No friends, the revolution will be here, online, and soon it will be coming to you in the form of CreateDebate2008.com.

Those of you who have been frequenting CreateDebate already have a feel for how these arguments are designed to stimulate critical thought, engage users, and hopefully provide a platform for useful discussion. In and of itself this is a worthwhile goal, but in the context of an election, it is that much more significant.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave somewhere, then you know that these are very, very exciting times in United States politics. But excitement comes with a bit of peril, does it not?

War, potential recession, credit crunches, and housing bubbles are just a few of the things which have U.S. citizens poised to participate. People are eager to heighten their level of engagement. Citizens are clamoring for a voice and wanting to be heard upon acquiring that voice. And this is true on every side of the political spectrum.

The internet is a major part of this rising tide. For better or for worse, print media is going the way of the dinosaurs, and that leaves us with the internet. That leaves us with an opportunity to be one of the most informed voting populaces which has ever amassed to the polls. There simply are no more excuses!

Ever since mankind has been roaming the Earth, people have been philosophizing on the role of religion in their existence and wondering if there was an “intelligent being” that put them here on this Earth.  Whether it was the Christian God, the Muslim Allah, the Supreme Being of Scientology, the Flying Spaghetti Monster of Pastafarianism, or the evolution of the Atheists, people will argue until they’re blue in the face about their religion.  To me, only one thing is for sure, nobody really knows what happened because none of us were there.  But don’t let that get you down, there are plenty of arguments for and against all sorts of different religious beliefs.  From the highly believable to the “you can’t seriously believe that, can you?” and everywhere in between, CreateDebate presents to you the top 10 Religious Debates of All Time. 

 10.  Was Ra, the Egyptian Sun God,  the father of all the Pharaohs? 
Ancient Egyptians believed that Ra was the Sun God, commander of the sky, earth, and underworld.  He is the most central god of the Egyptian pantheon. Most Egyptians believed that Pharaohs were the sons of Ra and erected solar temples and obelisks in his honor.  However, some Egyptians did not believe that Ra created the Earth but didn’t have an appropriate outlet to vent their frustrations (especially if they preferred their heads to remain attached to their body).   

9.  Was Haile Sellasie I, the former Emperor of Ethiopa God incarnate? 
Rastafarians believe that Haile Sellasie I is the living God incarnate, or the Messiah, who will lead the people of Africa and African diaspora to freedom.  Rastafarians believe that exiled Africans will one day return to Ethiopa with the help of the Messiah to escape the oppression caused by Babylon.  The Rastafarians movement was started primarily in Jamaica, although the ranks of Rastafarians throughout the world is estimated to be near 1 million strong.   

8.  Is Scientology a cult?
The Church of Scientology, originally founded by L. Ron Hubbard, believes “that Man is basically good, that he is seeking to survive, [and] that his survival depends on himself and upon his fellows and his attainment of brotherhood with the universe” (from Church of Scientology’s statement of beliefs).   However, many people believe that this Church is a cult that was set up as a tax shelter for Hubbard’s Dianetics book profits and that is primarily intended to extract large sums of money from their celebrity cult members.  

7. Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene?
This debate was popularized by the highly successful (and highly controversial) book “The DaVinci Code” by Dan Brown.   The book claims that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, had a child, and the Church covered it up through the years for self-serving reasons.  While Brown has stated that the book is fiction, it has caused much debate and controversy, especially within the Roman Catholic Church. 

6.   Are Mormons Christians?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith, Jr. in the Spring of 1820 after publishing the Book of Mormon, one of the faith’s scriptures, which Joseph Smith said he translated from plates of gold that were buried near his home in a place shown to him by the angel Moroni. Many traditional Christians reject Mormonism as a Christian religion, claiming that the story of Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates is fiction and that he was not a prophet. 

5.  Was the Flying Spaghetti Monster responsible for intelligent design? 
 The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (CoFSM) was founded in 2005 by Bobby Henderson to protest the teaching of intelligent design in school.  Bobby parodies the theory of an intelligent designer by professing belief in a supreme creator made of spaghetti and meatballs. The CoFSM has gained a huge following, primarily on the Internet in response to the Christian movement to teach intelligent design in classrooms.

4. Is Islam a religion of violence or a religion of peace?  
This debate has received much attention, not only on CreateDebate but throughout much of the mainstream media since the terrorist attacks of 9/11.  While Islam’s central tenets preach, several extremists have taken passages from the Qur’an such as, “Make war on them until idolatry shall cease and God’s religion shall reign supreme.” (8:39)” to mean that Muslims are called to kill any non-Muslim to ensure Islam is the supreme religion of the land.   

3.   Jesus Christ: Fact or Fiction? 
Christianity claims that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who was sacrificed to absolve believer’s sins so that Christians could receive eternal life.  The Christian Bible teaches of many miracles performed by Jesus of Nazareth and of his resurrection from the dead.  However, many people dispute that he was the Son of God and that the writings of the Bible are embellished stories chosen by the Church to further their mission.   

2.   Was Mohammed a pedophile?
The Qur’an (Mohammed’s testimonies) and Hadiths (other’s reports on the life of Mohmmed) depict Mohammed marrying a 6 year old girl for his third marriage.  Many people believe that this practice (uncommon in present day) should be viewed as pedophilia.  What do you think? 

1.   Do you believe in God?
This debate still reigns as the Most Popular debate on CreateDebate thus far.  Many people define themselves by their religious beliefs (or lack thereof), which is why it deserves the spot as the number one religious debate of all time.   It seems to me that everyone, no matter what gender, nationality, ethnicity, or age has an opinion on this topic, and they love to share it.

At CreateDebate, we strive to offer an easy to use website to debate any topic that you want; whether it be religious, political, sports, or any other topic you’d like.  We are quickly building a strong community and are rolling out new features almost daily.  If you’re interested in online debating or just want to learn more about what people are arguing, check out CreateDebate. 

After almost a month in Public Beta, we’ve noticed that some debates take off in popularity and remain in the Most Heated debates page for days, while others never even make it close.  Many of you have asked what you can do to increase the chance that your debate gets noticed and gets the attention of other debaters.  To that end, we present to you the Top 10 Tips for a Great Debate:   

10.  Make the debate title controversial.  This probably seems rather obvious but having a controversial topic that stands out from the rest will encourage people to click on and debate it.  

9.  Choose the right type of debate.  Is it a debate that can be broken down easily in two sides?  If so, choose a 2-Sided Debate.  If not, choose a Popularity Contest.  Not setting up the debate properly is a recipe for an empty debate.  

8. If it’s a two sided debate, pick clearly distinct points of view for each side.  Yes vs. No, Black vs. White, Democrats vs. Republicans are just a few examples.  Whatever you choose, make sure that they’re clearly opposing points of view.  

7.  Embed a link or a video as a central point for people to focus on during the debate.  This will ensure the debate stays on topic and does not wander into oblivion.  Make sure the link is from a reputable source so it will ground the debate in reality.  

6. Invite your friends to the debate.  Use the “Share This Debate” feature of CreateDebate to invite your Allies, Enemies, and anyone else in your Address Book.  Inviting friends to a debate ensures they know about it right away and can be one of the first to post their opinion.  

5. Add Research to the Debate.  Use the Research feature of CreateDebate to add RSS feeds regarding the topic being discussed. This is a great way to inform your users of the various points of view on the topic being debated.  

4.  Add an Argument.  Add an initial argument to one side of the debate that is well thought out and that clearly states why your side of the debate is the correct side. If you need help crafting a great argument, check out our previous blog post on How to Write Strong Arguments.  

3. Proofread your argument for grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. Nothing makes an argument weaker than a bunch of sentence fragments, misspelled words, and grammatical errors. Use the Spell Check feature of CreateDebate just to make sure your argument is correct before posting.  

2. Add references.  Back up your argument by citing reputable sources. Be sure to include a link to the source so others can view the entire text you’re referencing.    

1. Build debate traffic.  Submit your debate to the top social news sites (i.e. Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Mixx, del.icio.us, etc).  CreateDebate makes it easy for you to share your debates by using the “Social Bookmarks” tab in each debate.  Once you post the debate to the sites, leverage your network to move it in to the most popular categories where more people will view it and hopefully debate your topic.  If you need help learning how to make stories popular on Digg, check out this article loaded with great advice.  

Use these tips and you’ll be well on your way to getting a debate listed on this page.   

Social content sites like Digg are the catalyst of viral marketing. If you write a blog or operate a website and your content makes the front page of Digg, you can expect lots of good things to happen: about 60,000 unique visitors in the first 24 hours, a hefty amount of referral traffic from secondary websites, and a large number of high quality editorial links that will boost your search rankings.

In a perfect world, interesting content would be all that it takes to become popular on Digg. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.  Unless you operate a large site with tons of traffic or your blog already has a loyal base of readers, you need to understand how to give your submission the right kind of nudge. You have to become familiar with the unwritten protocols and practices of Digg.

Since CreateDebate launched into public beta, we have been doing our best to execute a viral marketing plan. Our goal is to introduce new people to our site via relevant & interesting content. In the last 30 days, various content from our blog has landed on the front page of of Digg, reddit, delicious, Mixx, ShoutWire and StumbleUpon.

One of the things that we have learned is that when it comes to generating explosive traffic, Digg reigns king (at least until Yahoo!Buzz begins accepting content from new, smaller publishers). If your content becomes popular on Digg, it will almost assuredly become popular on several other social content sites. It doesn’t always work the other way around.

Digg is an ecosystem and in order to get something from it (traffic), you’ll need give something to it (interesting content, not  advertisements).  For all of the Digg noobs and budding social marketers out there, we thought it was time to share a few insights from our playbook.  Here you go, the top 10 Digg tactics:

10. Join Digg - Yes, you should sign up for an account.  To really join Digg, though, you need to read and participate on a daily basis.  You should begin to track the popular content, especially in the topics where your content will compete. You may find the Digg RSS feeds to be helpful.

9. Monitor the Comments - Understanding the Digg culture is paramount. You should make it a habit to always read the first few comments every article that you check out. A well-planted, snarky comment can go a long way when you are trying to solicit diggs.

8. Learn How a Story Becomes Popular -  The Digg upcoming section may seem daunting but understanding how it works is essential.  In the base case, it takes about 24 hours for a submission to become popular.  During that period, the submission will have the opportunity to achieve a number of milestones (i.e. becoming Hot in Topic).  Each milestone will put the link in front of more people, thereby increasing its chance to be dugg.

7. Track Power Users - The power users, the people who use Digg the most, are the influencers.  They aren’t hard to find, go to the front page and start checking out some profiles.  On the bottom-right, you can see their stats.  Find people have made at least 50 stories popular. Bookmark their profiles and check back frequently. Do your best to befriend them.

6. Become a Fan - Add friends, hundreds of them.  Don’t do it all in one sitting, remember: Rome wasn’t built in a day.  You should get in the habit of adding at least 20 new friends per week. Start by adding some power users, then add their friends and so on.

5. Build Your Buddy List - A lot of digg soliciting goes on behind the scenes, especially via IM.  Coincidentally enough, many diggers list their IM information in the About blurb on their profile.  Parse through a bunch of profiles and compile a list of screen names. Don’t just bombard these folks with digg requests though. Take the time to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships.

4. Build Your Profile - If you want to become a Digg power user, you need to look like one. Your profile should show lots of fans, friends & diggs. When people ask you to digg one of their submissions and it turns out to be interesting, take it a step further and make that story one of your favorites.

3. Submit Smart - Choose the topic that you will submit to wisely. Some topics are much more competitive than others. Of course, you need to make sure that you are submitting to an appropriate topic or casual web surfers may not have a chance to find your submission on their own.  Analysis has also shown that when you submit also plays a key role.

2. Send Shouts - Digg shouts are the single best way to solicit diggs. Of course, you can’t just send shouts to anybody, that’s why you need to add friends to bolster your network. When you send shouts, remember, its a two-way street. If you expect others to digg your content, you’ll need to regularly check your shouts and digg the stories that you find interesting. Don’t be afraid to remind others that you have dugg their stories. Most importantly, don’t keep sending repetitive shouts. Nobody likes a pest.

1. Submit Interesting Content - All of the Digg tactics in the world won’t help you unless you have some worthwhile content to submit.  At the end of the day, every digg that your submission receives will be from a intelligent, free-thinking individual. Nobody like to see crap hit the front page.

On a final, unrelated note, I’d like to give a quick shout-out to sarahintampa who maintains an interesting tech blog and wrote a great review of CreateDebate 2 weeks ago.  If you haven’t already checked out CreateDebate, please do so.  We are a new site, built from scratch on the ideals of collaboration and democracy, and our community is growing quickly!

When you’re debating, you’ll come up against many styles of arguing, based on all different levels of arguing.   If you’re in the debate to win, you’ll have to spot the flaws in opposing arguments and point them out, or exploit them like a weak spot.  Sometimes it’s as easy as listening for fuzzy words.  Here are some words and phrases that are easy indications of flaws: 

many, all, a lot, every, none, nobody, much, more - Solid arguments use actual numbers with references to their source.   These words can indicate implied statistics that show the debater is making up a fact rather than working off real data. Example: “Many Christians disagree”

never, always, usually, tend, trend - These may be blanket statements that imply cause and effect, or assumptions about overall responses and opinions that don’t hold up under scrutiny. Example: “the rich have always been getting richer”

I, I don’t think, I believe - including yourself in the argument can indicate thinking personal experience equals the overall trend. If the debate is not a poll or about individual views, this can be Hasty Generalization.  Here are some examples from CreateDebate:  From: Should the US have seatbelt laws?  Someone who manages to use words from two categories:”I always choose to wear one”  From: Man vs. Elephant : can you escape?“I am much more shifty than an elephant and would be able to escape if ONE was chasing me in a large field by cutting and weaving.”and one rebuttal that found the critical flaw:”Elephants charge at up to 25mph. Way faster than you can run…”

So next time you’re arguing with friends or proving your point in an online debate, listen in for these hints for weak arguments and when you make your response make it stronger by avoiding the same flaws.

I just finished reading a great article, written by Albert Wenger at his Continuations blog. Albert is a partner at Union Square Ventures and I’ve found his writings to be concise (always appreciated) and meaningful. Last week, he wrote about the importance and difficulty of listening to your customers. More food-for-thought than advice, the article throws out three questions and some common problems associated with each.

As we continue to build CreateDebate into a business, we have frequently found ourselves addressing these same questions. In the spirit of transparency, I thought I would take a crack at answering Albert’s questions from the current perspectives of the CreateDebate team.

Which customers should we listen to?

This question should probably read: Should we listen to our early-adopters or should we listen to what we believe to be our “mainstream” customers? We are about 1 week into our public beta and, fortunately, we already have a nice stable of committed early-adopters that have found real utility in using CreateDebate. We are thrilled about this and we are committed to rewarding our early-adopters with a feature set that over delivers on their requests. At the same time, however, we must remain fully-focused on building CreateDebate into a highly scalable decision-making tool that is capable of providing significant value to paying customers.

Paying Customers? Don’t worry, we’ll never charge you to use CreateDebate.com. Rather, at some point in the near future, we do expect to charge licensing fees in exchange for private use of the CreateDebate application software. We have already been contacted by several enterprise & governmental organizations interested in deploying our software and we think this business model has a significant amount of promise.

At the end of the day, the answer to this question isn’t as tricky as it seems. First and foremost, we are dedicated to building CreateDebate into a community. To be successful, we must embrace our early adopters and their new feature requests. We always discuss new feature requests as a team and do our best to prioritize and temper those requests against our vision of the “mainstream” customer. In a nutshell, our strategy is to grow our community by continually improving our software. By doing so, it is our hope that the CreateDebate application will become a powerful decision-making software package worth paying for.

How should we listen to our customers?

We get a lot of critical feedback and suggestions via email. At this stage in the game, virtually every email that we receive prompts a personal response. We alway log the comments and do our best to group and prioritize them. The problem with email feedback, though, is that it sometimes proves difficult to accurately deduce exactly what our community really needs, as opposed to what a small, vocal subset of our community thinks that it wants.

In light of this contradiction, our preferred forum for listening to our customers has become the website itself. Last week, one of the most popular debates on CreateDebate focused on the new features that people would like to see incorporated the site. The debate spurred lots of arguments and votes and gave us a much better perspective on the new features that our community needs. As a result, we went to work and delivered a bunch of new features over the weekend, including:

• A new way to sort the arguments within a debate (”Sort By Newest”)
• A better way to catch up on new activity (”New Activity Quick Glance”)
• Permalinks for each argument to facilitate more sharing
• RSS feeds for the Most Heated and Newest debates
• A more secure Address Book

How should we reconcile listening to our customers with our strategy?

Our goal is to build an incredibly useful tool that will help groups of people to sort through issues, viewpoints and opinions so that better decisions can be made. I’ve already noted that our strategy is to grow our community by continually improving our software. This is a strategy that we fully believe in and are committed to following. To that end, we are dedicated to making listening to customers a priority and constant process as opposed to a one off exercise.

As far as the reconciliation process goes, I’m afraid that we haven’t yet fully figured it out. The good news, however, is that we are aware of the importance of the task at hand. I fully expect this year to be full of twists and turns as our community grows and our software becomes more sophisticated. Most of all, I hope that you will stay around to help us grow and let us know what we are doing right (and not-so-right). If you have feedback, please share!

In March, Paul Graham wrote a great essay entitled How to Disagree. I loved the article because it is all about how the web is turning into a conversation (which is why we built CreateDebate). Shortly thereafter, I transformed Graham’s underlying thesis into a graphic to help illustrate his point. The original graphic (similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) can be found here.

After reading the comments spurred by my illustration (on this blog and elsewhere), I decided it was time to revisit this graphic. In particular, this comment by Danielle Vyas caught my eye:

I arrived here via Stumble Upon and read the comments. I think that the chart would be more understandable if presented as a ladder instead of a pyramid. A lot of people relying on the visual representation with this post as one reader mentions without “reading”.

Paul Graham’s Ladder of Disagreement

I think she hit the nail on the head. Rather than illustrating the frequency of disagreements, this graphic illustrates the ascending quality of disagreements on the Internet. What do you think?

As always, if you found this analysis then you might enjoy using CreateDebate. We built our site from scratch and our community is growing quickly. Check it out!

If you found this analysis then you might enjoy using CreateDebate. We built our site from scratch and our community is growing quickly! A debate about The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Internet Users is already underway. Click here and check it out!

Recently, I came across a debate handbook written by Alfred C. Snider of the University of Vermont. The complete text can be found here. I read through it with an eye for concepts that could be applied to online debate. One of the best takeaways was The Code of the Debater (albeit, its somewhat cheesy).

I’ve reprinted it below. In the web 2.0 world of user-generated content, I think that guidelines like these make a whole lot of sense. Whether you prefer to debate in the comments section of Digg, in the self subreddit or on CreateDebate, try to keep these guidelines in mind. You will be more effective in expressing your point and your reputation will improve.

For Myself:

1. I will research my topic and know what I am talking about.
2. I will respect the subject matter of my debates.
3. I will choose persuasion over coercion and violence.
4. I will learn from victory and especially from defeat.
5. I will be a generous winner and a gracious loser.
6. I will remember and respect where I came even though I am now a citizen of the world.
7. I will apply my criticism of others to myself.
8. I will strive to see myself in others.
9. I will, in a debate, use the best arguments I can to support the side I am on.
10. I will, in life, use the best arguments I can to determine which side I am on.

For Others:

1. I will respect their rights to freedom of speech and expression, even though we may disagree.
2. I will respect my partners, opponents, judges, coaches, and tournament officials.
3. I will be honest about my arguments and evidence and those of others.
4. I will help those with less experience, because I am both student and teacher.
5. I will be an advocate in life, siding with those in need and willing to speak truth to power.

Many of our Private Beta testers have asked for more information on the marketing plan for CreateDebate’s launch to the public. One important component of our marketing plan is leveraging the power of other popular social networking sites to drive traffic to CreateDebate. In an effort to test how well this type of marketing works, yesterday we decided to post Loudacris’ blog post on How to Write Strong Arguments to reddit to test if it would drive users to the site.

My initial reaction is WOW! The blog post made it up as high as #46 on reddit and it ended up driving over 200 new people to CreateDebate. And that’s just the number of people who actually signed up for the Beta! We were very happy with the results of the test and believe it affirms our belief that the best way to encourage people to use CreateDebate is through viral marketing. We are really looking forward to bringing more people in to the CreateDebate community with various viewpoints, thoughts, and interests when we launch to the public.

In the meantime, please continue telling your friends and family about CreateDebate and feel free to send them Beta Invites so they can use it as well! The more people that join CreateDebate and bring their diverse backgrounds and opinions to the site the better and more heated the debates will be. Help us to spread the word!