[manx]

Creating a "Wikipedia of Arguments", one can refer to in public discussions.

It turns out that this is a way harder problem than I thought. I'm in this space for some time now and am happy to talk about it.

Relevant links: https://github.com/canonical-debate-lab/paper/blob/master/RE...

https://www.societylibrary.org/

[jka]

Let's hope that a well-constructed, well-behaved and well-participated argument forum maintained over long enough timescales can lead towards better outcomes for everyone. Best of luck with the project.

You might be aware of it already, but just in case, the most progress I've seen in the area of web-based argument mapping has been Arguman ( https://github.com/arguman/arguman.org ). They're also following an open source model and there could be opportunities to co-operate and/or share ideas.

[manx]

Thanks, I'm aware of it. There are quite a lot of tools in this space already. Unfortunately, many are unaware of each-other and therefore making the same mistakes and learnings over and over again.

Looking at all these tools makes it clear how difficult it is to create one that actually "works".

Most of the researchers at the canonical debate lab created their own tool in the past and are now discussing how a next-generation tool should look like.

[jka]

Cool. In some ways, that sounds like the software industry in a nutshell, to be honest :)

Can you share a sense for what any of the core unsolved problems are? (I'd be happy to read a mailing list / previous discussions if there's too much background to be worth communicating in a comment here)

I've noticed that Arguman seemed to run into community management and spam issues. More broadly speaking there seems to be a societal challenge in getting people to trust and feel invested in honest debating and to accept best-known truths.

[manx]

The core unsolved problems in my opinion are:

- The argumentation data model

- An attack/manipulation-proof community curation system (maybe similar to StackOverflow)

- A user-interface that can be used by anyone who is interested to contribute, but powerful enough to work with the argumentation structure

There is a weekly zoom meeting every monday that is recorded and uploaded to youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwMyf-sRX2_Hqw-h9ba_S...

[jka]

Late reply here, but thank you - I'll try to catch up on a few of those recordings.

Edit: small clarification

[gitgud]

That is a brilliant paper, I expected it to be centralised around logical fallacies (which is how I view arguments/debates) but it goes into so much more detail around the nature of online debate.

It's interesting to dive into the factors that influence online debates; reputation, trolling, anonymity, echo-chambers, the hive mind, language barriers, commercial interests.... There's so much more to an online discussion than just the argument presented...