12 December 2012

Partial transcript of the "An Introduction to the MIT Deliberatorium" slideshow from the MIT's Dr Mark Klein's group.

What is the Deliberatorium?

The Deliberatorium is an innovative internet tool whose goal is to enable better collaborative deliberation
  • the systematic exploration, evaluation and convergence on solution ideas
  • for complex problems like climate change
  • with large, diverse and distributed groups of stakeholders and experts
What's Wrong with Current Deliberation Tools?

With current tools (e.g. forums, blogs, email, IM, wikis) the interactions are organized by time.

 Scattered Content

Discussions typically meander from topic to topic in an unsystematic way producing scattered content & haphazard coverage

People tend to cluster into multiple disjoint (balkanized) discussions

The Soapbox Problem

The last to speak is the last to be heard, which encourages lots of redundant post cycles, especially for controversial topics, and "small voices" tend to get drowned out

Flawed Argumentation

In current collaboration tools, there is no inherent bias towards well-founded argumentation

truism - prejudices - unfair ratings - biases - rumors - lies - spam - confusion - opinions - attacks - NOISE

Scattered content + Soapbox problem + Flawed argumentation

=

- Incomplete and often flawed content

- Hard to make sure your voice is heard

- Hard to find the good stuff amongst all the noise

Argument Mapping Can Help!

Argument mapping can address these limitations by the simple but powerful trick of organizing contributions by topic, rather than by time

Contributions are broken down into issues, ideas and arguments

issue: a problem that needs to be solved
idea: an approach for addressing that issue
argument: an point for (pro) or against (con) an idea

Every point can only appear once and it is attached to the point it logically refers to

Benefits of Argument Mapping

No scattering: all content on a given topic is co-located, regardless of who authored it

No soapbox problem: each point can only be made once, so there's no room for repetition

Bias towards well-founded arguments: the system makes the arguments for/agains idea - or the lack thereof - visible

More complete, better-supported content

All voices can be heard

Easy to find the good stuff

Th Role of Authors

Unbundle - break your thoughts into points that each contain just one issue, idea or argument

Locate - search the argument map to see where your point(s) belong, and whether they are already present

Enter - If it's a new point, attach a new post to the issue, idea or argument it logically refers to. Otherwise, refine the existing post

The live-and-let-live rule: If you disagree with someone, add a "con" argument or a competing idea, but do not edit their posts to undercut them. You should only edit a post if your goal is to strengthen it.

Why Bother?

Why bother going to the extra trouble of argument mapping? What's in it for me?

In a word, impact:

Argument maps represent the kind of distilled and organized knowledge people are hungry for. If you have something important and unique to offer, it is much more likely to be seen in an argument map than in a traditional forum.

The Role of Moderators

 It takes practice to be able to follow these rules correctly. And some people may even choose to ignore these rules in hope of sabotaging the discussion. This is where moderators come in. Their task is to:

Check pending posts to ensure that they are unbundled, named, typed, and located correctly, and point out/fix structural errors.

Certify well-structured posts: only certified posts "count" (can be viewed, or rated, by non-authors)

Remove clearly inappropriate (e.g. abusive or spam) posts but otherwise remain strictly content-neutral

Re-organize the argument map as needed (by clustering related posts) to make it easier to find stuff

The Role of the Community

Discuss - leave comments on the posts in order to raise questions, suggest improvements, and so on.

Rate - rate posts to help highlight important issues, promising ideas, and compelling arguments. This makes high-quality work salient, and encourages the community to do good work.

Join Us!

Help create better ways to do large-scale collaborative deliberation

Learn more about critical challenges like climate change

Contribute your expertise to help solve these problems

Find others like yourself, throughout the world

We hope you enjoy using the Deliberatorium

For more info: MIT Center for Collective Intelligence http://cci.mit.edu

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