June 2021 Presidential Debate - Commentary Thread

[OBD]

NOTE: This is now the commentary thread!

With one side announcing their candidate, I think it's time to talk debates again.

While debates kind of got left by the wayside in February, we tried something new in October with the Discord debate. It was definitely a new experience - with the live-ness of it being a novel, nice touch - but it was definitely controversial. There was also a traditional forum debate IIRC, which in turn has its pros and cons.

I'm proposing a happy medium of the two, one that creates the 'live' effect and forces candidates to answer difficult questions on the spot, while making it available to all Atlasians (including those not on Discord), and increasing forum activity to both. We hold a forum debate with the candidates and moderators all online during a roughly 2-3 hour period, having live questions and a forum commentary thread for folks to potentially crowdsource questions. I think this is a neat hybrid of the two October events, taking the benefits of both while mitigating the drawbacks, and I'd be happy to help organize this and get the old moderator team together to make this a reality.

Thoughts?

[OBD]

Just realized that unless this occurs in the next few days I can’t host. Hope someone can take this and run with it.

[OBD]

With both sides now having apparent nominees I can host this debate on Monday the 7th or Tuesday the 8th, probably around 6-7 PM PST. If this works for all interested parties I'd be happy to host - otherwise someone else could at a later date.

[OBD]

Alright. If this works for everyone, I anticipate holding this tonight at 7PM PST.

[OBD]

Alright. If this works for everyone, I anticipate holding this tonight at 7PM PST.

I look forward to participating.

To clarify, this is a debate for the presidential candidates. You can represent the Ted/Spark ticket but you should probably work it out with Ted to see who's participating here.

Anyway, I'll put the thread up shortly.

[OBD]

I will be participating in the debate.

Alright.

Anyway, this is now the commentary thread! Please submit questions (for tonight's candidates) or concerns here.

The debate thread will be locked until the debate starts, FYI.

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Don't really want to skip over one of the participants but out of respect for Sev, Ted, and WB's time I'll bypass LT's opening statement if he doesn't indicate his presence by 8PM Pacific.

[OBD]

we did one recently and people went crazy. I assumed that's why OBD opted to do it on the forum.


I personally would prefer what we originally wanted with that discord debate and have a voice debate, but MB didn't wish to talk.

Exactly. We literally did this last time and everyone lost their collective sh*t, hence this 'compromise solution'.

That said, this experiment doesn't appear to be working super well. Perhaps next election (or in another debate this round) we could hold a Discord debate, and have a scribe transcribe the answers over to Atlas as they come in to keep everyone up to date?

[OBD]

And thus concludes the live portion of this debate. Thank you to WB, Ted, Sev, and LT, as well as the folks that submitted questions, for participating.

Obviously this format leaves something to be desired. I urge folks to make their thoughts known here so we can work on creating the best possible debate format to allow candidates to better get their messages out to Atlasia in the future. I still have hope for the live format, though if the traditional method is ultimately the best that might still be the way to go.