I was wondering how well y'all'd think a BBS system similar to this site would work for philosophical debates and such. A possible change would be branching the debate any time someone says something debate worthy. (e.g. A post with "God is great." could brach of into two debates: "Is there a god?" and "Is god great?") I'm really thinking about looking into making something like this, but I don't know how successful it'd be.

I'd have to somehow draw in a crowd, yet manage to filter (at least partially) people who are there just to push their views. Without working towards growth of knowledge and understanding. Also, I'd want people to be able to read all of the debate and maybe comment on it.

So I figure I should ask if anyone would be interested before putting too much effort into this guy.

Just got out of class, so forgive me if this sounds flippant - I'm still in "take in information, give no shit." mode.

First, filtering in the "people who want to work towards growth of knowledge" is difficult on various levels, mainly because people can be like that towards certain subjects. I personally think that dealing with those types of people actually furthers your work towards coming to your own understanding of a subject.

I'm a sink or swim person, so a stubborn and unmoveable wall of principles is a wonderful Trial By Fire. You're forced to rapidly try to come up with points to dispute their claims, and in the process they will shoot down illogical fallacies like so many falling leaves. The result being you either collapse under the incident and give up, or you come out of it with a point of view you can easily call your own.

Of course, a lot of people don't like that... So again, it's an individual thing.

As for the BBS format, it would be interesting. BBS systems have been generally left behind for forums when it comes to those kinds of discussions because it's simpler to quote and load large threads. Nesting threads, IE: the branching idea you mentioned, would be an interesting bit of code.

I think it's quite possible to do... But seems needlessly complicated. Your thread would act like a folder, which holds the other two conversations, which could then act as their own folders... Eventually one thread becomes a file tree. I have a vague idea of how that would look, but it seems messy.

It'd be easier to just administratively split off the posts that were ranging towards the branch and stick them into a new thread all together then direct people to that thread.

Efficiently speaking, a normal forum based system would work better for this. BBS systems shine on "current events" type communities such as Dollars - however - I see where you might be coming from. BBS would allow a new person to see a summary of the thread purpose (first post) and the contents of the most recent additions.

It's inviting, user friendly, and promotes casual participation. As opposed to forums which often give off the feel of something being a dedicated time consuming event to catch up on.

So you seem stuck between efficient coding wise and extremely user friendly. Of course, it's always possible to give a live-feed in BBS format of the top, say... 5 threads stored on an otherwise forum-format site. If you set it to refresh every X seconds or so, or maybe just whenever the user themselves refresh, then that may be what you're looking for.

Unfortunately, the weekend for me starts now - So any knowledge of coding, or any ability for me to give a flying fuck about how it could be done, will not be available until next tuesday. It is an interesting coding concept though, should go in the tech board.

As far filtering goes... You'd just need to make personal calls on that. Some people enjoy the point-pushers, others hate them, and some people only push their points on certain issues. If you really want to handle it, then it would just require an active and thoughtful moderating routine and some practice to get a feel for when they're healthily being stubborn or when they're stagnating the growth.

First of all, thanks for taking the time to reply. It's interesting that you bring up "You're forced to rapidly try to come up with points to dispute their claims, and in the process they will shoot down illogical fallacies like so many falling leaves." That's one of the things I'd like to see happening. It's funny that you mention leaves, because I was thinking of using a tree as a parallel for the site (branching posts, a tree of life symbolism, very popular posts could "bloom", etc). I see your point in letting random users in, and I guess a good way of "filtering" would be similar to the dollars, those who are liked well enough by friends to be told of the site/those curious enough to look into it can join.

You very perceptively caught why I enjoy the bbs format, cleaner, feels more user friendly and more casual, being able to see what's been most recently spoken about. However, I do see where you're coming from with the forums, and perhaps some wild forum/bbs splice could work it out (though admittedly I'm still leaning towards bbs).

As for the branching posts, I always imagined a collapsible tree as the visual, but there is the problem of monitoring proper branching and making sure people don't talk about things that are down other branches, etc. Perhaps taking the new debatable item and starting a new thread with it as the topic, putting a redirect in the old thread, is a good idea.

Last bit, what's everyone's thought on some sort of voting? I was thinking of treating posts as "leaves" and allowing people to vote on the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of each post (or something like that). Then, based on some sort of scoring system, the post could become more red (representing that it's getting ready to fall off) or more green (showing a "healthy" leaf). What are y'alls thoughts on voting systems and that particular voting system.

unholy chizzzzzzz.... o-o you actually... i mean i...but you..


okay i stumbled upon this thread just becuz i saw so many new threads on random, so i was curious about wut else was made while i was away. But apparently, this has lost all interest, i'm guessing because of two things:

1) both of your posts are 'tldr' style

2) people arent interested in philosophical stuff.

But anyways, wutever, i actually am. But in any way, hao would BBS respond to having this kind of debate? Well, how about this (its prolly already been stated by Aya somewhere in that long post but oh well): We've had our share of 'Does God exist?' kind of threads and we've all had our own diabolical thoughts on things. They usually didn't end well, consisting with someone having to claim the thread was dead, leading to trolls, or having the thread permasaged. In any case, I think if we were able to ourselves cool and collected during a debate like this, we could possibly pull it off, as long as we don't go into a crazy man eat man war...

bump

Well Kao, I wouldn't generalize. The people that post most frequently do so because they post briefly, and not on topics that require an essay's worth of response. I think these topics are good once in a while, because they actually get intelligent responses beyond "lol ya."

I'm actually pretty interested in how this turns out, see if anybody else likes metaphysical debates about things. I've been thinking about this question for a while (a week is a fair amount of time for me) and was wondering if you guys could help me see.

If life exists to only make more life, why bother with all the trouble of starting life in the first place? Why make it if the only thing it can do is get bigger?

You have my full support and the best way would probably be to create a new page, where separate topics could be discussed. A "Philosophy" tab to the left would look quite appealing.

...I'm not entirely sure this is a good thread to bring back right now.

First of all, it's not a thread for discussing philosophy, but a thread for discussing the idea of making a separate site for that. Since it's old and OP is kind of gone, you can't really carry on the conversation with them.

Second, for the most part, (well phrased) philosophical questions and discussions go on Main. So that's where you might want to go >>7. There's a thread called What's Life About that might fit what you're looking to talk about. Or might not.

And finally, >>8 pros and cons for that are in this thread in Suggestions.

Might as well...

>>7 The way you're asking that question it sounds like you're assuming things have to have a grand purpose for existing and/or were made by something/someone to fulfill that purpose. Almost every religion in the world has tried answering that question, so you might want to look at some religious philosophies and see which one is right for you.

If you take away the idea of a creator and a purpose, the 'why' question becomes kind of pointless. Life just happened, because auspicious conditions and a certain chain of events made it so and will continue existing until another chain of events will wipe it out. So 'why' doesn't really get an answer, it's more of a 'how'.

I was looking for the grand purpose, what will it accomplish in the end. I was redirected here because I was told the main page was not the right place for it, so I put a new reply on this, as was suggested. So where do I put it if the only two places it can be choose not to accept it?

>>11 I don't often advise people where to put their threads, because I don't think I'm very good at it... This isn't 'The Philosophy Thread' though, so linking to it was wrong.

You made a thread on Main and got told it didn't belong? I don't pay enough attention to things on Main, so I probably missed it. But the way I see it, if you could manage a couple of paragraphs as a discussion starter, there wouldn't really be a reason for it not to fit on Main /shrug. But as I was saying I'm not the best at judging these things.

Not exactly. I replied to someone who avoided all the fancy words and just asked the question, and then the post was noticed, and we both were saged. Even still. Thanks anyhow though