[ChrisKor]

> Argument mapping is not just about pro/con trees; but pro/con trees are a nearly-lossless way to capture how people actually debate things, so they’re a good “ingested primary source” format to keep around and refer back to when you’re trying to summarize and judge a debate (rather than having to listen to the audio transcript over and over, or read through a linear stream of debate text.)

We have used Kialo for exactly this. The parties that we suspect to start quarrelling about a decision have to capture their reasoning in a Kialo and send it to everybody before the actual meeting. And then we use the Kialo tree as a source document during the meeting. And if new arguments are brought up, the person taking notes just adds them.

Or if a heated debate ensues, one person starts mapping the arguments in Kialo, for later reference.

One problem we ran into though, is that older management folks seem to prefer traditional meeting notes, instead of hipster pro/con trees. Also, argument trees don't allow for nice print outs.