Structured debate

About

A structured debate is a dispute resolution technique which breaks down the elements of a disagreement into the smallest arguable chunks ("points"), clearly indicating the dependencies between supporting points and the larger points they support or attack.

This helps to prevent a number of common problems with discussions of complex issues:

• accidentally (or deliberately) taking opposing points out of context, and answering them as if the context didn't exist
• the feeling of getting "lost" in the argument due to not knowing what has been settled and what remains to be discussed
• significant points falling by the wayside and remaining unanswered
• conflating multiple points into a single point, which leads easily to making logical fallacies

See project:Structured Debate for extensive design discussion.

Implementations

• Argumentrix is attempting to stage what appears to be loosely-structured debates using MediaWiki as a platform
• Issuepedia is working on a set of rules for structured debate, eventually to be turned into an internet application with a web interface
  • category:debates has a list of structured debates using Issuepedia's proposed rules and debaticons

Links

Reference

• Wikipedia (argument map)