On 10/11/07, fredbaud@waterwiki.info fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:

-----Original Message----- From: Marc Riddell [mailto:michaeldavid86@comcast.net]

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What I'm talking about, Fred, is an exercise space where the focus is on the skills of discussion and debate, not the subject. Where two or more persons would get together; a subject would be chosen at random, and sides taken. Then, at some point, the sides would be switched. Observing would be persons not involved in the subject of the discussion, but there to offer input to the participants about their individual techniques. Call it "Debate Camp".

Marc

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Talk about a bus man's holiday. And we already have the switching sides. If you want to remove any link you're censoring, if you want to not remove a link or even talk to a harasser you are not supporting users. This is our life, we don't need a place to practice it.

I think Marc's point is that we're not learning much at the meta / process level on what we're doing wrong from being in the middle of the contentious debates.

It is extremely hard as an individual to take the step back and see what we're doing wrong in personal arguments or interactions. Communities are no easier, perhaps harder.

Somewhere that we could do those learning exercises and try to find community coping mechanisms for the real-life flame wars might be useful.

We also could do a better job of taking the step back and looking at the meta / process level in the real-life debates, but a separate training ground appeals to me, if we can make one and convince people to use it.