Gather
Every debate begins by gathering the participants in a Lobby. debate.club supports two ways for participants to find each other:
- Invite-only debates — a user creates a debate and shares its identifier (or a link) with the people they want to debate with. The creator becomes the Organizer, assigns each participant a role in the Lobby, and starts the Preparation stage when the team is ready.
- Open Debates — published by the debate.club team on the home page. Any signed-in user can sign up to take part as a debater (or, where allowed, as an adjudicator). Roles are assigned automatically from the sign-up order, and the debate enters the Lobby once its sign-up criteria are met.
In both cases the Lobby is the staging room where everyone meets, settles into their roles, and waits for the Preparation stage to begin.