Edeb8 Tournament?

Anyone got any ideas how we could set up and run a little internal tourney?

That might be fun...

nzlockie: There's code sitting around on the edeb8 backend that allows league-style tournaments to happen but I've never coded the UI for it. I ran that code manually in the WODC. I was thinking it might be cool to do a little series of smaller championships next year based around different themes. Like a quick debate championship or a NFL topic championship.

In the meantime, I think forum-organized championships would run well here. You could make a group for the championship to coordinate everything too.

admin: Featured Debates should be considered before another tournament.

I don't know what featured debates is.

I like the idea of having a quick debate championship. I also like the idea of doing it around a theme.
With the release of the ability to hide the debaters' names - maybe we could bring that into it as well.

nzlockie: A featured debate is something me and admin talked about before. The idea is to take two debates a month, mark them as featured, and give them a purple title.
Possibly give featured debate's their own tab on the front page "debate UI".

I don't feel the site should officially run any tournaments. It's bad PR if they turn out the same way as the last one. I think there should be a tournament interface, where users can set up their own tournaments. We can even broadcast them on the hopeful edeb8 youtube channel.

Blackflag: I disagree. I think that there are a bunch of debaters who would be happy to debate if they were part of something structured, but otherwise will just drift in and drift out because they don't see anything that tickles their very specific fancy.

I'm no better. If forced to accept a resolution, I almost always end up being quite interested in it, whereas before accepting it, I'm certainly not interested enough to accept it. That's why I like the secret debates. It forces me to do topics which I wouldn't normally accept.

In my limited experience, the debate resolutions that people come up with themselves usually end up being quite niche and can often be intimidating to people less familiar with the subject matter. In a site with fewer members, this results in less debates being accepted.
Using resolutions written for irl competitions assures participants that there ARE legitimate arguments to be made for either side and lessens the likelihood that one side will be overly familiar with the subject matter - thus giving an impression of fairness.

A tournament where the resolutions are randomly assigned does this.

If the goal is to get more people to debate, to broaden the scope of the topics they are able to debate and to give them opportunity to learn to research, prepare and present information then a tournament like this is probably one of the best vehicles we could use.
Instead of trying to get people to buy into debating a topic they feel unfamiliar with, against a person who they think IS familiar with it, all we have to do is get them to buy into the idea of competing in a tournament. Once they're committed to THAT, there's more incentive to commit to the debates that make up the rounds.

Finally - I'm not sure what you mean by, "it's bad PR if it turns out like the last one"?
Are you referring to WODC? Because I thought the PR from that one was great!
I reckon posting that screenshot of the ongoing BP debate in my DDO vs Edeb8 debate on DDO was a massive boost to our rep! See how long it takes them to do anything like that over there!

In fact, I reckon that could be a great format to do this tournament in!

How about this:
BP debate tourney
We need four or eight participants. Let's pretend we get 8. I'm calling them: A, B, C, D and 1, 2, 3, 4

We have eight randomly selected topics from the Edeb8 pool. These are the topics which will be debated in our four round tourney.

First round: A - B - 3 - 4 do one topic while 1 - 2 - C - D do another.
Second round: 2 - A - D - 3 do one topic while B - 1 - 4 - C do another.
Third Round: C - 4 - A - 2 do one topic while 3 - D - 1 - B do another.
Fourth round: 4 - D - 1 - A do one topic while C - 3 - B - 2 do another.

Final: Top four scorers face off in one last debate. Order is chosen by participants. Choice given in ranking order.

This format means that everybody argues each position once and the people are mixed up each time so that you're in a debate that contains everybody at least once.

What do you reckon?!

Blackflag: Just saying - the last tournament was awesome.

admin: +1 (why don't we have "like" button?)

nzlockie: On the forums? Nice idea.

nzlockie: Also, I would want to advertise this tournament here first, and then fill up the remaining slots with anyone from DDO that was interested.

There would be no CX because I think that drags it on too long, and the rounds would be 2 days to post, unlimited characters - only because that's MY preference and I'm the only one commenting so far.

Finally, I'd want to drag in as many external judges as we could swing. If you are participating in the tourney, your vote counts as one, if you're not, it counts as two.

nzlockie: I'll join any tournament, but I would like to get an organized flow going. Maybe a three round, one debate per week, one tournament per month kind of thing.
I still think setting up tournaments should be a user only feature. I like the idea of setting up and customizing our own tournaments.

admin: I like the idea of a like button. Or even a 'ditto' button.

sea_shell: Preference on "kudos"

Blackflag: And maybe a 'touche' button. ..