I think a Scholars DIR is a great idea. One-on-one with judges is a pretty cool thought too.
Are you thinking of having some sort of filtering system so that certain requirements are needed to participate in those sections if you implement them?
For the Scholars DIR, my thought is that anyone who already has the RF Scholar's Award should be considered an automatic Scholar's DIR member. Best case scenario, once the DIR has say a half dozen members, those members should be able to invite any additional members, at which point the members invited would also automatically be awarded the Scholarship Award. In thatsense the Scholars Award would act like an access key for the DIR.
As far as the Lincoln/Douglas Debates forum, anyone weould be able to challenge anyone else to a debate there. The panel of judges would have to be selected either by the members or by staff or possibly as a collaborate effort.
Thanks and no problem, just trying to keep things on-track.
A rating system which judges people on the manner which they respond to other peoples posts rather than the content of the post itself would be potentially useful because it reduces the impact of individual subjectivity in the voting, at least in regards to the subject matter.
For example if person A constructs an argument, person B demonstates that its incorrect, and person A refuses to acknowledge this person A will recieve a negative vote. This moves the issue away from the content of being discussed to an admittedly subjective judgement on the strength of the arguement and counter-arguement. Therefore it won't matter if person B is arguing against evolution for example because they are not being judged on that but rather their conduct in the debate. The number of votes they've recieved could then be used to determine posting rights in particular areas of the forum set aside for real debate.
I think these are all excellent ideas. That last suggestion (even though I particularly like that one
) would be hard to implement and would probably best be put to the side for consideration in the future, but for now I think all of your ideas together would be a great schematic for the Lincoln/Douglas Debates forum.
The main problem would be finding suitably equiped individuals willing to devote significant amount of time to the task of reviewing all posts. This could be remedied by limiting this to certain discussion threads only where more formal debates are run. Giving voting power to the whole forum would render the system useless because not everyone would vote in accordance to the rules.
Maybe applying all of the above to a single forum would be the way to start.
As for trolls there isn't a huge amount you can do about them except subject them to warnings, suspensions and eventual bans. Its tricky because it ultimately boils down to censorship but if an individual is using the forum as a pedestal to broadcast their views and isn't willing to actually engage in discussion then such censorship isn't really that bad a thing.
Yes, and that's what we've always done, but the main problem, and the main reason for creating this thread, was to see if we could come up with a few solutions to the less obvious trolls and proselytizers, people, basically, like the one's you're describing above who may not be breaking the rules outright, but who aren't actually debating or discussing either.
I think the Scholars DIR would give us at least one forum where questions could be addressed and serious discussions between knowledgeable members could be conducted without having to worry about these kinds of trolls derailing the threads.
I think the Lincoln/Douglas Debates forum would provide a platform for any one member to basically expose any pseudo-trolls for what they are in an arena where the troll wouldn't be able to get away with any of the shady tactics they usually use in the open debates.
