Debate the substance with precision

Debates conducted online are rarely constructive and often frustrating: misunderstandings, straw-man arguments, missing evidence or quotes without the context they belong in push the substance of the matter aside.

Fair Debate addresses these problems with a combination of technical properties and specific rules of communication. A debate is taken apart here into its individual statements ("segments"), which can be answered individually.

The obvious reaction is then no longer undifferentiated blanket criticism of an entire contribution, but the concrete answer to one specific point. Because contributions to the debate are also published as signed git commits, the platform's neutrality is verifiable. The goal is a place where controversial topics are discussed factually and in the depth they require, and where insight actually comes of it – and with it better solutions to real problems.

• The example debate ∅ (3|10|3) 3 mo ago
  Explains the format in the format: what a segment key is, why every contribution is a git commit, and how to answer one.
• Which flavour of ice cream is the best? ∅ (10|25|8) 8 mo ago
  A small and deliberately harmless dispute — the short way to see what several parties and a few levels of nesting look like.
• Pension reform: implement the commission's recommendations unchanged? ∅ (2|11|4) 4 mo ago
  In German. A pointed opinion piece taken apart along four threads — in one of them the opening party concedes and rewrites its own proposal.
• Ban phones at schools, and social media below 16? ∅ (3|3|1) 3 mo ago
  In German, and deliberately unfinished: three objections, most of the text still unanswered. The place to write the next contribution.

Show all public debates