I think the debate section should be in 2 parts Judged debates and Informal debates. It would make looking for threads easier.

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What do you mean by those two?

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He means that some debates should have a judge-able template, such that the debate eventually ends and zgs decide which outcome wins, and another section with debates that go on unhinged till the end of time with no winner

it's not a horrible idea, but there's not enough activity to warrant it, second, there's no criteria for judging, how long do you wait for before you vote, how do you decide if it's over... how do you decide if a topic is not emotional enough to count. A strongly emotional topic like animal rights, no matter how strong either side makes arguments for they are highly unlikely to change anyone's mind, and so, you might as well vote before the debate even ends.

Those are just a couple of problems with the idea. It would be cool if some debates could be judged, though.

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i think 3 rounds of empirical evidence for each side then thread locked.

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I think discussion is not about 'who wins'.

But if you do want to have jugded debates then entrants shouldn't be able to choose their own stance on a subject, but rather be appointed one. That's how it's officially done most of the time anyways.
However competitive debating has many facets that wouldn't make it work on a forum. Being able to quickly retaliate for example.
The strong point of competitive debating is that it's all about the skills, not so much about the object.

On a forum it would probably just get overly emotional.

Besides, there are already people who are afraid to post something in the debate topics because they're afraid they'll say something stupid. I don't think that will improve by appointing winners (and thus losers too).

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