One of our occasional commenters contacted me before the weekend, and asked if we might publish his prepared debate speech, given that he wouldn’t have a chance to make it “for real”. My first thought was, “it’ll be a bit on the long side”, which he accepted. However, it strikes me that we could do something to enable people to debate the various policy motions after a fashion, and so, today, I’m going to try a little experiment.
I will publish one of the motions due to be debated, and invite you, our readers, to “debate” it. My thoughts on how to manage this are as follows;
- Publish the motion and invite responses for, and against, it.
- All contributions will be managed as comments and will be pre-moderated, so that I can balance the debate according to the balance of submissions.
- Normal debating rules will apply, with word limits for interventions, and rejection of anything off-topic, or unacceptable in terms of behaviour.
But, before I start, any suggestions that might improve this would be greatly appreciated, so do get in touch.
5 Comments
Mark a good idea, I suggest to facilitate the public “debate” (*) it would be nice to have contributions labelled as being: for, against, uncertain. Also some way for people to applaud/boo, without having to stand and make a speech.
(*) I assume this idea is to use the LDV platform to garner a wider audience and not be restricted to the members only platform.
Mark its a good idea but I suspect will require rigorous monitoring. There are certain people who are ruining LDV by bringing the same tired talking point into every discussion. They wouldn’t be allowed to do that at conference so shouldn’t be able to do it here.
I agree with RossMcL
In a conference debate one only gets one chance to speak – and then with a time limit.
The motion is much too long.
It is a good idea. PS where have you been hiding for I have not been on here for a bit!?