The current rules have the time limit for the initial poster to be 48 hours after the opening of the debate. The time limit for the next poster is set for forty-eight hours AFTER I copy/paste the original post to the next contestant’s site.
There has been suggestion that this time limit is too long and the debate will grow stale quickly, I feel this should be put to a vote. The alternative is that we lower the time limit to 24 hours AFTER I copy/paste the original post and after I open debating.
The current time is Wednesday at 10:30p.m. EST, we will vote on this matter for five days and I will tabulate all of the votes (From ILO and ILP combined) and post the result of the voting around 10:30 EST on Monday the eighth.
Most of the time, responses will come within 24 hours, but the extra day will be necessary sometimes. Work, family, school, there are a ton of demands on one’s time that can make at least one day unworkable, and that shouldn’t disqualify a team.
More of a concern than the individual response time is the overall time of the debate, I think. Even if we take the debate down to 24 hours per post, we have 18 days of debating (3 posts per 2 teams per 3 topics), plus the time it takes to copy the responses, plus the time it takes to announce the topics, plus the time it takes to judge the debates. We’re talking about a two-month endeavor, and that shit is likely to go stale.
Why don’t we do either three one-on-one debates, or one three-on-three debate with more to come if it goes well?
I would prefer the former as opposed to the latter, though.
For now, let’s go with things as they are. For any other changes to the format or the rules I would rather let the actual debaters decide from this point on. So, let us for now continue to determine who our debaters actually are and go from there.
While 48 hours seems a long time, there are often a lot of unpredictable things that pop up. If something unexpected happens, there is a chance that a poster won’t be able to make a post in 24 hours. However, if something so catastrophic as to prevent posting within 48 hours were to happen, I am sure various allowances could be made. You know, “I got held up at work, uuuhhhh, sorry” could actually prevent someone from posting a proper reply in 24 hours. Whereas the likelihood of that happening two days in a row and them not being able to reply is very remote. Heck, even if I got into a car accident and was in the hospital, I could call a friend and be like, “Hey, you know that website I’m always wasting time at? Could you do me a solid and tell them I am in the hosptial?”
Plus more time to think about a reasoned reply as opposed to less is probably better.
I would like to get it started before the holidays. If we can get it to where the first debate begins on the fifteenth, we may actually be able to get a whole debate hammered out before that.
Of course, there is a possibility that the whole thing starts after the holidays because I’m sure there are going to be some specifics to hammer out between the debaters themselves.
Either way, I would suggest that regardless of the start time of this whole thing we make December 23-27 as well as December 31 + January 1 optional post days that do not factor into the 48 hours.