Can we resurrect this forum?

Recently I challenged someone to a formal debate.

Eventually someone will take me up on it and I'd really like to get this forum going.

Any mods have input?

Who's the boss of this forum now?

Let's get ready to rrrrrrumble!

a reply to: DBCowboy
I can't believe there haven't been any posts here in YEARS!

I LOVE a good debate but unfortunately nowadays people dont know how to have a proper debate without lowering to trollish standards.

This was a great forum back in the day.

a reply to: mblahnikluver

Thanks, I often forget about this, glad you remembered.

a reply to: DBCowboy

I'd love to debate again, kinda miss it

a reply to: vkey08

Same here.

We'll keep reminding the powers that be, maybe it can be resurrected.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: vkey08

Same here.

We'll keep reminding the powers that be, maybe it can be resurrected.

aren't the ptb new people now or is it stil the same three that we all know and love? I'd love to see more people with the fighter tag again, heck I can't even remember how I got the scholar tag anymore it's been so long..

a reply to: vkey08

Welcome back from a long absence.

Scholar...I could probably look it up but my guess off the top of my head would be involvement with the old Tin Wiki in some way. Yes there is a new owner(s) but forum activity really wouldn’t be up to an owner unless it was shut down. ATS has always been member driven. But the debate forum is a little different.

With the debate forum you have to have the Fighter tag to even post here. It is also the easiest tag to get. You only had to ask, agreed to follow the rules of the Debate forum and be a member in good standing without major recent post removals. And therein has been the problem these past two years since this thread was started.

Political Trolling has been an epidemic to put it mildly. So much so that a causal look at which members that would probably want to participate, wouldn’t be eligible to receive the Fighter tag. So I tried to help people out by writing one of those PSA thread which took some time because everything staff does has to be done by consensus, especially those types of threads. To get the wording just right and maybe catch an error or typo. And while a boring read, that last sentence really should have stood out, since I like to hide things in plain sight.

Some of the staff had collaborated on revitalizing the Debate forum. By that I mean rules for different styles of debates that just the standard Socratic, rules for tournaments, lists of topics that were focused on anything but political brinkmanship topics...really all we were lacking was participants so I wrote that thread. And in January of 2020 I wrote another on Civility to at least make a dent in the ill-mannered posts.

Screams into a hurricane, for all anyone has paid attention. So until things change, that working thread on bringing back the Debate forum will have to sit complete but unused. Mostly because I cannot in good conscience let a debate start feeling that a participant would have to forfeit due a posting ban revoking their Fighter status. And most of the staff working on it felt the same way.

In short, within three weeks the staff was ready to go. And there may have been some fine tuning along the way as some formats might not have been liked at all or needed tweaking. But as I said before, ATS is member driven. And it seems the membership as a whole has little interest in bringing back a community building forum versus running around like a naked three year old in front of company. Which is a pretty good description for quite a number of posting habits.

It should be easy for people to treat one another with respect and limit the political trolling to the Mudpit where it is accepted and expected. Let’s see if people can do it.

a reply to: Ahabstar

Thanks for the welcome back

I really hadn't been paying attention to all of the ins and outs of the forum over the past few years, and had no idea it had gotten so bad, but, I have noticed a bit more vitriol, best word I can see fitting, around here lately..