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
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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