As stated above, the aim of this site is to find the truth. This means that a debate here won't have a winner and a loser. Televised debates especially result in the audience making a largely subjective comparison of the cases made by the debaters, and comparing the debaters themselves, including their charisma. It's often interesting, entertaining, and insightful, but I believe it isn't as useful for determining the truth as a systematic method such as this one.

Thus, as debates are mediated here, the focus will be on clarifying points of view, agreements, disagreements, what we've determined so far, etc. Progress won't be seen as one debater being better than the other, but rather as debaters agreeing more and more. It is more of a collaboration between the debaters and the mediator than a competition.