Controversies

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It is frequent to see "religion wars" in subjects like politics, programming, etc. Many times it is the n-th re-enactment of the same controversy (e.g. "Java is slow"). Many times references are made to the same propaganda (which has been already rebated in a dozen different ways). Many times arguments are bloated with personal attacks, missinterpretation, pickiness about irrelevant details, off-topics, and all kinds of impertinence and bad-sport. Anyone wanting to discuss ceirtain topics has to have a master in dealing with bullies and assholes. Anyone looking for information might have to go through piles of dung over several different sites. Non-mainstream comments are severely discouraged, and are difficult to find.

It would be nice to have a "play field" that is unified and neutral, with clear and sensible rules of engagement, where the parts would build up their arguments in an structured and cooperative way (avoiding repetition or digression, enabling comprehensibility, allowing extra information in each annotation or fragment so it can be highlighted)

Although language expression might need a high degree of freedom, it would be adequate to:

• use a fine grain granularity, allowing the parts to refer to concepts as precise as possible
• Promote a controlled "vocabulary" about:
  • The type of elements/concepts in the argumentation: Question,hypothesis/assertion(conjetura/tesis),sample/demostration,(réplica), etc, and the links among them
  • The tags/labels set over the elements

The possibility of setting labels for the most frequent argument scenarios might avoid the need for verbose responses for many comments (if the response just has been read, if I approve the point of view, If I have my doubts but I don't intend to reply at the moment, etc). Also promoting responses that are straight to the point (as telling the URL where to find an alternative/comprehensive view for the topic, without added prose).

The finer granularity would allos a comment or label on the precise concept where it is applicable. Many extensive comments would be better expressed like a number of simpler comments made on the precise location. However, these individuala comments might have an structure or relation among them (e.g. picking some contradiction). Therefore, we might build a comment that, like an article, has its own structure and might be decomposed in fragments for individual concepts.

It would be interesting to develop some notation about trustworthyness of the expressed hypothesis. We might know if the concept is "certain","trustworthy","feasible","questionable" or "false"). The trusworthyness score would be managed by the system from information like the opinion of experts, or people trusted by the reader/publisher/etc. There might happen that the parts wont agreeon the trustworthness evaluation rules.

We must not close our eyes over the fact that some parts (activists) might do whatever it takes to promote their ideas and scorn on the countraries, trying to game the system. Such thing happens in Wikipedia, where people who don't like a given point of view they might raise flags about neutral point of view, primary sources, etc, regardless these requirements might be assimetrical or unfeasible. (The issue about the different types of vandalism should be developed: concept description missrepresentation, erroneus labeling (like calling an inconclusive argument a decissive refutation), mob voting, marking as redundant or incorrect comments original and valid)(I wish the system would reach enough recognition as for suffering vandalism)(Anyway, in systems like wikipedia or slashdot, culprits for this kind of manipulation are supposed to be revealed and banned. They depend for that on people who have earned the trust of the community.

Examples of discussion

• Discussion about the forbidding of using break and continue statements in java in a dysfunctional company
• Governance: A management would announce incoming decissions and intention. Subjects and opposition would put into question and propose alternatives
• Caveat emptor: Let the consumers be warned about products overglorified by publicity, warn from weak spots and bad practices that the seller won't tell you about (e.g. some "inteligent food" that is not so).

Alternative Systems

@@@TO-DO: Pick the best sample available and compose a mock up of how it would be done in each case.

Forums and blogs

There are already forums (phpNuke,Drupal,Discussion), blogs and content aggregators (Reddit, Slashdot) where people can discuss about topics. Would Obelus or any other system be able to provide a better discussion ground? These discussion systems come in several flavours. - Hierarchical? (Yes/No) Pros: Not clear if many points in different directions are made, to tell apart which is related with which. Cons: Hierarchical promotes overdiscussion. Some comments may attempt to resply to many, makes the rendering more complicated (many queries, more error-prone). - Voting, labeling. Labeling if properly used is a powerful tool to allow users to filter what is relevant, but these are features that are usually played, turning them useless and distracting. There is the chance to do some meta-voting (which voters are reliable? what has a good score by users who like the same things that i do?), but of course that introduces extra complexity. - Enforced rules of engagement (Draconian/Lenient). This is up for the moderators. Everyone prefers if the site is not a chaotic pile of BS. But there are few rules which are totally appropiate 100% of the time (there are contributions which are not perfect, but are valuable anyway, where do you put the limit for trimming and disciplining), and often these rules become a distracting topic of discussion.

Right now I dont have a case for which for instance a Drupal or an Slashdot with proper moderation would be adequate enough. If need to label comments, moderators might edit even the headings of comments.

Wikis

If there is a topic of discussion, you can create a page for it. If there are different alternative answers, you can create sections for any of these. If they become big enough they might have a page of themshelves. You might have also sections for explaining further about the nature of the problem, examples, driving forces and factors and thresholds which might provide indication of which solution is better or worse. It is problematic that a chaotic wall of text might emerge if not enough redaction and organization effort is provided, but neither would it be good to be reviewing a ton of text for every single contribution whe want to aggregate.

There can be many methodologies and approaches about a topic (for example we might organize a set of historic events chronologically, or geographically, by nature of the event, etc). It would be unfortunate to have to repeat text and review many times on each modification. Should choose one metodology (e.g. group events geographically, and list them chronologically clearly stating nature of event). A semantic system might easily provide a custom layout, but that would not come without cost, and might not be of great advantage (dont need such a query so often, and is not so hard to merge different lists and trim unrelated events. Might even find a related event that for some reason was labeled in a different category).