About Debate Unlimited

About the Editor

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

George Bernard Shaw

What is this site? Is it supposed to be funny, or serious? Is it some kind of mindless ramble or does it contain some great answers to the mysteries of man?

Yes. All that and much, much more. Enjoy it. Read whichever bits take your fancy. Take your time, there is a lot of material here. I don't expect anybody to like every bit.

This is not a web resource, it does not follow a service ethos, or a profit ethos, it is a work of art. If you enjoy it I am happy for you, if you don't like it please tell me why, and I might do something about it, or I might not.

There is no single metaphor running through the site. Much of it is done with a desire to amuse. Some of it is designed to provoke a reaction. Some of it is totally serious and designed to change your thinking for ever, for the better. Unlike many atheists who write websites I am not rabidly anti-Christian. I am not trying to strike a pose or shock anybody.

My first pages were uploaded to the web in August 1999. They have been constantly updated and added to since. The site began in my imagination about six months before I began to write my first page of HTML. It was not until August 1999 that I got my hands on a computer capable of the task. Technical details

In November 1999 my website moved to the Cable and Wireless address and became for the first time The Meme Machine. The Meme Machine is also the name of a book written by Dr Susan Blackmore.

The site is now in its fourth home. The fourth move to mwillett.org has taken me to fully independent donated webspace and services.

In February 04 with over a thousand visitors per day coming to the site I decided to change its name, as you do, to Debate Unlimited.

In March and April 2004 I converted the site to remove the frames which it used since January 2000. This was a monumental effort. Frames have great advantages and great disadvantages, I finally concluded that the disadvantages outweighed the advantages.

The effect that I am trying to achieve can be summed up in the following way:-

Readability.

This is the most important criteria. I want people to read my pages so the text must be clear. The font must be familiar, no quirky shapes to slow down your reading speed. The background must be easy on the eye. I have found through experimentation that in web design, as in so much in life, less is more. Black text on a white background: it works.

The whole point of the web is to communicate. Man thinks in a way that does not have a language. Simply translating our thoughts into words loses more than half their meaning. I do not want to lose any more than that. The English language is the most powerful communication tool ever evolved, it will have to carry the burden of my message until something better comes along. Text rules, OK?

Speed.

I want visitors to enter my site, to browse around all my pages and then to return at a later date. I know from my own personal experience that I am likely to get impatient with a site that is full of meaningless graphics which take precious time to load. The important part of this site is the ideas, the ideas are expressed principally in text form. I see no reason to fill my site up with a lot of graphics.

While sparce design is no longer as vital as it was in pre-broadband days I still see a virtue in keeping things stripped down so that handling is fast.

Expandability.

I have separated the themes into different sections and sub indexes, this will allow people to stay with a single idea or theme if they want to but allows them to launch into another subject very easily at any time. A totally different theme is only two clicks away.

The use of a single style sheet for the whole site allows me to write pages each with very little code that still have powerful effects available. Now new pages can be added which match the look and feel of the existing pages without me spending a long time formatting them.

Grown up.

I do not want the site to be kewl, hip or happening. The more anybody tries to be fashionable the more pathetic their attempts seem.

I want my site to stand out because of the content.

This is also done out of a sense of realism. For me to learn all the tricks to make this site stand out visually on the web today would require me to spend months experimenting with techniques. All too often other web site designers use techniques that they do not fully understand to do things their site does not need simply to show off their ability; and unfortunately it usually does just that...

Ratings?

The site is aimed at adults. I do not try to lure children into this site, there is nothing here for them. There is nothing designed to corrupt or deprave anybody and far worse pages are available for children to stumble upon. I have no formal way of keeping children out of the site, and I see no need to. There is some “strong language” on the site but it is well diluted with a more extensive vocabulary which should be sufficiently erudite to leave the impressionable ones nonplussed.

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