Google Launches User-Driven Debate Site

Tyndmyr writes "In conjunction with the previously covered Knol system, Google has recently released Knol Debates, where users can vote for and discuss various topics. First up, presidential debates, representing topics from any party, and with some commentary being given by the libertarian Cato Institute. Unfortunately, patent law and technology questions are still rather poorly represented. Oddly enough, Knol Debates doesn't even appear to be in beta. The system makes use of Google Moderator to select questions."

Look...

[Darkness404]

This is only going to fuel the fire of stupidity in the USA. Just read their slogan

Knol Debates: Listening to opinions, debating the facts

That isn't exactly how a debate should be run. It should be listening to facts and debating about opinions unfortunately, there lacks a good source to get facts, and even the presidential debates are more or less set up to keep us more in the dark.

Ideally, there should be a debate where individual citizens can stand up without pre-screened questions and ask the candidates anything pertaining to the election, but today with the news nothing more than glorified hype, that isn't going to happen.

Re:Just What I Need

[Anonymous Coward]

Without wanting to sound too cynical (I'm using Occam's razor here), this is (rather obviously) just another way for Google to profile you. Unless someone can offer a simpler explanation for an advertising company trying to engage you this way.

Having said that, I'll check it out. Playing the part of devil's advocate, of course ;-)

Re:Just What I Need

[Darkness404]

Or you know, Google just is like most of us and are tired of people just voting for a candidate based on the hype machine which is the media. Tired of people only going to vote for Obama because he is black and not Bush and tired of people voting for McCain because hes white and not Bush. Tired of the fact that most of the people who vote have no clue what the issues are, tired that the fate of entire industries are being determined with this election with no clue on what either candidate supports (for example, neither McCain nor Obama claim to support or deny software patents that are killing the US computer industry).

Sure, Google might be profiling you, but I think it is mostly that they are sick and tired of people voting with no clue who they are voting for.

Re:Just What I Need

[erikina]

Try again. By definition Occam's razor cuts against these conspiracies.

Debating the facts

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that especially when it comes to economics and climate, interpretations of the data are basically opinions. I don't think we are going to end up with a single fact repository for these issues.

On the presidential debates, I agree 100%. They are all about management. Especially when they are this close to the end game, nobody wants to risk ruining the sale with a real debate. Even without pre-screened questions, the candidates seem perfectly capable of answering around the questions or answering some other question! Perhaps give Joe Citizen (No relation to Joe the Plumber) a series of questions and follow-ups. I doubt anyone who thought they had a real chance of winning would go anywhere near this.

Re:Here we go again

[blahplusplus]

"Google would rather Knol didn't suffer the ignominious fate of Google Answers [google.com]. Not everything Google does is a hit."

Google answers was a bit of a cash grab, you'd get better responses for money. No one really wants to pay a bunch of google guys money for answers when they can use google themselves and save money.

Re:To what end?

[gbutler69]

I beg to disagree with respect to Wiki markup. I find it highly intuitive. It is, for the most part, a natural extension of how people type things in plain text documents. For example (Bulleted List): * First Bullet Point * Second Bullet and point * Third Bullet Point Bold *text*, Italic/Emphasize _text_, Underlined __Text__ I find this highly convenient and wish this type of markup was supported in Slashdot for example. It's much more intuitive, fast, and cognitively consistent. But, as you can see, Slashdot doesn't support it, so what I typed looks like crap and I have to remember obscure tags instead or use HTML tags. Blech!