Hello, interested parties to the Great Debate - a civil, formal debate on the webdiplomacy forums. A work in progress since summer 2012, your lazy moderator, Thucydides, has at last decided to act.

Because of complications with the judges who minutiae are too complex to list here, it has been discussed privately among some of the debates that it may be best simply to publish the debates without judgments, and allow the judges to be recognized as "official" judges if they wish to post their opinions.

To those judges (myself included) who have already invested significant time to neutrally evaluate the arguments and compose opinions, I ask your apology and permission to go ahead with publishing these debates over the holidays.

My proposed action is this:

I will publish one of each of the four debates every 3 days (a usual cycle for a thread on our forum) starting on the earliest date of everyone's mutual convenience (I propose this Friday to start), each with its own thread, and a title that reflects the content of the debate.

Each thread will contain the rules, a link to the formatted document, and an in-thread text of the debate (unless this appears too long, but I think I will do it anyway).

It will then invite the audience to comment. No "voting" will take place, because this seems to be a fruitless exercise in any event.

Please use this thread for meta-commentary. I think any further delay on this is unnecessary, and that we can all agree (with most of the blame again on myself) that the dithering can safely end.

I would like to ask everyone's input though before moving, so this is your chance to have a word about it before Friday.

The purpose of having each debate in a separate thread is A) to reduce confusion in what would otherwise be a cluttered comment section and B) to introduce the debates to those who have not been following the saga since 2012, or who stopped caring to awhile ago. It will make them appear fresh, with a focus on the content rather than the original Great Debate thread and idea.

Let me know what you think. If no serious objections are raised by Friday evening, American time, I'll start posting them.