Review of existing solutions
This page lists similar projects and what WL needs to build on.
Almost identical page dealing with this here: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Debate_tools
Contents
Argunet Editor
This site/project is very good. WL should link to many of the articles here to save us having to explain ourselves again. Unfortunately some of the examples are in German but the majority is in English. The key contacts seem to be Gergor Betz, Sebastian Cacean and Christian Voigt.
The code has not been touched on Github for a long while although there are still blog posts. It could be there are no longer plans to develop the software as he (Gregor) feels its reached its potential.
There is an online browser mode for sharing although i feel he probably never considered the idea of permanently archiving and using crowd sourcing to constantly update and improve. We should ask if there is a reason why he never took it in this direction.
- Not designed to be used as a Wiki with a shared database
- Requires technical HTML set up for online use
- The design for plunging deep into an argument may still not be deep enough for us to add all the worlds arguments in one map!
- No longer developed? https://github.com/christianvoigt/ArgunetBrowser
Debate graph
http://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nid=61932&vt=bubble&dc=focus
Video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=32InMNjO4tQ
If WL was at this stage we would be in a good place! DebateGraph is a visual map with community editing abilities that has the potential to link all arguments. The main difference between it and what WL hopes to become, is that there is no way to show which arguments are 'working' or 'true'. At least not an objective way. Each user may vote on a scale of 1-9 for an argument but it has no affect other than to offer a total score.
Pros
- Can use in read-only mode immediately without login
- Includes short and informative intro video on home page
- Relatively intuitive without any instructions and an existing map is loaded on home page for quick start
- Search functions
- Visual map with views that allow you to effectively zoom out (takes a bit of playing to find them though)
- Easy to traverse nodes and see their connections
Cons
- The default bubble view is trippy although they do have other views so this would be an easy fix for them
- No idea what the colours mean at first - again easily fixed with a colour key
Rationale by reasoning lab
https://www.rationaleonline.com/editor/
Of note: bCisive - decision making program by same people: http://www.reasoninglab.com/wp-content/uploads/videos/bCisive_my_first_map.mp4
Pros
- Provides easy to use, web based mapping program
Cons
- Not free
- No world wide database of existing arguments
- No automated updates so if an argument relies on another statement and its proven false, it will not update
- No way to evaluate how likely an argument is
Compendium
http://compendium.open.ac.uk/openlearn/screencasts.html
Pros
Cons
- Offline
- Generic to mapping, brainstorming etc
AIFDB
Adhocracy
EvidenceHub
Promising name but this is about tagging and categorizing related materials so searching "copyright" can show challenges, evidence, solutions, general resources etc.
It uses sentences and paragraphs to argue rather than breaking them down into their smallest parts.
Cohere
ARG-tech
TruthMapping
https://www.truthmapping.com/#
This is similar to WL in many ways and has been critiqued here:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1y/software_tools_for_community_truthseeking/
YourView
Australian focused democracy tool on hold while waiting for funding since 2012
http://yourviewaustralia.weebly.com/vision.html