ArgWar

"Arguments war" inquiry system

Most of inquiries and questionaries ask simple questions of type:

"Do you support or are you against some proposal, solution, ...?"

Yes and no answers are only expected so in result we know percentage of positive and negative responses. This is of course very important knowledge but not very deep. We do not know why specific option was chosen and we have no suggestion for other possible solutions that may solve conflict situation. "Arguments war" inquiry system ask question of different type:

"What is the best argument that supports your positive or negative opinion on some proposal, solution, ...?"

People responding to the inquiry votes on arguments and from this information we may learn why they chose specific solution.

To start inquiry we must prepare the question and some arguments for supporters and those who are against. Inquiry participants may also add their own arguments so setting start arguments is not absolutly neccessery but it is adviced. We may prepare arguments that do not overlap and are related to poblems we want to investigate. Complete argument list helps participants in thinking about the problem. Of cource we should take care about arguments balance and clear formulation.

Setting start argument list may influence results however this influence will be weak if number of voters is high. The way we formulate question also may influence result.

Supporting and dissuporting arguments are displayed seperatly sorted by number of votes. Because people usualy read from top to bottom more popular arguments have better chances to be selected. There is some positive feedback - popular argument becames even more popular. This effect will be stronger when argument list is long.

Inquiry participant may vote on argument selected from argument list or may add own argument. This is very important option. The start list of arguments may not contain some relevant arguments the people want to add and vote on.  Having the possibility to add arguments the responder has the feeling of participation in decision making process. Thinking about argument formulation is quite different from simple voting. In this process new ideas and problem solutions may born. This indirect effects are of great value.

To find solution of a problem we may put it at internet forum and wait for answers from internet society. It works fine for many technical problems when we have not too many answers from people who know how to solve it. Frequently, unfortunatly when problem to solve is important for many people, we obtain at forum many answers but wise and relevant are perfectly mixed with non-important and stupid so it is quite difficult to come to conclusions. In "arguments war" inquiry system we try to solve this problem with argument elimination.

Adding new argument expands the argument list. To keep argument list compact special mechanizm was developed for "argument war" inquiry system. After each vote, the system looks for an argument that have not obtained vote for the longest time and decreases its vote count. If vote count is too low (less than zero) argument will be rememoved from the list. New added arguments are not taken into account in this search for a number of first
votes after their addition so they have chances to stay in the list if people votes on them. The option to add new argument by anonymous user may born some problems similar to those we meet at internet forum. Some people like to write some unacceptable remarks that are not related to question and we do not like to apear on our page. To deal with this problem system offers the option for immediate argument removal by inquiry moderator. To do this he/she must type in password in new argument field and then vote on argument to be removed.