I believe some people on this website are incompetent in making propositions.

I hold the belief that many people on this website simply do horribly when creating their propositions. Some of them are worded in such a way that they are not propositions, some of them are worded in such a way that the topic is confusing.

As con, my position must be that I believe some people on this website are competent in making propositions. There are many members on this site who actually do a good job at making their propositions and follow up arguments. Some members I personally admire for this are as follows:

joze14rock
Randomknowledge
clsmooth
kvaughan
Logical Master
repete21
Harlan
mikelwallace
dairygirl4u2c
Los_Altos_JW
answermate
FalseReality
Fenrir
bsergent
Miserlou

And those are only a few of them. Having read several of their debates, and debated with some, I find them to be superior to the average debaters, who not only word their propositions clearly and in a non-confusing manner, but also back them up using examples, evidence, etc. They form valid arguments in the first round, rather than the all too familiar "two sentence trap" where they will state only their proposition, waiting for a member to accept, and then bombarding them in the second round with information they failed to give. So there are members on this site who are competent in making propositions. While many members could use some work on their own propositions, they too are sometimes able to give valid arguments within a paragraph. Thus, I would have to say many members on this site are good proposition makers, and only a minority are a waste of time.

Well, I might as well counter your argument and push my own main point as well.

My argument was that I believe that some people on this website are incompotent in making propositions. While some might be competent, that does not null those 'some' that are incompetent at making propositions, those some still exist.

Furthermore, my premise is "I believe...", therefore, you must prove that I do not, in fact, believe that some people are incompetent at making propositions.

People who make propositions, such as mine "I believe" (I did this for a reason, not because I fail at propositions) usually argue pro, and do not bring up the fact that they believe it, and that con must disprove that they believe that..... but that's exactly what it is, the proposition "I believe some people on this website are incompetent in making propositions." forces the con to disprove whether or not somebody believes it!

Since some people are so incompetent at making propositions, to put "I believe" or propose a question (EG: Do dogs bark?) they make debates confusing and difficult.

Not having specified what point your opponent must argue on, I chose my own, which does, in fact, logically fit. Because of this failure on your part, you must work with the side I choose regardless of the way you may have intended for me to argue. During your whole rebuttal, you failed to show specific examples of members who lack the ability to make good proposals, throwing into question your point of view as a whole. Its seems you are among those to whom you scorn.

A debater does not need to disprove the words "I believe" unless it is necessary for the betterment of the debate, e.i. "reality vs. perception topics". If one did try to disprove every members personal views, the debate would quickly fall into a battle of personal attack (ad hominem). Rather, the words "I believe" are only a formality of the argument, in order to show their personal stance, and is synonymous with "The topic I will be arguing for is" or something else to that effect. It is much like judging a person based on the way they greet you, such as whether they say "hi" or "shalom", it means the same thing, so why make a junk about it. The main point of civilised debating is to prove a main idea wrong, not a persons feelings. Any worthwhile debater would know that.

I have shown that some people are competent at making propositions. The only someone you have shown to be unable to make good propositions, unfortunately, is yourself regardless of whether you meant it to be an example or not. This validates my point that a majority are competent, and a minority are not. If someone does not do a good job with their proposition, they are only hurting themselves, allowing their opponent to meld the argument anyway within reason that they want. It then falls to the instigator to work with the mess they made for themselves. Thus, it seems as though the problem falls not on the opponent but the instigator. If they do not fix the problem themselves, that just means more free wins for everyone else. Darth_Grievous_42 out.