I have a feeling that most of the people reading this site already understand everything in this article, but it's a useful synopsis of common issues faced when trying to have a reasonable discussion with laypeople, and might be good to point them to if necessary.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/how-to-have-a-rational-discussion/
I also want to mention how much I wish someone had shown me something like this as a teenager- I was very prone to lecture others against their will- as it might have saved me a lot of grief. I'm curious to see if these tendencies might have been common among members of this community growing up, so please comment to tell me if so (actually, please tell me even if not-no reason to encourage my own confirmation bias)!
That diagram assumes an adversarial model of discussions. Note the use of words like "concede" and "forfeit". I prefer to get into discussions where the interests of participants are aligned, e.g. everyone wishes to find the truth. This way you never need your opponent to "concede" anything, in fact you'll try to fix your opponent's arguments for them.
Such "rules" may help in discussions with misaligned incentives, e.g. when you're trying to defend your theory or convince spectators that you're the better debater, but avoiding such discussions seems to be a better strategy.