Friday, May 23, 2008

This is a REALLY AWESOME idea.

Debategraph -- a wiki dedicated to gathering the arguments. Period. From the site description:

Our goal is to make the best arguments on all sides of any debate freely available to all and continuously open to challenge and improvement by all.

In pursuit of this goal, Debategraph is:

(1) A wiki debate visualization tool that lets you:

* present the strongest case on any debate that matters to you;
* openly engage the opposing arguments;
* create and reshape debates, make new points, rate and filter the arguments;
* monitor the evolution of debates via RSS feeds; and,
* share and reuse the debates on and offline;

(2) A web-based, creative commons project to increase the transparency and rigor of public debate everywhere—by making the collective insight and intelligence of the global community freely available to all.

* Every debate map is provisional and open to iterative improvement by anyone who participates.
* Over time, the debate maps will mature into the definitive articulations of each debate.
* Every change you make—whether correcting a text, adding a new argument, or starting a new debate—contributes towards the fulfilment of this social promise.
* So be bold as a first time visitor—and safe in the knowledge that a full editing history provides a safety net. And if you are interested in playing a more systematic editorial role in the community, we would love to hear from you.

(3) A global map of all the debates that enables us to visualise and deepen our understanding of the ways in which different debates are semantically interrelated, and ways in which these interrelated debates shape, and are shaped by, each other.


This is BRILLIANT.