I feel it is pertinent to ask about the goals of Debate club.
My imagination, fruitful as it is, pictures two distinct forums co-existing. One is open discussion, wild west no real rules. It's the OT of politics, high noise but low signal. The other forum is restricted, has plenty of meaty rules, and has a directed, moderated, heavily structured debate. This is a specialized forum attempting to cut out the noise for a crystal clear signal.
Now I haven't filled in all the details of what Debate Club could be, it's just a general idea of me, perhaps, leaping to conclusions of what grand distinctions would separate it from P&N. Presently I see a forum that is strikingly similar to P&N with a polite open discussion.
Was that it? Debate Club is a polite, troll-free (maybe), version of P&N?
Don't know how I feel about that. Is it a distinct enough role to warrant a separate forum? I realize that all along I may have mistaken the intention of our benevolent, omnipotent overlords, and a clean P&N may be a worthy goal. However, the signal to noise ratio is still going to feel disconcerting for those who may have wanted more.
Now that's not necessarily me. My time in P&N is self evident that I'm a pig wallowing in mud as much as the next guy. That together we have treated this forum as the OT in politics and nothing more. What if Debate Club wasn't our next pig sty?
My suggestion is to call out for ideas. If you are a person who wants more from this new forum, let us hear it. Help share ideas on what its structure and rules should look like. I would like to know how we'd lay out the details of a better Debate Club.
First partial example is
this post here. This sort of thing sounds like a step in the right direction, but we would need more to fill the whole picture of how a directed, structured political debate would be moderated.
If you want to see a high signal low noise forum, we have some work to do at defining just what that is.