I'm curious, what happened to having a 600 post buffer for such a forum? This seemed like a great idea, considering the average posts per user on the forums is 104 posts, therefore meaning the person who has such amount of posts would have to have a higher level of maturity to be allowed to stay here. (this includes the many no-post accounts of which have been allowed to continue to exist.....sorry guys, but I do not have the patience to weed those out)
You guys say that this type of forum will not work, and evidence is the past forums that were created for debate, but you don't consider the context in which those forums were made, and how they were aproached by the administrator/moderator team. The "Fight with Sin" forum was a mass insult-fest and didn't work for a couple reasons:
1) It was intended for fighting, not debating.
Fights have no rules....The pure goal of a fight is to win at all causes, wheather right or wrong. Debates are a battle of inteligence in which the only way you can win is by having the best option available in the debate round. You can not yell to win a debate, and anyone who tries to intimidate others in a debate most probably have a weaker argument, since they cannot defeat their apponant through facts.
2) It was not controled, and sometimes it was even encouraged to be a pure fight, rather than a inteligent-minded discussion. Yes, it was fun to watch, but uncontrolled and therefore not useful to anyone.
There has never been a
REAL debate forum on Teenhelp to date. Therefore, we cannot and should not try to compaire with forums which only mocked at being ones of a real debate.
Cindy, you never agreed with the Realigion Forum happening, and you probably still do not. However, it has turned out well, and become a place for teenagers to talk about their religious/philosophical belifes. It did not fail, and that is because people have faith in it, and maintain it. I belive the same thing would happen with a debate forum. In fact, the religion forum could easily be adapted to also be a debate forum, since issues not necissarily related to religion are already discussed there.....I think this would be a much better idea, rather than having a brand new forum.
I know the answer has already been declaired a 'no', I just hope that you admins(whom are also members of this site) consider the things I have stated, and if you wish, give the members of this site who belive a debate/discussion area is needed a place to do so.
http://www.teenhelp.org/groups/index.ph ... opic=28946
Thank you,
Jacob Wilson
