Oh boy, I’m getting excited! Moderator and fully qualified wizard in one week, I can hardly believe it!
Anyway, here are my rough plans for the debates, I really like the idea of making house teams, so it can eventually be used in the house competition:
Sunday (could also be any other day, but I’m just using this as an example) the debate and the topic is announced and a poll can be made to see how many people agree or disagree wih the subject.
Next Sunday the poll will be closed and by now the moderators of each house have handed in a list of the members on their team (in order of appearance). The overall judge (Paul?) will then decide which house will be the for-team and which house will be the against-team.
The teams can consist of 4 members. These members can be others than the previous debate, to make sure everyone gets a chance of joining a debate.
Then the debate can start!
For the debate itself I like the suggestion made by fierce:
So, say we flipped a coin and the 'for' team won the coin toss. The first speaker for the 'for' team outlines the arguments the 'for' team will make, and elaborates on a couple of the major points. Then it's the first speaker for the 'against' team's turn. The first spearker for 'against' team does much the same as the first speaker of the 'for' team, but then also rebuts the 'for' teams first speaker's argument. The next speaker for the 'for' team then establishes more the points the first speaker of the 'for' team has made, and brings forth new points, and rebuts the points of the first speaker 'against'. The second 'against' speaker does much the same thing, and then the third speaker for the 'for' team rebuts the second speaker 'against's points, and summarises the arguments made by the 'for' team. the third speaker for the against does the same thing.
I would also like to add that I think that before a speaker speaks it’s advisable to discuss the things you are gonna say in the common room of your house, but of course this is up to the players…
When the discussion is finished, so everyone had his or her turn (dunno how long this will take, I think around a week or so), it will be closed and a new poll can be made that will also be open for a week.
After a week we can count the votes again and the team that gained the most votes wins…it will have to be explicitly mentioned that you can only vote if you voted in the first poll and read the entire discussion…otherwise the whole system is not working…
(is there maybe an option when making a poll to let only the people who voted previously vote?)
So, one discussion takes about 3 weeks in total, but most of the time is for the polls…therefore I think we can make the discussions overlap and have a discussion every week or 2 weeks…
Well that’s about it…feel free to comment on this!
And now I’m really going to bed!