Someone posted this and I think it might be an interesting experiment. I understand that the technology might not be available or that there may be other reasons not to do something like this, but if it were to happen, do you think that it would make the forums better? How would we prevent it’s abuse?
DISCUSS
Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 8:03 pm Post subject:
With some programming, forums could gain a little more sophistication. It’s not that we should / shouldn’t tolerate proper arguments. It’s that there are different levels of standards, which can be varied in different places. “Philosophy Forums” uses “Pseudophilosophy” as a variance, but I think that that’s inaccurate. Pseudophilosophy uses fallacies for one’s advantage, and can actually be quite ingenious. Just plain saying things you don’t really understand is just novice philosophy, not pseudophilosophy.
You could have a questionnaire that tests one’s discipline on logical principals and forms of inquiry- in which your profile needs to have passed that test in order to post on certain forums. That could also benefit forum members by giving obstacles to scale. As it gains sophistication and popularity, such achievements could even help the forum member use the forum as a reference for their achievements.
Well you can simply have people do logic tests or basically have two people argue in a “battle arena” thread, and then give a rating on someones logic, etc and have the best members vote on the results. It’s quite obvious though that a lot of good argumentation requires:
Age
Maturity
Time
Intellect
Experience
The truth of the matter is not everyone has them in equal amounts.
I think what we really need would be to integrate WIKI functionality into a forum where people could work on re-writing other peoples stuff and clearing it up (being able to edit others posts and fix errors, missing words, spelling mistakes - or rewriting or replacing poorly written analogies, examples, etc.
Thinking takes time, but when you multiple it (by) many minds it goes a lot faster.
‘‘Sometimes the simplest of good ideas is above the most complex mind.’’
It takes a complex mind to realise when it’s happening though.
That ‘‘Battle Arena’’ thing is just about the best thing I’ve heard, ever, I’m tired of people starting arguements badly then thinking they’ve won when you get frustrated because they’ve just looked like an immature, aggressive moron, making arguements for the sake of winning, not being accurate.
And who says you need age, I like to think that I’m pretty sufficient in all the other areas, you can’t handicap me due to a factor I can’t change.
Anyhoo…all great ideas…now if only there was some way to make the mods think they thought of it themselves…
We had the ‘hero’ forums here before, when I first joined.
No offense to uh… this site, but if we did that, as we did in the past, the ‘pro’ forum would be a barren wasteland, as the only thing that drives this site is useless banter.
People do pro philosophy in class, (at least I did) and come here to take a priori shits – even the good philosophers here. It’s rare to get them going on something good.
Perhaps maybe just a requirement that the OP and the following posts must be a minimum of some words…around 150 or so and somehow make it so persons cannot [Submit] their message unless it meets certain criteria.
I like that idea, at least for certain forums. One hundred fifty words is not too much to ask.
Of course, the ways that people get around that restriction would be absurd. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz. My philosophyz roxxorz.
This issue has been raised before, and two special forums were created to give folks what they asked for and both forums failed miserably. There are all sorts of forums where formal debate is encouraged for those willing to do their homework. ILP has tried to be whatever the folks have asked for, but apparently, rigorous philosophical debate and discussion is just too much work for most of the people here.
As for a word count OP, I’d rather see a short concise well-thought-out question than a ream of blah blah blah.