CreateDebate is the answer to standard internet flame-wars and message boards that are an unreadable jumble of arguments. The CreateDebate platform provides a structure that lets people easily see what the best arguments are, and which side of a debate is winning. People can create three kinds of debates and argue about any topic they are passionate about.

The CreateDebate community is empowered to vote up well-conceived arguments and vote down flawed logic. Over time, the best arguments rise to the top of the debate, which helps to distill out the central points and most relevant factors.

At the most basic level, CreateDebate is a social tool designed to help groups of people sort through issues, viewpoints, and opinions in an organized manner, so that better decisions can be made. We encourage people to create debates about interesting things that they really care about.

Debates about personal decisions and self-promoting debates are welcome. By creating a debate, one can harness the collective intelligence of the CreateDebate community, which is a great way to get honest feedback (and criticism).

The social networking features of CreateDebate are robust. Each user has a profile, which automatically builds itself over time. Allies, enemies and hostile relationships are tracked and a news feeds provides personalized updates. Debate and arguments activity is also automatically tracked so its always easy to find out what’s new.

A points system keeps tabs on participation, which makes it easy to identify the top debaters in a number of categories. The research feature allows people to pipe RSS content from the web into any debate. Many additional features and improvements are slated to roll out during the public beta period.

We think that CreateDebate is a great startup, which is a finalist in the Politics category of the Mashable Open Web Awards and they’ve previously been featured on sites such as Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, and SarahInTampa.