I worry that it won’t really result in more rational outcome but I do wish it luck. Is there anyway to downvote the points for being, for example, strawman arguments?
Edit: maybe I’d parse it better if they were labelled “agree” and “disagree”?
It boggles my mind anyone designing Kialo would have thought that to be a good idea, or that they wouldn’t foresee it being abused regularly to nudge the tide of an argument in the preferred direction by the moderators.
I’ve seen it all the time: Depending on the agenda of the moderators, one side of the argument mysteriously receives an overwhelmingly large amount of “moderation” for minor technicalities or even outright nonsensical reasons.
I’ve even seen Kialo’s own confusing design you mention here used as a way to subtly suppress one side of an argument: Take any argument beyond the top level, and it’s very easy to simply claim it is a duplicate of a top level argument. For example, if I write a con of a con, moderators can remove it saying it resembled an argument they saw in a top level pro. Or if I write a pro or a pro, they can remove it by saying it’s a duplicate of its own parent!
And this technique applies any number of levels deep in the tree. When this “moderation” gets applies overwhelmingly on one side of an argument, you can shift the entire balance of a Kialo argument quite easily without revealing overt corruption on the surface of your actions.
If you have specific examples, please point us to them, but we are not aware of any really large (>500 claims) biased debates.
The idea is for claims to be canonical for each debate, otherwise you have to rewrite them a gazillion times, including their children. That's what we have linking for.
Generally speaking, if you think your claim was unfairly rejected, just hit report and we'll look into it.
Having claims rejected as duplicates, happens to us too. :)
If you have any suggestions, other than reporting, and roaming powerusers (which we will introduce soon), please let us know!
Also instead of removal just make it less visible. With a big arrow pointing towards the main discussion. If people still choose to discuss there then they must see value in doing so.
PS: thank you for making this
Page rank would give users a high score if they are up voted by other users with high scores.
I'm not sure if page rank can deal with negative weight edges for down votes but probably.
Suggested claims that were not accepted, aren't deleted. users often argue back and forth with admins on those claims, often edit them and then get them accepted. Very often it's really just a clarification or "could you please add sources" or "do you mind moving this claim over there".
Duplicates are thornier. What we have considered, is linking them to the ones that they supposedly are duplicates of, so you could see them there.
That's possible and we might do it, but we really don't get that many complaints about them. It's really just a problem in the debates with >1k claims. but as more debates grow, this might become more of an issue and then we'll build that.
Thanks for your input.
Is it possible to deter troll behavior by using a reputation system and investigating bad behavior? Reputation that takes a long time of good behavior to build but a single act of malice to destroy.
It also has the statistical beauty of adding a prior probability estimate to the likelihood estimate that sorts Reddit comments.
We have a "reputation system" it's the thank count next to usernames. We have not handed out any privileges based on those yet, but will probably soon take all with a certain thank count, look at their contributions and grant them some poweruser rights, e.g. commenting into all public debates and see how that goes.
The brain has several cognitive biases, such as giving more value to the last paragraphes it reads (which are usually at the right, or at the end of a text block). Cultural biases, such as colors (red for "alert","bad" for example) also influence judgements.
By the way, the website doesn't look easily usable or accessible to impaired people
All debates are unique
The most common misunderstanding is the one mentioned before, a con to a con, indirectly supports the thesis, but is red.
But changing that around is even more confusing. Especially when the parent to that con is then used as a pro somewhere else (and the con now having to be labeled red again).
We consider pros and cons always to be relating to the parent directly above them. This allows them to be linked or copied between debates, irrespective of what debate they originally were a part of.
We finished read and navigation accessibility (screenreaders) last month, if anyone knows a great company for testing this, please let us know.
So to clarify, the below is in the wrong section, right? Even if it was under cons, as I believe it should be, the X cons Y wording doesn't feel natural to me.
https://www.kialo.com/macos-and-windows-should-sandbox-all-a...
For posterity:
>>> Getting asked for permissions by various apps (can I access the camera, can I read you photos, can I send you notifications, can I get your location, etc...) is annoying.
>>> Pros: Mobile users seem to be okay with getting asked for permissions on demand, why would desktop users be any different?
As an aside, how do I copy anything without having to trawl through the DOM or click the tweet button!?
Mind you, we aren't a site for commenting or opining, but for capturing and visualizing the reasoning for your opinions.
Thus to "show/capture" your opinion, you vote the individual claims and theses (in the case of multi thesis debates, like this one: https://www.kialo.com/2027). Then later you can select the different perspectives (opinions) and see the reasoning of different individuals, all in the same document. Works best in team environments, as public users often only vote 5 claims.
We tried agree/disagree, but this became problematic on mobile browsers.
This interface version 4.5, but we are happy to try new stuff. :)
https://www.kialo.com/kialo-should-create-a-mobile-app-addit...
I'm on Firefox, Android 8.1
Edit : Nevermind, I found the view on the menu, then "Info / Stats / Topology". For information, I never opened the website on a desktop, and the mobile version is a bit overwhelming at first sight. UI animations are rather laggy
Edit2 : Just registered to try to participate to that debate. A bit overwhelming at first, but after understanding the UI, that tool is awesome. Democracy Forum 2.0 right there :-)
Edit3 : I agree that "agree"/"disagree" is easier to understand than "pro"/"cons" when navigating the tree. An action verb makes it more obvious that we can participate, and it then naturally shows a text box to add our arguments. Also, I'm still not a fan of green/red colors.
https://www.kialo.com/kalios-source-code-should-be-free-and-...
;)
It's also an awesome tool to help one at building a reasoning
the most obvious feature (and a more objective metric for the productivity of the scoring algorithms) would be a button or color that highlights the claim, which if swayed to garner more or less support would most influence the topmost/root claim. If you don't build it sommeone else will. The most popular and desirable interface is the one that helps the user sway the rest.
Apologies for the pedantry, but no - a con of a con need not be a pro of anything.
From a logical standpoint, not at all.
From a social standpoint, it often does persuade people towards the pro. However, that is a known fallacy. It is a standard tactic in persuasion.
From the movie "Thank You For Smoking":
Joey Naylor: ...but you didn't prove that vanilla was the best...
Nick Naylor: I didn't have to. I proved that you're wrong, and if you're wrong I'm right.