The Debatabase has many advantages over any print reference. With no fixed timescale, the pool of contributors from whom topics will be sought is boundless, and will include the IDEA network throughout the world.

Any reference source that deals with the content of debates, rather than the style or technique, must inevitably be updated regularly in order to deal with the changing background to all controversies, no matter how perennial they are. While print versions can only be updated every few years, this online version can be revised regularly and, crucially, at different times -- so that topics which need constant attention can receive it while others are only occasionally reviewed. Do let us know if you have any suggestions for how we should update a particular topic, or if you find that any of our weblinks are broken.

Perhaps most importantly of all, this site will involve the user in a way that a book cannot. Each topic allows viewers to add their comments; to suggest new arguments or modifications, or web links or books for further research; or to let us know how useful they found the material.

How To Use The Material

Users of similar content resources will be aware of the dangers of relying on pre-prepared debates too much. The topics in the Debatabase are intended to be a starting point for further research. They have not been developed in anything like the detail necessary for an informed debate -- instead they are meant to give a few pointers to beginner and intermediate debaters faced with unfamiliar subjects.

While the contributors include some of the world's most experienced debaters, coaches and judges, they would not claim to have the definitive approach to any debate, and may well have left out a line of argument that you would feel to be important. For this reason, we advise that the first step in approaching a debate should be to conduct a 'brainstorm' and write down all the arguments you can think of. Then, and only then, should you consult the Debatabase to see if it can offer any new ideas. Many debate teams find Debatabase particularly helpful when they come to consider what arguments the other side may put forward.

We cannot stress enough how important it is to develop your debating arguments far beyond those offered here. Nothing is more tedious or unproductive as two sides of a debate repeating the same old cases, sometimes even read out of a book or from printed-off web pages. If you are debating for fun, it won't be any fun. If you are debating to learn, then you won't learn very much. And if you are debating competitively, you could be greatly hurting your chances of winning -- the chances are that the adjudicators will know these arguments and where they came from, and bored judges aren't easily persuadable judges.

You have been warned! If used as a first point of call for students of debate, and as a means to further research, we hope you will find the Debatabase a useful resource.

Debatabase's Commissioning Editor Alastair Endersby was a contributor to Pros and Cons: A Debater's Handbook, 18th Edition (ed. Sather, Routledge, 1999), which worked on a similar idea and is the latest in a series that has been a popular tool for British and American debaters since its first publication in 1896. The book is available from Routledge via their website at www.routledge.com.