45, 31 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I've just come across the article on Debate (parliamentary procedure). It would make sense to have 3 articles: one on debate in general, fairly short I think, about the idea of two sides discussing and resolving on a proposition, techniques, and so on, maybe rhetoric; an article on parliamentary debate, much expanded on and modified from the existing version; and one on educational debate, under a suitable name. I maintain that an article with the title "debate" which is only about educational debate, and with subheadings such as "parliamentary debate" is very misleading, though. This has confused others as well as me; there were bits inserted willy-nilly in the swathes of minutiae about debating societies about debate in parliament and between leaders. Pol098 (talk) 12:25, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Online Debate NPOV
I added an npov tag to the online debate section. It contains many unsourced statements such as " Many people use this to strengthen their points, or drop their weaker opinions on things, many times for debate in formal debates (such as the ones listed above) or for fun arguments with friends. The ease-of-use and friendly environments make new debaters welcome to share their opinions in many communities." which sound like personal commentary. Jh1234l (talk) 23:31, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Educational/Competitive Debating
Currently the section header "Educational debating" only lists "Competitive debate" and nothing else. Is there a reason why the section is not simply called Competitive debating? That would seem clearer to me.

Alternatively, if there are non-competitive forms of debate under "Forms of debate" (I don't think so but I don't know all of them) that should be made clear and they should be separated somehow.Tiyire (talk) 08:43, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Ugh. Such an Essay.
This article is absolutely infested with unverified claims and POV. It's kind of disgusting. --Mr. Guye (talk) 00:52, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Please be specific. Also, the use of loaded language such as "infested" and "disgusting" belie any claim to neutrality. Atrobinson (talk) 00:38, 30 January 2015 (UTC)


 * The lead is ridiculous, in how someone tries to debunk or discredit every claim with blue italics. It's like people read "Debate" and think "Oh, I'd better debate." Funny, in a meta way, but sucks for anyone actually trying to learn about the topic. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:23, 23 June 2015 (UTC)