I'm not sure how "you have to answer questions" is necessarily following strict debating rules, but okay. After all, "I don't know" is still a perfectly valid answer--but I think that if you don't know how the evidence fails to contradict the mainstream and instead support your theory, you really need to do some more studying before you're equipped to proclaim your theory.

I tend to agree with you on these points; one thing I'd like to see is a distinction drawn between those who merely casually believe in certain conspiracy theories and have questions, and true conspiracists, who attempt to "proclaim" the existence of conspiracies (though not necessarily articulating theories, coherent or otherwise). Obviously there are grey areas, but some people clearly fall into the latter category.

One problem we do have to guard against is giving the impression that we are "ganging up" on the conspiracists, because they will presumably always be a small minority here. For example, it's clearly unfair to expect Brumsen and turbonium to quickly answer every single question put to them by 20 different people; however, this gives them a handy excuse to duck the more problematic questions. Possibly one or two people at a time could act as designated "inquisitors" to pose questions that conspiracy proponents would be required either to answer, or to affirmatively admit that they could not answer, in a timely manner.

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor