Should we borrow from Cross-X.com?

Many of the readers and contributors on this forum have previously looked at or posted on Cross-X.com. Given the success of that website, I am thinking about integrating some features from the CX forum into this site.

Do you think we should have:

1. Regional sections (i.e. northeast, west, etc.)
2. Evidence Trading
3. Other forms of debates
4. Current Events
5. College Debate
6. Coaching

As I want the content of this site to be controlled by the users, what do you think about potentially adding these sections? Would they be helpful? Even more importantly, would they be used?

1. Regional sections (i.e. northeast, west, etc.) - pointless, why is this better than discussing all tournaments in one forum
2. Evidence Trading - definitely
3. Other forms of debates - maybe, if you do, include popular non-national events (i.e. parli)
4. Current Events - not really, miscellaneous forum can be used if there's some event debaters are interested in, probably won't be used too much
5. College Debate - sure
6. Coaching - as in?

I like the idea of regional sections actually. It would be cool to discuss smaller issues especially when this website begins to include more members in the discussions.

We shouldn't have evidence trading. That is a stupid practice. It encourages laziness and the misapplication of evidence. Keep LD real.

JohnnyFontane wrote:We shouldn't have evidence trading. That is a stupid practice. It encourages laziness and the misapplication of evidence. Keep LD real.

Trading evidence rests on some of the same reasons as why there are caselists. Evidence trading can lead to preparation for these positions. Also, lazy debaters don't do well and will be lazy whether or not we give them evidence. I think evidence trading will make more people join this site. People who need help and are looking for information can come here and that will increase the amount of traffic this site gets. Making an evazon type evidence file selling program might also be considered. (It wouldn't be as effective as the on cross-x because we can't recycle evidence as most policy debaters, but it might be helpful for people making theory files and preparing for Ks.)

Seriously? You don't think having easy access to other people's stuff would encourage lazy debaters to be a little bit more lazy? In a world without evidence trading, LDers don't have too many options to avoid cutting cards, writing cases, etc.

I think the argument for case sharing is a lot different. That argument pertains to increasing openness. I am not sure how evidence trading accomplishes this (unless we would mandate that all good debaters post their cases or something equally absurd).

Frankly I don't like evidence trading. I think LD kids do it too often on CX already, and bringing it to the only forum for LD would be a bad thing for the activity.

Lazy people don't do the work that is required to do well. If they get cards from evidence trading, they can use them, sure. Without evidence trading, they don't get cards. There is not a big difference; they still are lazy. They will know less about the topic than someone who has worked and will probably lose and could misapply evidence. There's also no impact to someone having cards and being lazy; it doesn't harm us in any way because they will still be bad debaters. Also, it helps people who don't have big teams who share evidence. Lazy people with big teams are getting better cases without doing work, so lazy people are still going to have evidence. Having an evidence sharing forum can help those without a big team.

Evidence trading would increase openness like caselists. People can post the cards they use; that's what a caselist is. It's also better because people will ask for evidence while researching instead of waiting until after a tournament to know what people are running.

The people who give out the evidence also check back any abuse by people just begging for evidence. People could just PM the evidence they are trading or not give it out.

JohnnyFontane wrote:Seriously? You don't think having easy access to other people's stuff would encourage lazy debaters to be a little bit more lazy? In a world without evidence trading, LDers don't have too many options to avoid cutting cards, writing cases, etc.

I think the argument for case sharing is a lot different. That argument pertains to increasing openness. I am not sure how evidence trading accomplishes this (unless we would mandate that all good debaters post their cases or something equally absurd).

Frankly I don't like evidence trading. I think LD kids do it too often on CX already, and bringing it to the only forum for LD would be a bad thing for the activity.

You can't TRADE if you haven't done your own work. An evidence trading forum wouldn't become "oh let's steal this person's prep" it would be "I'll trade you one of the files I have in exchange for one you have." I honestly don't see how this could be bad.
If I remember correctly, you were the one advocating a totally open disclosure policy in LD. That would encourage much more laziness than evidence trading...
But, as Old said, there's no impact to having lazy debaters. They'll be lazy and not know what their ev says, so they won't do well. Doesn't affect the good debaters.

How about we have a "other debate issues" forum for non-ld events, college, coaching, and evidence trading for now. There's not enough traffic to justify individual regional forums or forums specific to those topics yet.

And any evidence that is posted in those evidence exchange forums on cross-x is generally generic impact ev that can be useful if you're looking for something very simple (ie terrorism leads to extinction, or Nuke war leads to extinction, or dehum is bad, or whatever). In the same way that policy files are good for finding generic answers (to prep out answers to), impact cards, or cites (say you're into a particular K author and are looking for good secondary lit on their theories), evidence exchange forums are neat for building a base of generic impact cards for when you don't have a more specific card/as a backfile. It's not meant to be a way of building an entire strat. It's a way to supplement topic specific literature.

And like others have said, lazy debaters are going to be obvious when they don't know what their bad evidence says. If you do good research on your own, you'll be in a much better position anyways