Hey everyone! It appears I’m six years late to the party, but better late than never.
I’ve been building a website for the last few months which is very close to the ideas presented in this article. I’ve summarized some features of it, and added an entry to the wiki page:
Debate Map: Web platform for collaborative mapping of beliefs, arguments, and evidence.
Pros:
Collaborative creation, editing, and evaluation of debate/argument maps.
Open source. (under the MIT license)
Developed using modern web technologies. (react-js, redux, firebase)
Built-in probability and validity rating, and calculation of argument strength from these ratings.
Tree-based structure which can extend very deep without loss of clarity or usability.
Integrated term/definition system. Terms can be defined once, then used anywhere, with hover-based definition display.
Cons:
Has a learning curve for casual users, as content must conform to the argument<-premise structure at each level.
Performance is currently less than ideal on mobile devices.
I’m the sole developer at the moment, but I’m very invested in the project, and plan to spend thousands of hours on it over the years to make it the best it can be. I’m very interested in your feedback! I’ve been a silent reader of this site for a couple years, and it’ll be neat to finally get involved a bit.
“most online discussions are structured in a way that makes the accumulation of knowledge difficult.”
It’s a different kind of conversation, but I’ve been trying to improve on this problem by developing a “debate mapping” website, where conversation is structured in tree form based on claims, and then arguments underneath it which support or oppose each claim recursively.
This is the website if you’re interested: https://debatemap.live