Fwd: WODC feedback
Abhishek shrestha
:)
Avi
From: Alex Helling <al...@debatewise.com>
Date: Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 9:35 PM
Subject: WODC feedback
To: avii...@gmail.com
Hi,
Thank you very much for taking part in the WODC which is now into the Quarter finals. I am mostly emailing you about another internet debating project we are intending to run.
We are currently planning to during this year to hold a world online debating league (WODL). The intention is that this will start off as being universities only with any university able to enter a team (although we imagine that most will come from debating clubs/societies there is no reason to make it exclusive). This will therefore operate throughout most of the university year (northern hemisphere), starting sometime in October and ending in May.
Each team would only be able to debate with another team once and the more teams a team debates with the more points they will get – so you get points for both winning and simply for taking part in a debate. Because a team can only debate each other team once we could eventually accommodate having a large number of teams.
In the long run we intend to leave almost everything up to the teams themselves. They can seek out other teams to debate and agree on dates and the motion between them (or if they could not decide we would provide one) meaning that it is much more flexible than the WODC. Debatewise would then create the debate for the date/time set by the teams and would find a judge. However as this requires quite a lot of software changes, particularly to allow teams to contact each other we need to incorporate a social networking element to Debatewise, which we are doing anyway but it will take some time. So for the first year we would be doing things much more manually with teams contacting each other through us. Of course as we develop the relevant technologies during the year we will implement them.
This means that we are initially looking for around 20 teams for the first year of the league.
So I would like to know is 1, would this be of interest to you (or anyone you know). 2, would a broader version, possibly for schools in particular or a version open to anyone be of interest to you. 3, if you have any other suggestions or ideas that you think would improve the project.
Back to the WODC; as I have to admit that (and apologise for) we have had several problems, most particularly with the site going down and with voting I might as well also use this as a chance to ask you for any feedback you might have on the WODC. What you think we could do better, what changes you would make etc. So that we can take it into account for next year and hopefully make the WODC much better for future years. If you are someone who has already gotten back to me with feedback no need to send it again as I already have it.
Regards,
Alex Helling
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Abhishek Shrestha I Co- founder and Strategic Member
Nepalese Youth for Climate Action I www.nyca.net.np climatenepal.wordpress.com
Core Team Member I Nepali Youth Debater's Club (NYDC)
nepaliyouthdebaters.wordpress.com
Email: avi...@nyca.net.np
+977 9841 451 667
Skype: avishk27
Blog: http://avishekblog.wordpress.com/
"Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead