Usergroups and the Debate Room

Open discussion has many things going for it. The level of discussions here is often stellar.

But at the same time discussions between like-minded individuals also has its benefits.

The Debate Room is not just for debate, in fact it was created for the sole purpose of having individuals have more control over special topics.

There have also been a few political usergroups that have had their own forums and have benefited from this.

Creating forums for each group is not feasable so the Debate Room is a shared room where these groups can take turns using.

Recently there have been a lot of attempts made to take over forums and threads. A very vocal and disruptive few have demanded that whole swaths of members be prohibited from using the public forums. The staff has been getting questions on why people are "allowed" to use certain forums.

This is counterproductive. The public forums will remain public. With the debate room the members who wish for selective discussions will be able to conduct them in that setting.

The user-groups will not be cliques. They will be groups of like-minded individuals who would like to discuss things with each other.

Separate groups can decide to meet in this debate room for a discussion.

Members who are not a part of any of these groups will still be able to use the debate room if they schedule a discussion.

So with the debate room we hope to enable the best of both worlds. The free style discussions as well as discussions in which members can tailor the thread's participation to their desires.

This is being rushed under a heavy work load. All the site staff is very busy with personal work and the tremendous amount of work that this site generates. So please bear with us as this new feature is developed "on the fly".

If you would like to schedule a discussion in the Debate room post a request here.

Please use this thread for questions about usergroups and the Debate room.