Proposal: The debate

I humbly sumbit that we create a rule titled "Debate", with the following text:

Any Disciple may often (once per day, but no more than once every six hours) commence a Debate in the Academy by posting an entry to the main page titled "Debate: X" where X is the subject of the debate in the question.

Debates are either Open or Closed, and default to Open.

The body of the post shall contain the initial argument of the Debate.

Any Disciple may join a Debate by posting a comment in the thread which contains the phrase "I concur" or "I dissent", where these phrases connote agreement or disagreement with either the initial argument or premise of the debate or subsequent rebuttals and counter-arguments. Any member of the Academy who has joined an Open Debate may post further comments on the thread in question if further argumentation is necessary. A member of the Academy who has commenced a Debate is considered to have joined that Debate as a matter of definition.

Once 48 hours have passed after the first Disciple has joined a Debate, any member of the Academy may Close a Debate by posting the phrase "I move to close debate" in that thread. No further argumentation may be posted to a Closed Debate. Once a Debate is Closed, the administration should mark that post in some way so to denote that the Debate has finished.

When a Debate is Closed, all members of the Academy should read through the Debate, and then are allowed to score the Debate by posting a comment on the Closed debate summarizing eir judgment of the facts, presentation, and aesthetics, as well as some text denoting a change of score of each debating member by as much as five points in one and only one field (either Gold, Honor, or Knowledge) as the scoring member sees fit. Each scoring member must then make the accompanying changes in the GNDT, with a comment reflecting the adjustment and the Debate in question. A Disciple may not score eir own arguments.

Enacted at 14-1 by Cayvie at 15:16 on June 29.