/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Political discourse has dropped off a cliff. No one could blame people for this. The political problems of today are massive in scale, existential in importance, and often deeply personal.
However, this is keeping anything from being done. This will continue. People will drive their party to take action, which will cause a backlash effect, halting progress in any direction.
Some people believe that the only way forward is the complete breakdown of the social order. These people are waiting for the violence to start. But we have to believe in a better way, or else we will eventually wind right back up where we are. No political system lasts forever, and even if your particular political utopia takes place, it can eventually devolve into what we have now.

What we need to avoid this is better tools - better tools for making decisions, better tools for informing the public, and better tools to direct our area of focus.
One of the things that I believe holding us back on this point is the present-day structure of political disagreements. That is to say - little or no structure at all.

When there are disagreements on a political point, the most productive way, currently, to resolve these disagreements (or at least air them out) is political debate. Ask yourself - is even the most well-run and polite political debate the best way to present an argument for the general public to make an assessment of who is correct for themselves?
First of all, it's nearly impossible to address every argument and piece of evidence provided. Arguments spread out like an infinitely deep tree structure - every argument can have one or more counter-argument, which can all be supported by one or more pieces of evidence, which can all have issues, and all those issues can have counter-points, and all those counter-points can have counter-points, ad infinitum… Even if you could present this in the theoretically perfect debate, and no one could follow it - and even if you could, you would have to look up all the citations for yourself. Even after all that research, there is little way for you to contribute to the argument other than start a whole new debate from scratch, which likely would not be perfect!

I propose that a Wiki-like structure is a more ideal way to structure an argument on any topic.
The initial topic of argument can be laid out with points and supporting arguments from each side. One or more counter-arguments can be linked at the end of each argument. One or more pieces of supporting evidence can be linked to arguments and counter-arguments, with potential issues with the evidence such as methodology issues laid out in a nested structure, with each side able to respond.
There are obvious issues getting different sides of an issue to collaborate on something like this together, but first let me talk about the advantages. First of all, all sides will be able to identify potentially weak areas which they should focus their research efforts and arguments. Both sides will be able to educate the public on their points and allow them to decide for themselves. And most of all, both sides will hopefully stop wasting time spinning their wheels in the same direction and repeating their strongest points over and over again until they run out of time.

Now let me say that I do not necessarily identify as left or right leaning, but I spend most of my time on /pol/. I will be getting thoughts from both your board and /pol/. I thought, since /pol/ has more activity than this board, it would be more fair to give you guys a chance to respond first to minimize the risk of brigading.
I also have friends of friends in Wikipedia leadership positions. And I can say that, as a person who often disagrees with them, I am impressed by Wikipedia's ability to remain impartial on many points. On other points, I am less impressed. However, I have faith in the idea that, if we lay the correct structure, productive argument will take place.

I am here to get your thoughts on this idea, particularly:
>Would you be willing to collaborate on a system of argument like this, even with your worst enemies?
>What would you want to see in terms of the rules of this site to protect and enrich its users and content?
>Say your political enemies make up most of the leadership and moderation team. Would you still be comfortable? How could rules best prepare us for this situation?
>How would you want to handle cases where arguments could be construed as hate speech in some countries?

It's not exhaustive, but I have a few suggestions for rules which could possibly help some of these issues:
>Arguments are not to be removed unless if they are trollish, duplicated, or incomprehensible. Instead, arguments can be marked as weak/unsubstantiated, or their writing can be improved or merged with other articles. Similarly, content of arguments is not to be removed unless it matches one of the categories above or it's immaterial to the argument in question.
>Discussion pages are to be limited to the value of edits. Arguments about the topic, related topics, or any political disagreement are strictly prohibited and should be confined to proper pages. Similarly, other official communication channels should refrain from any political discussion.

I would also want to see arguments which could be construed as hate speech preserved, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, given I come from the "politically incorrect" board. I believe that if an argument is made solely out of bias, it should be easy to disprove, and it should be kept up to allow for counter-argument. I am even okay with a disclaimer on these articles.

Currently, WikiDebate exists, but its biggest problem is that it is not evidence-driven. Which I believe political debates should be.

Well, sorry for the essay /leftypol/. Let me know what you think.