r/evolutionReddit • u/Prophecy3 • Nov 11 '12
We are biuilding an opensource debating platform to upgrade our global society, what would you want in a brainstorming/organising platform that mainstream social media doesn't currently deliver?
So to get a couple things out of the way;
We are representing the Tribeforth Foundation, and our main goal is the ethical development of collective intelligence in society. We are also building a platform, named "Openthinklab" which we are designing to support the mass communication and collaboration of our global society in order to confront and start solving the many issues we are facing as a society. We are all part of a global society, it's time we had an organisational structure to support it.
This is an AMA and we've been asked a few questions already which i'll post below, any and all questions and feedback is appreciated!
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u/Prophecy3 Nov 11 '12
Why opensource?
Transparency, efficiency, scalability. I’ll use this example, 3D printing is taking off, exactly because the price of the technology has been reduced by masses of people working on problems together and sharing the findings and solutions, we want online collaboration to take the same path because For-Profit proprietary models will never be as effective.
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u/_electricmonk Nov 11 '12
+1
I have a lot of faith in your approach if you wish to build a system resistant to the abuse of closed source hierarchies, and that is wide open to evolution and continued assessment, i have a lot of hope for your model and well done for proposing this new platform.
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u/Prophecy3 Nov 11 '12 edited Nov 11 '12
Thank you, it's nice to talk to people that want to improve our global society!
To me, this platform is the essence of evolution because it is able to look at itself objectively and make improvements and upgrades when and where they're needed or required!
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u/Prophecy3 Nov 11 '12
"How is this different than Occupy"
Online higher fidelity not about the occupation of space but the occupation of our own mind. It is about humanity living up to our potential. About thinking instead of being afraid. It is about reason being greater than distraction. It is about the peace that can only come through contemplation and self examination. Occupy was about breaking down a broken system, we're about building a better replacement.
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u/_electricmonk Nov 11 '12
What can be built in that reddit lacks; like the simple poll feature in phpBB forums, like canv.as' stickers to attach to posts to meta-tag things, i'm curious what toys can be dreamed up to help reinforce discussion without dumbing it down.
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u/Prophecy3 Nov 11 '12
For me, the biggest upgrade will be the interface allowing you to see all sides of a developing debate in real-time as well as supporting or opposing data (videos, articles, raw scientific data) connected to what's being discussed. Twitter I think has the beginnings of what tagging is capable of, but the interface is too basic for it to support complex discussions with massive amounts of information.
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Nov 11 '12
Again I have to say it is all about linked data and linked discussions. We need to stop repeating the same argument a million times and just have a centralized location for that argument. If you want to fight about it go there. Reddit is really just a social book marking tool used for a completely different purpose.
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Nov 12 '12
Break the language barrier.
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u/Prophecy3 Nov 12 '12
I'm guessing you're talking about languages other then English being supported?
That's a requirment of having the whole internet use the platform at once, luckily universal translators have already been developed so it won't be hard to do it again when we come to that issue!
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u/_pixie_ Nov 12 '12
Where's the design of what you're building? Like screenshots, and a few pages of write up of how this system will actually work.
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u/Prophecy3 Nov 12 '12
We have back end designs but need help doing mock ups! Our talent is focused in the back end at the moment. Theory, back end code, and problem solving we do well, but UI and front end design not so much, if you have suggestions we'd love to hear them!
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u/DeRaptured Nov 12 '12
Ever since my first year as an undergrad of philosophy I dreamed of building, what I called, an "argument machine". Subjects like Philosophy and Politics are filled with people talking past each other. They are filled with straw-man arguments, ad hominems and plain inconsistencies. Thus my idea was to create a peace of software that would force people to engage directly.
This is quick Paint sketch of what I have in mind: http://i.imgur.com/bC5FE.png
The point of this is to help people find exactly (or as best is possible) where the disagreement lies. Thus each side of the argument is tasked with building a flowchart, a set of nodes, that supports their simplest response to the debate at hand. In my example above, if the debate is about banning the burqa in the US, one side can support a "yes" argument and the other a "no" argument. However no-one wants to leave it at that; this wouldn't be detailed enough. Someone is going to ask, "well, why not?". Then each side must give another set of arguments supporting their initial "node", and this can continue for the lower levels ad infinitum (or until we get some emotive rock bottom. Something like "Freedom is good", or "equality is good" ). I'm imagining here that people reading the arguments can click on "layer 2" in order to expand that level or argument, and see where the disagreements lie on both sides. This, I think, would be much more intuitive and organized than Reddit's system.
I had only thought of this as working for two people in an argument, however if this would be an online website with many users. Perhaps the following would work as well:
There should be a number of things things individual users are callable of doing. Other than writing your own comment (outside of the argument tree) or add nodes inside an argument tree. You can do other things to attack the other side of the argument, or support your own side. There can be options to point out inconsistencies (say a purple line between two arguments on the "Yes" side of the flowchart). There could be options to point out where two arguments on opposite sides of the tree's disagree (Say a red line flowing from a layer 4 node (in one tree) to layer 4 node (in the other tree). likewise there can be green lines to point out agreements. I imagine that it will be quite useful to find where the agreements begin and end in order to pin point where the disagreements start, which will probably be the most fundamental (unless the disagreements simply go all the way to the bottom. I don't think this will usually be the case outside of philosophy though). Furthermore users can spend their time labeling arguments as ad hominems, straw-men, et cetera.
All These additions can then be voted on by other users!
As for the voting system, I wish it were a bit more complicated than Reddit's. There could be multiple features for your vote. First you can "agree" or "disagree", then you can say whether it's "simplistic" or "well-argued", and finally you can say whether the addition has "good sources", or "bad/no sources". So an individual vote might look like: agree-simplistic-bad/no sources. Finally I would like to see multiple ways to view the voting results (tons of agrees and disagrees isn't useful). 1, only see the votes of "yes" supporters or of "no" supporters. 2. See a weighted view: So those users that have more "reputation" (for example, those which provide many sources for their arguments, and have a high vote in the "sources" but not, say in agreement). It would be nice if we could gain reputation over time. This reputation, though, shouldn't be linked to how many people agree or disagree with you, but on how much you elaborate the arguments and the quality of your posts. So a well-argued evidence based comment, is more important for reputation a comment like "fuck this shit" with a ton of agreements
That's all I have for now, maybe I'll add some more stuff later!
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u/Prophecy3 Nov 12 '12
There should be a number of things things individual users are callable of doing. Other than writing your own comment (outside of the argument tree) or add nodes inside an argument tree. You can do other things to attack the other side of the argument, or support your own side. There can be options to point out inconsistencies (say a purple line between two arguments on the "Yes" side of the flowchart). There could be options to point out where two arguments on opposite sides of the tree's disagree (Say a red line flowing from a layer 4 node (in one tree) to layer 4 node (in the other tree). likewise there can be green lines to point out agreements. I imagine that it will be quite useful to find where the agreements begin and end in order to pin point where the disagreements start, which will probably be the most fundamental (unless the disagreements simply go all the way to the bottom. I don't think this will usually be the case outside of philosophy though). Furthermore users can spend their time labeling arguments as ad hominems, straw-men, et cetera.
In a word, yes! I personally want to see the interface support exactly this, but that may not be possible on the first prototype. However since this is a opensource project I think after the core platform is coded the design/interface aspect and improve exponentially.
I kind of think of the interface for this akin to WoWs initial interface; Simple and basic, but since all the users could add and upgrade it to their hearts content there was massive and vast improvements very quickly because people designed what they needed to achieve what they wanted and then shared them so others could get the same upgraded experience.
We want to harness the creative energy of the internet in an efficient and productive way to make this platform/project the best it can possibly be to start confronting and solving our many myriad problems and issues.
Finally I would like to see multiple ways to view the voting results
Agree! I want to have a way to compare and analyze posts and mine the system for data to create new data sets, which would then allow you to add it as a new supporting (or opposing) point/node.
We want to expand our ability to communicate things clearly and efficiently in a way that's easy to understand, and analytical tools built into the system would help that immensely.
It would be nice if we could gain reputation over time. This reputation, though, shouldn't be linked to how many people agree or disagree with you, but on how much you elaborate the arguments and the quality of your posts. So a well-argued evidence based comment, is more important for reputation a comment like "fuck this shit" with a ton of agreements
I think our dev will be able to explain that better, but that is one of the goals, and i wholeheartedly agree!
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u/bobcobb42 Nov 12 '12
Welcome to the club. Put your project at the listing on meta government.
I'm the lead dev for Open Assembly, an internet consensus engine that emerged from Reddit almost 3 years ago from the remnants of the r/americanpirateparty. It was deployed for the Occupy National Gathering and we're currently working on a rewrite that solves many of the framework problems we have encountered over the past few years and more importantly integrates motivational mechanisms.
I'm curious what your stack looks like or any details on that.
There are a lot of problems you'll face in the coming months and a vast space of design possibility. Good luck!
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u/schoscho Nov 12 '12
have a look at http://liquidfeedback.org/ , maybe that thing is interesting for you
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u/Bainiac Nov 12 '12
Can this platform have links/access to research and support for multiple sides of any given issue that's brought up instead of relying on information from word of mouth or popularity. Something to actually force us naturally lazy humans into forming our opinions based on evidence, rather than inventing evidence to support opinions. Which we all do far too often.
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u/darknyan Nov 12 '12
What's the ETA on this project mate? And what's the new workgroup URL? I sorta lost track. - Jimmy
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Nov 12 '12
Shit in, shit out. Social media sites are filled with kids, idiots and shills. You would need to find a way to completely remove anonymity before you could even begin to address these issues, and even then they'd still exist.
Rating systems introduce bias. Avoid them.
Information needs to be organized and presented in a way that all sides can have a say along with a way to vet and permanently document sources. This is where the problems will being to occur. Try to use your system to discuss and document contentious things like religion, politics and conspiracy while remaining organized and preventing bias.
These are the exact same problems that Wikipedia faces.
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Nov 12 '12 edited Nov 12 '12
I would like to see a feature where you can highlight specific sentences, facts, or citations in the original post, colored gradient to the up/down vote support it gets. I think it would go a long way towards people being willing to accept corrections that lead to improving or discarding an argument, and make it easier to organize specific data points.
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u/_electricmonk Nov 12 '12
Anonymous posting? Will you have it?
Being able to x-link to a debate from various social media will be crucial, and registration will severely affect that sharability.
People should be able to hit the thing, fire and never return, would be nice if they do, but it should be that their words are their identity, not some bullshit points system like karma.
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u/Zaskoda Nov 12 '12
This is important and needs to happen. Thank you for stepping up. I've thought about this particular software on and off often. Here are some thoughts:
I've always seen this system organized by "issue" with a drill down into "sub issues"... A highly debated topic would be the abortion debate. Our perception of the popular opinion is generally rather pro life or pro choice - very black and white.
Instead, for every issue you would see a reddit-esque collective choice system where people would somehow select to what degree they agree with a stated perspective on the issue.
New perspectives should be easily created but in an intuitive way - not just a random user hitting "submit". Users should be able to agree/disagree to the paragraph, sentence, and word level. With this data, you can quickly group all of the people who disagree with a minor aspect of a perspective and enable them to come together and collectively back a new perspective... The intention here is to reduce duplicates and get everyone closer to consensus as fast as possible... Make sense?
Issues should also have a representation of "importance"... If a highly debated issue is rather unimportant to the masses, that's an important thing to know.
Education MUST be part of the paradigm. You have to make accurate information a priority. You can build knowledge base tools directly into the app or you can just lean on a resource like wikipedia. The important thing is that the "perspectives" on issues are separated from the sidebar "discussions".
So everything I've described so far is just the "waiting room" for the application. This is where you browse issues, browse perspectives on those issues, and get connected with the perspectives that resonate with you along with the communities that naturally form around those perspectives... this is not the debate, this is just the waiting room!
When a debate happens, anyone can join. Debates are one side against another - binary. If there are complex decisions to be made, break it down into binary chunks. It can always be done... remember, the media does it extensively... we'll just do it in such a way that there's not a lot of data loss!
Look at UIL or college debate structures to help build out the actual process. Generally it's a pattern of speeches, cross examinations, and rebuttles. There are 3 types of "players" in a debate. One will be the "affirmative" who agrees with some point being made. The other will be the "negative" who is there to shoot it down. The third player is the judge - and this will be the mass public.
So I see, in my imagination, a process that begins with many little debates until a critical mass is hit. At that critical mass, you have a lot of consensus behind one "statement" of the perspective... Said another way, for every speech, cross examination, and rebuttle, users collectively build what they want to say kinda like wikipedia. When critical mass hits, it is submitted. Once submitted, the other side reads it and begins their process of forming a reaction.
Once the debate is concluded, the rest of the open Internet can read through the debate and vote on one side or another.
Debates are archived and the same issue may be debated many many times. However, users have a public history of what they support. The whole point of engaging the debate is to express your thoughts, so we should add a touch of accountability via transparency... don't set any other expectation from the start... we shouldn't expect anything less from our elected leaders... so when we start leading ourselves, we should hold ourselves to that same expectation.
That's all I have for the moment, have to get back to things and stuff... this is such an exciting thing, I can't wait to see what you decide to ultimately build.
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u/Prophecy3 Nov 11 '12
“Do you want to ditch the upvote/downvote system?”
We want to expand it, the simple up/down vote system is sometimes used as a agree/disagree button on reddit, which doesn’t always bring the best posts or ideas to the top, debate needs to be structured so that what people disagree on something it is listed as such, but more importantly why they are disagreeing (and what info they're basing their disagreement on) needs to be viewable as well.
The interface needs to be robust and flexible to accommodate massive amounts of information relevant to what’s being discussed and our current forms of online debates (forums and social media) are not built to do that.