Argument blogging

Citation: Simon Wells, Colin Gourlay, Chris Reed (2009) Argument blogging. CMNA 2009 (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Argument blogging
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.