What do you think about the online debate?

Please give me your feedback on the online debate. Some of the questions I have are:

1. Does this debate format provide a different and useful view of the candidates?
2. Were the questions good, both for the format and did they provide answers that help illuminate each candidate?
3. Were the questions fair in that they did not favor any candidate?
4. Would you like to see something like this for most races?
5. Any suggestions for improving it?

Please, let me know what you think.

thanks - dave

Update:

To address the post by jm fay below, the debate purposely did not list the "big issues" because the format does not work well for that, both in that it only allows short answers, and the candidates would just copy & paste from their websites where they each do have comprehensive statements on the large issues we face.

Ok, so what was my approach in the questions selected? I think all three candidates are very good, we would be well served by any of them. I also think their political position on most every issue is comparable (not identical, but by and large close). So what we are left with is how they will approach the job. What issues will they concentrate on, how will they approach the job, how effective will they be.

So the questions were designed to find these differences between the candidates. I don't expect them to show one is better than the other, but I do hope they show these differences and we can use our understanding of these differences to see which approach & priorities we would prefer.

And as much as possible, I wanted questions that were not expected. It's in the having to come up with an answer fast that more of the real person pops through. So here is my grading of the quality of the usefulness of the questions (note - I came up with the even numbered questions):

1. I thought this was a great way to dig in to their health care knowledge with a question that was unexpected and could be addressed in 5 minutes. But the real interesting result was that only Will actually answered it (and with a very good answer). So we learned from this question - but not about health-care.
2. This was my favorite question, I was sure this would give us some interesting info. But I'll be damned if I can see anything to pull from this one. All 3 gave different, thoughtful, intelligent answers.
3. This was good, it showed some differences on where each first looks to increase opportunities for all.
4. This question is the root of what I was trying to illustrate in this debate. So of course asking the question directly failed. This was easily the most useless question.
5. I think this one was pretty good - both Joan and Will gave good questions and it added to the picture of how they approach life. Jared's "worst characteristic" answer was a first date kind of answer - but again, that difference is illustrative.
6. This also was very good - all 3 of them clearly showed that they can see long term historical perspective and all 3 had very good answers - yet aside from climate change which deservedly belonged on all 3 lists, they had different items. This question might be the one that best illustrated what issues they will focus their efforts on.
7. This one is superb - I think it gives a real clear set of distinctions in how they will operate. And the three of them are clearly different here.
8. Another good one - this takes us back across to what issue inspires them. There are only 24 hours in the day and this helps us see what issue each will eagerly invest time in. Again, clear differences, and all very good items.
9. This one doesn't help much. I was worried that this would get very vague answers but no - lots of specifics. However, they all pretty much said the same thing so this is in the category of we already know they would all make a good rep - and no real differences here.
10. This was not that useful - Will & Joan agree so the only interesting thing out of this question is no specifics from Jared while Joan & Will were specific.
11. Another that was not that useful. The only substantial is Joan also brings up the mental health aspect - which is significant.
12. This one I think does a pretty good job of showing the difference in their personalities. I don't know if/how that would bear on the job they would do, but it does give pictures of very different people. I do thing Jared's 5th item was clearly the most poignant.

So I'm pretty happy with the result as I think it did help quite a bit in illustrating the differences between the three. We the voters have an embarrassment of riches in this primary. It's too bad that we can't send all three to Washington - especially considering national embarrassments we have in other districts such as Marilyn Musgrave, Doug Lamborn, and the soon to be replaced Tom Tancredo.

Again, thank you to the candidates.