Challenge ideas. Respect people. Make your own case.

Four steps from nothing to a live debate:

1. Create an account and pick a handle. Your handle is how you appear here.
2. Write a clear claim — one sentence someone could reasonably disagree with, between 8 and 300 characters.
3. Choose your side and the settings for the debate: category, word limit per response, how long each side has to reply, whether names are shown, and who may read it (public, unlisted or private).
4. Choose who you are debating. An open challenge is visible to everyone and anyone may take it up — or, if you switch on approval, people send you a request and you choose. A private challenge is directed at one person by handle; only they can see and accept or decline it.

Start from Create.

The affirmative side opens. The negative side answers. After that you take it in turns, back and forth, each response answering the one before it.

• The debate page tells you plainly whether it is your turn or you are waiting on the other side. Read the latest argument before you write.
• There is no fixed number of rounds. A debate runs for as long as both sides keep answering.
• Every debate gives each side three days to answer, shown as a countdown on the debate page. If you need longer, ask the other side for three more days — one request per turn, and they decide. Miss the deadline and the turn is forfeited: a record of participation, not a judgement on the argument.
• You can also concede — accepting the other side's position, which closes the debate as their win — or withdraw, which ends it with no winner and no rating change. Both keep the transcript intact.
• Your writing saves as a private draft. Nothing is visible to anyone else until you post it, and you can use the preview to see how it will read.
• There is no minimum length. A short clarifying question is a perfectly valid turn.
• Cite your sources, and answer the points actually made rather than easier ones.
• Before the first argument, each participant may add one optional 200-character introduction — a hope for the debate or a friendly line. It is entirely optional and affects nothing.

IronSharp is for your reasoning, not a copied answer from someone else or an AI tool.

Do not present a response written by ChatGPT or another AI tool as your own argument, and do not post a ready-made rebuttal someone else produced for you, or copied text without saying where it came from.

These are all fine:

• Quoting a religious text, book, article or another person — marked as a quote, with the source.
• Pasting in your own draft that you wrote elsewhere.
• Spelling, grammar and tidying corrections that leave your argument yours.
• Using built-in spellcheck and source lookup tools.

AiMOD is advisory only. It can offer feedback on reasoning and conduct. It does not write your argument for you, and it never rules on whether a belief is true.

Honest participation means sharing your own reasoning and acknowledging your sources. This is a standard of honesty we ask you to keep. You are responsible for every claim, quotation and source you post — be ready to explain and defend your reasoning.

• Question the claim, never the person. No insults, threats or harassment.
• Represent the other side fairly. Answer what they actually said, not a weaker version of it.
• No spam, no repeated off-topic posting, no advertising.
• Keep private details private — yours and anyone else's. Do not post someone's personal information.
• If something crosses a line, use the report tools on the debate or the report page. Reports are read by people, not decided by a machine.

If you post an open challenge with approval switched on, several people may ask to take it up. You can approve one, approve several, or decline.

Each person you approve starts a separate one-to-one debate with you on the same topic, with its own fresh opening. An existing thread is never changed or reassigned, and the related debates are linked from each other so readers can follow them all. You can stop taking new challengers at any time.

This is different from a team debate, which you set up deliberately — see below.

• Set a team debate up from Create. You choose the number of seats on each side and invite or approve who fills them.
• A side still speaks with one voice per round: the seats on a side take turns in order, so exactly one member is the speaker for that round. Members cannot all post at once.
• The page shows whose turn it is. Write only your own turn — never post for a teammate.
• Coordinate fairly among yourselves, and keep to the same word limit and reply window as everyone else.
• A team debate shares one thread; separate challenger debates each have their own thread.

• Anyone — not only the debaters — can share a public debate. Use Share or Copy link; the link carries a topic preview card showing the question and the sides.
• Readers who follow the link come back here to read the debate in full.
• Private and unlisted debates, pending directed challenges and private studies are not shareable in public. Only people allowed to read them can open them.
• Follow a debate to be alerted about new turns and the result. Unfollow stops those alerts.
• The follower count is clickable and opens the list of followers. Names link to public profiles; in blind debates concealed participants and deactivated members simply show as an unnamed member.
• Which alerts reach you by email is up to you, in Settings.

• Bold, italics, lists and quotations are supported, with a preview before you post, and three text sizes for comfortable reading and writing.
• You may attach up to 5 files per response, 10 MB each: PNG, JPEG or WebP images, and PDF, DOCX or TXT files. You can paste a screenshot straight into the box.
• Add alt text to images so everyone can follow your point.
• Only attach material you have the right to share, and say where it came from. No irrelevant files and no private documents about other people.

• The person who wrote the claim can use Edit challenge to fix spelling, grammar or capitalisation — even after the debate has started. Corrections must not move the goalposts.
• To change what the claim actually says, use Suggest new wording: the other side has to agree.
• Every edit is kept in a visible wording history, and the question is marked as edited.
• When you are finished, propose ending the debate. If the other side agrees it closes as a draw with no rating change. If they do not answer within 14 days, you can close it yourself on the same terms.
• If a debate has a reply window and a side lets it run out before posting anything, the challenge can reopen for a new opponent — the original debate and its posts stay exactly as they are.
• How a debate is decided is chosen when it is created: opinion shift, a community vote, a named panel of judges, or no winner at all. Reader-judged debates need at least 5 participating readers and a 72-hour window after the debate closes. AiMOD never decides.

Not everything is a debate. Let's Study starts with a question instead of a claim: no sides, no rounds, no ratings, no winner. Contributions are chronological, and you can reply to a specific passage so the context is clear.

The person who asked the question can edit it, keep a pinned “what we have learned so far” note clearly marked as written by them, and close or reopen the study to new replies. A study is either open to everyone or invite-only, and private studies are readable only by the people invited.

Browse them at Studies.