Debate Digest: Teacher-student friendships on Facebook, Law school, Balanced budget amendment, US debt ceiling deal.

From Debatepedia

We are trying to expand our system by which we involve readers and volunteers in the tasks that lie before us. This section is dedicated to those ongoing as well as day-to-day tasks that you can help with.

Articles that could use your help

See longer lists of editing tasks at the top of each article. Keep in mind, it is helpful to think about what needs doing in the context of what we are aiming for in each article. We are trying to achieve the most comprehensive documentation of the primary pro and con arguments in a public debate. Refer to the abortion debate article for a greater understanding of what this looks like, and the direction we need to be moving each article.

See also Category:Underdeveloped debates.

• Liberal vs Labor in Australia - This is a brand new debate that needs facts as content. See the pro/con resources on the page to get started.
• Banning religious political parties - This is a new debate with no content. Start by building a pro/con resources section and draw arguments and quotations from these resources, documenting them on the debate page.
• NAFTA - Pro pro/con articles at the bottom of this article need to be read and argument-quotations from them need to be cut-and-pasted into this debate article and its argument pages. Some arguments also need argument summaries or summarizing-quotes.
• Prohibition of school prayer - The arguments at the bottom of this article need shortening, cleaning up.
• Developing world debt, cancellation of - This article, like many others, is drawn from the Debatabase, and needs some overhauling. Most importantly, it needs more pro/con resources, and development from there.
• Eliminating "under God" from the American Pledge of Allegiance - This debate article is starting from scratch. It needs, first, a pro/con resources section, from which arguments and quotations can be drawn into this article.
• Home Schooling - This debate needs to move toward becoming a model debate.
• Child labor, using sanctions to end - Many sub-debate sections in the debate article need to be cleaned-up. The first one is OK, the rest are sloppy.
• Maximum weekly working hours - Some of the argument "claims" in this article are too long and need to be tightened up.
• Debate: Ban on advertising targeting children - This articles needs many of its sub-debate sections re-formatted and needs an expanded pro/con resources section.
• Debate: Is Pluto a planet? - This article needs its con section to be reformatted and for more pro and con resources to be gathered, and for arguments and quotations from them to be presented in this article.
• Outsourcing - This article needs an expanded pro/con resources section.
• Turkey, EU Membership for - Same with this debate.
• Single-sex schools - This article needs an expanded pro/con resources section.
• Children, Choosing Sex of - The pro/con resource section of this debate needs expansion.
• Rehabilitation vs Retribution - This article needs some sections reformatted, and its con resources section developed.
• Corporate personhood - This article needs the listed pro and con articles to be read, and quotations to be drawn from them into the article.
• Debate: EU constitution reform treaty (Lisbon Treaty) - This article could use quotations integrated from Wikiquote's article on the subject. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Reform_Treaty.
• Debate: EU Common Foreign and Security Policy - The following article should be read and arguments and quotations integrated into this debate article: Burkard Schmitt. "Common policy failure: Disunity holds the EU back from a major global role". International Herald Tribune. February 13th, 2003
• Decriminalizing marijuana possession - This article has a pretty good pro/con resources section. Pro and con articles from this need to be systematically read, arguments and quotes drawn from them, and then "read" and "non-read" articles need to be indicated within the pro/con resources section.
• Debate: Child Curfews - This is another Debatabase article that needs a pro/con resources section first, and then needs to be developed from there.
• Debate: Ban on battlefield lasers - This is a new debate article that needs a pro/con resources section, and basically needs to be taken from start to finish.
• Debate: Ban on snowmobiles in US national parks - This article has some arguments that have no argument summaries or summarizing quotations. It is also a very young article that needs the development of its pro/con resources section, from which pro and con arguments and quotations can be drawn.
• Carbon Emissions, Cap-and-trade versus Carbon Tax - This article needs a major clean-up. It has substantial content, but its contents are currently not up to Debatepedia's standards.
• Debate: Calendar reform - This article has a section that could use standardizing with other sections. It also could use more sections that reflect the pros and cons of the various calendar reform proposals.
• Debate: Bill of rights in the UK - This article needs more con resources posted in the pro/con resources section; articles that advocate against a Bill of Rights in the UK.
• Banning Islamist political parties - Another article needing a pro/con resources section and for pros and cons to be drawn from these resources.
• Debate: Attorney-Client Privilege - There's a strong Wikipedia article that could be read on this topic. Arguments should be drawn from it, as well as from articles that are referenced in the Wikipedia article.
• Debate: Abolition of art subsidies - There is a good list of pro/con articles at the bottom of this debate. Read an article, quote from it, and then mark that it's been read and quoted.
• Debate: Armed pilots in airplanes - Another article in the beginning stages that needs, first, for the pro/con section to be further developed, and then arguments and quotations drawn from these resources.
• Debate: Homosexuality - We need to develop this aticle, effectively, from scratch.
• Debate: Arranged marriage - There are some arguments that need claims. A pro/con resources section needs to be created and arguments and quotes drawn from these articles.
• Debate: Banning the confederate flag - This article needs a pro/con resources section and development from there. There is one argument that is far too long on the con side.
• Debate: EU Common Foreign and Security Policy - This debate is from Debatabase and could use modifications listed on the article.
• Debate: Corporal punishment of children - Needs quotations from main pro/con sources. Debatepedia:Getting started tutorial#Writing_model_pro_and_con_arguments Needs arguments isolated and sub-debate sections organized.
• Debate: Polygamy - This debate is highly developed, but needs to be cleaned up. Also, it needs more quotations to be drawn from the pro/con websites on the topic and put into argument pages.
• Debate: DNA database of criminals - Needs arguments separated out, pro/con resources gathered, and arguments and quotes drawn from these resources.
• Debate: Waterboarding - Needs a pro/con video section, more quotes, and a background section.
• Debate: Affirmative action - Needs more quotations out on the debate page.
• Debate: Animal rights - Needs arguments that cross-apply from Debate: Animal testing to be transfered over to this article.
• Debate: International military intervention in Darfur - Needs a major overhaul, a pro/con resources section, many more quotes, and a major clean-up of wording.

On-going, important editorial tasks

See the 'Editing tasks and things you can do' section on Debatepedia's main page

On a semi-daily basis, the Underdeveloped debate section on the main page should be updated now. For editoral tasks that

a) are the most interesting

and

b) need your help to edit them,

see this section for regularly updated editoral tasks.

Be a part of the Debatepedia community and start editing now!

Editorial skimming of Daily Debate Digest debates

Roughly every day, we publish on the Main Page's Daily Debate Digest a debate that is very good. BUT, BUT, BUT, we do this very quickly, as we are trying to build content at a rapid pace, and make plenty of mistakes. If you are willing to read these articles, search for mistakes, and click edit and correct them when you see them, that would be great, and would be highly valuable to the site.

Help publish a debate in the Daily Debate Digest

If you want to put your editorial efforts to high-impact use (where lots of people will read your work), one thing you can do is help publish on the Daily Debate Digest. You should go to the Daily Debate Digest Publishing Calendar, see what's coming up, and see what you can help with. You can put your name under one of those debates too, and "sign-up". You should prepare to help meet the deadline for publishing that debate on the Daily Debate Digest, and you can get ahold of Brooks Lindsay (Debatepedia:Contact), the editor of the site, to coordinate efforts.

Build debate background sections

Many debates lack background sections, or at least good ones. These are very important to introducing a topic. The way we've been doing this is to provide in one paragraph a brief introduction to the history of the debate and the context. In the second paragraph we've been presenting an overview of the questions that frame the debate and that readers should expect to answer in their deliberations. See the following example. http://wiki.idebate.org/index.php/Debate:Clinton_vs._Obama#No These backgrounds are particularly needed in the Past Daily Debate Digest topics.

Build pro/con argument summaries

Realizing that many people want a distilled overview of arguments, we are opening pro/con argument summary sections at the top of debate pages. This is a great way to jump in, particularly because there are so many debates up with masses of arguments, but that badly lack this kind of pro/con summary.

Linking argument pages with counter-argument pages

You can open a section at the bottom of argument pages that creates a link (via the wiki code of [[ ]]) to a counter-argument. This makes it easier for readers to jump between arguments and counter-arguments.

Pro/con resources sections

Pro/con resource sections are an important part of any given debate page. They are the starting point for building debate articles, containing the main pro/con resources from which we can draw arguments, evidence, and quotes. Therefore, building a pro/con section list is a great way to get involved in helping the Debatepedia community. Check out the pro/con resources section at the bottom of this article: Debate: Withdrawing from Iraq as a guide of what it should look like. Click edit on it to view the formatting and coding for making hyperlinks. Emulate this when you create a pro/con resources section in another debate where it is needed.