One of the developers posted this on Reddit, in response to someone asking whether there's a registration-free version[1]:
I'm afraid not at this point. The system is set up to be connected to the user account (to make sure the votes and the links are attributed to an account).
However, it does make sense that some people might want a "Viewer only" version which doesn't add or vote, but just displays. We might look in to this....?
That might be beneficial. Their philosophy section states that they want people submitting and voting on rebuttals to have an understanding of argumentative logic; making registration difficult makes it more likely users have some idea of what rebutr is before they start using it.
While it will no doubt get used as 'auto research for lazy people', the implications of success for this project are much bigger than just that. Providing automatic skepticism for the average person is unheard of, but with a wide enough net cast by an active community, and wide uptake by common users, that is exactly what can come of it.
Definitely the chicken-egg problem is our main hurdle, but we are working on that by turning this project in to something more than just the plugin. We are also focusing on connecting with the most active communities who already engage in exactly the sort of activity which we need - the Skeptic community is exactly that community. So we are walking away from chickens and eggs, and going straight after the seeds.
Going after the skeptics would certainly be a niche market that could easily be created, I get that for sure.
I still think there is a model where you can impact the wider lay internet audience by providing healthy skepticism for everyone. Between Twitter and Facebook, communities with large, lasting impacts on social knowledge distribution and the behavioral modification that follows really helps gain mainstream traction.
I guess what I'm saying is - please don't only solve the small problem of giving balanced skepticism to those who want it (and thus may have the drive to do it on their own), but make those who don't look for it want it in the first place by making it easy to obtain (paying for that service would not be one of those ways).
The lazy people will think paying for such a service is a scam, but little do they know they get scammed for free all the time with unbalanced points of view.
We are building a website version of the 'Request a rebuttal' and 'Submit rebuttal' functions, so you don't need to install the plugin in order to participate (or view the material being generated either, of course, as is already the case).
However, in order to use these functions, there needs to be a user account for it. Otherwise people might 'test' things out and create nonsense links. Repeatedly. User accounts are a necessary filter in order to ensure we aren't inundated with testing clicks, and to provide quality control, and all the other things which follow from having registered users.
Most every page these days requires registration, so I don't think this is particularly odd.
Though we are now looking at creating a membership-free installation which allows you to complete our tutorial - and if we can, I would like it if that un-registered version could also deliver rebuttal alerts... So feedback is working. Now it will just take time to implement it all!
I'm afraid not at this point. The system is set up to be connected to the user account (to make sure the votes and the links are attributed to an account).
However, it does make sense that some people might want a "Viewer only" version which doesn't add or vote, but just displays. We might look in to this....?
[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/u8q8a/new_tool_to_h...