Welcome to the Argument Clinic
A new, coherent form of Internet debate
The Argument Clinic is an experimental debate website. Its purpose is to create an online environment where people can come to reach a resolution in their debates with others, and an online resource for finding an exhaustive exploration of disputed topics. Anybody with a strong opinion is encouraged to join, and debate pretty much whatever they would like. The site is in an early alpha stage, and I am still experimenting with the technology and psychology involved.
This site works similarly to a usual web forum, but structured to reach the truth systematically. To learn more about how this works, take a look at the about page, or just check out some of the current debates to see how it's worked out so far. We'd love to have you join, so if you'd like to propose a debate, or join a currently proposed debate, feel free to sign up.
If you have any questions, comments or complaints, we'd love to hear from you! Please email me at illlogic@argumentclinic.net
News
Aug 11, 2010
I thought I'd give a quick update on the state of the site.
As you know, development has slowed down severely. Life has unfortunately gotten in the way. However, much of that is in preparation for making more time for the site. Without going into any personal details, if all goes according to plan, much, much more time should be spent on this within a couple months. After which, there should be more outreach, and more activity again. At the moment, I simply couldn't handle very much activity anyway.
However, after a long break, a couple debates have started almost of their own accord, which is frankly very encouraging. And they've probably been the most successful and interesting debates I've had so far. As the debaters may have noted, I have been taking a while to mediate. I actually didn't expect any debates to start at this point, so I was caught a bit off guard as far as making time for that. But again, I should have much more time soon. And it's clear that before too long, I can't be the only mediator around here. For now, the debaters have been very patient so far, and it is appreciated.
I also wanted to add that I recognize that these debates are sortof hard to read and follow, since there's a lot of meta-discussion, and big walls of questions coming from me. Among the upcoming features will be improvements in this arena. I won't say much more at this point. In the mean time, I am grateful to the debaters and readers for putting up with it so far!
Stay tuned,
-Ill Logic
Nov 4, 2009
Well, after some outreach, particularly to some political "subreddits" on Reddit and a little bit on Twitter, we've gained 20 something new users and started up a few new debates, a couple of which seem to be going fairly strong. The response so far, though as of yet small, is very encouraging. I'd like to welcome you all, and thank you very much for your interest.
From what I've mediated so far, I've already started to learn what techniques may be more or less effective in clarifying debates. I've also heard some requests for features, so I have some idea what's a priority. So, just so you know what to expect soon, here's some of what's in the near future plans, in approximately this chonological order:
- Timestamps for posts
- Last Post, Number of posts, etc. for each debate on the front page
- A blog (to replace what you're looking at now)
- Show debate text above post submission box (so you can look back in the same window as you type)
- List of "Your current debates" and "Your current subdebates"
Stay tuned to @argumentclinic on Twitter for updates. (Until I've implemented options for email alerts, I will avoid making such minor announcements via email).
-Ill Logic
Current Debates
(newest to oldest)
Proposed Debates
(newest to oldest)