Hi Walter, thanks for reading and commenting. I agree that debate is the bedrock of America (not to mention any healthy democracy) and it will come back to Brigade. What we’ve learned is that putting everyone on the site into one centralized debate forum (via our home page) where, for example, two people with the most polar opposite views in the world can dominate the discussion board with vitriolic personal attacks, simply isn’t appealing to most of our users. We also don’t want to be in the position of trying to micromanage every debate. What I’m talking about is a current design problem on our end, not a problem with the ideals of debate. We have to redesign how we facilitate debate on Brigade if we’re going to get more people to engage with it. Some of our past designs actually worked better than the one we just deprecated, according to the participation data we’re looking at. I’d certainly welcome additional feedback if you have it (support@brigade.com). Best, Matt
