Not exactly, but it is similar. I've found that people who focus on asking questions usually are more ignorant than people who make statements and learn from the following debates. In a debate you are more involved as you both try to understand the other side and try to make up arguments that are convincing, this is extremely efficient for learning. In addition debates is a good way to find errors you don't know you make, questions can't help fix unknown unknowns, it only helps clear known unknowns, while the bold statement method helps bring up and clarify lots of unknown unknowns.

Some think that internet arguments are a waste of time, they must either do it wrong or they don't realize how well it works. The most important thing is to not go into arguments you know you will win, you don't learn anything if you go through the same argument over and over so just don't do that and instead focus on things you don't already know well.

Also I don't feel that these arguments are off topic either, you learn a lot from just watching others argue, that is the main reason I prefer reading forums over reading articles, as the forum has people arguing with each other while articles are mostly just long monologues.