Convince Me is an online debate website. It has debates on many subjects and many different formats of debate. The site provides rewards and has community features such as voting and commenting.
I was taking a quick look around the site and I realised there were three types of debate: open debate, competitive debates and king of the hill debates. Some debate subjects have much higher quality arguments (I found ‘pro-life vs. pro-choice’, generally, had higher quality arguments than ‘Best collaboration software’).
Arguments must be kept fairly short at 1000 characters so it doesn’t become an essay. This makes the site much easier to read and makes debating more fun. One can still makes rebuttals.
The site uses quite a bit of Ajax but the design feels somewhat heavy. Then again, this may be necessary for a site such as this one.
While Convince Me offers cash rewards to their best debaters, I don’t see how the use of the site is especially productive. I doubt your skills at debating will be increased that greatly, as many arguments aren’t that intellectual!
Apologies for another short post; I shall try to write 1 or 2 ones of higher quality tomorrow.
I don’t see this site being highly productive either.
I don’t have enough time to write my own thoughts let alone try to convince somebody else that I’m right and they’re not.
It seems like a good idea
It should be a good idea
But there’s something seriously lacking here.
Whilst words can be powerful, I always believe there should be a good level of vocality in a debate. Maybe it would be better if people could upload their responses as podcasts capped to a max duration? (to stop the opinions becoming rants).
They should also invite respected players from different markets and industries to debate on selected topics…with an outcome actually resulting in something. Other than a number.