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Argument blogging
From AcaWiki
Citation: Simon Wells, Colin Gourlay, Chris Reed (2009) Argument blogging. CMNA 2009 (RSS)
Download: http://www.simonwells.org/data/downloads/papers/wells2009blogging.pdf
Tagged: Computer Science (RSS) social web (RSS), argumentation (RSS), blogging (RSS), online argumentation (RSS), AIF (RSS), WWAW (RSS), DGDL (RSS)
Summary:
This paper describes "argument blogging", by which the authors mean the creation of arguments based on and reacting to arbitrary web resources (i.e. a blog post). This paper leverages existing argumentation technologies, such as the Argument Interchange Format (AIF), the AIF Database (AIFDB - an argumentation-specific MySQL database), and Dialogue Game Description Language (DGDL), as well as the World Wide Argument Web (WWAW - a collection of internet-connected arguments).
Individuals can collect quotes from various websites into the WWAW using a JavaScript bookmarklet. Pages which have agreed to be part of the WWAW display a badge linking to a dialogue on the WWAW server; those dialogues have transcripts which can be visualized using an online argumentation tool and alternately exported as AIF or in plain text.
The authors talk about the server as a point of failure, and indicate how a distributed system could be seen as an improvement. Yet they also see the strength of WWAW as a "unified point" (both of failure and success): by archiving distributed arguments, they are not lost piecemeal, whereas the "integrity of a chain of arguments distributed across the web" could be easily harmed by the loss of one or a few of those distributed arguments.
Theoretical and practical relevance:
Presentation slides also available.
