Open Debate Engine: Blog
We are ready to start rolling out a number of advanced editing features to allow users to contribute feedback, content and edits to the argument tree. The first of these is a simple feedback mechanism, a series of flags available on all of the debate elements (ex. quotes, arguments, news, and citations). These are only visible to logged in users so if you haven’t done so yet, please create an account.
There are three kinds of actions:
Flags , Stars , and Bookmarks .
The bookmark action works the same across all elements, allowing you to simply bookmark items which you can access on your profile page or on each object page (see more information about bookmarks). For the other two actions, the intent varies depending on the debate element:
Arguments
Stars : Use the gold ’star’ action for arguments that you find particularly well-formed or well-supported (good quotes, citations, news). We will be monitoring the aggregated feedback from all users over time and recognizing arguments that most users have starred.
Flags : If you find an argument that is lacking critical support or is incomplete, the best thing to do is to add a comment to that argument with suggestions on how to fix it. If you are unsure of how to fix it or do not have the time, you can ‘flag’ it and we will collect an aggregated list of the most flagged arguments to give other editors an idea of what to work on next.
Quotes
Stars On each argument, we will be ordering the quotes that display based on which quotes have been received the most stars from other users. For a given argument, please select the best quotes for that argument by ‘starring’ them.
Flags : If you notice a clerical error with a quote or question if it is correctly being taken in context, please let us know either in the comments section for that quote or through the contact page. Otherwise, you can flag it as requiring attention and we will review items that receive the most flags for accuracy and fairness.
News & Citations
Stars For news and citation items, the intent of the star is to help identify essential resources to recommend to newcomers to the debate. If you find a particular resource helpful in understanding the debate please ‘star’ it so other users can benefit.
Flags : If you notice a clerical error with a news reference or citation (for example, missing an author or wrong date), you can let us know through the contact page or in the comments section for that item or you can ‘flag’ it as needing attention and we will review it for accuracy. If you disagree with the content of the resource or the author, please use the comments section to make your argument or consider helping out on the competing argument.
I've generated a file of the complete argument tree with all of their accompanying quotes. This file weighs in at an absurd 500+ pages so it may not be practical except for high school and college debaters, wanting to add to their debate backfiles.
If you are currently debating and use this file, please send me any feedback about the formatting or structure of the file, I tried to make this as conducive to paperless debating as I could but am open to suggestions.
PDF (9.8mb)
HTML
Its been an intense few days since the nuclear deal with Iran was announced and there has been a flood of great essays, talking points, and explainers from think tanks and news organizations to help inform the public debate.
From my informal survey of the literature, the four most common arguments against the deal (and the ones that proponents were most often rebutting) were:
- Will the nuclear deal with Iran prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon?
- Will the $100bn of sanctions relief Iran is receiving be directed towards funding militants or towards Iran’s domestic priorities?
- Does the Iran nuclear deal set a new nonproliferation precedent that will spark a new arms race in the Middle East?
- Would further pressure and threats be successful at arriving at a better deal with Iran?
We will be focusing in on expanding these arguments in the coming week, and working to find on-point quotes and experts for each of these. We will also be releasing our guide on how you can help out with this task by identifying resources on these and other arguments or helping us make sure we have the best possible representation for each argument.
News organizations have been rolling out 'explainer' packages and shiny videos to help the public understand the basics of the nuclear deal with Iran, here are a few I've collected:
New York Times, "Simple Guide to Nuclear Talks with Iran"
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/31/world/middleeast/simple-guide-nuclear-talks-iran-us.html
The Weekly Standard, "The Iran Deal, Explained"
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/iran-deal-explained_991363.html
CNN, "What's in the Iran Deal: 7 Key Points"
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/politics/iran-nuclear-deal-main-points-of-agreement/
VOX offers an explanation of the deal in 3 minutes
The Hill shaves a minute off of that:
Think Progress gets that down to 60 seconds, and they used Legos to do it. Win.
Let me know in the comments (maybe a shorter video out there? A Vine explainer?) if you have seen any to recommend and we'll keep updating this list.
After 20 months of negotiation, Iran and the P5+1 parties announced this morning that they have reached an agreement on the nuclear deal. No matter your perspective, this is an impressive diplomatic achievement with the potential, as the former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations put it:
“This deal in effect ends the cold war between Iran and the US," former Iranian ambassador to the UN Kharrazi tells me.
— Saeed Kamali Dehghan (@SaeedKD) July 14, 2015
Here's the full text of the deal below, we will be updating the site around the clock as the real work in debating the deal has just begun.
Iran nuclear deal text
Welcome to the (beta-, pre-, soft-, robots only-) launch of IranDebate.org! There's still a lot of work to be done before the grand opening (however I'm defining that) but for now, I've turned the lights on, lit the sign out front, and opened the door to accomodate any web crawlers that pass through. For stylish and intrepid human visitors such as yourself, you can find out more about the project on the about page or jump in at any point in the tree to get a general idea of what is going on here.
This project is part of a larger effort I'm calling the "open debate engine" project, which is an attempt to find a better way to debate and analyze complex policy topics through crowdsourcing. I've been working on this idea for a few years now and the key challenge has always been getting a solid enough base of resources (arguments, citations, etc.) to demonstrate the potential as well as an active topic to facilitate participation. I also intend for the system to be used on a number of different topics and have been testing that through the development by working on multiple topics at once. The first site I launched on this current generation of the platform was UNCLOSDebate.org but IranDebate.org was one of the first topics I started with and is now the second site launched.
The debate over the Iranian nuclear deal is epic in scale and consequence and we still have a lot of work to do to represent it properly. I started this about 3-4 years ago, when the possibility of a nuclear deal was still speculative and Ahmedinjad was in power. The prospects for a new peace have improved dramatically in the past two years but it does mean there are a number of quotes or arguments in the system that need to be updated to reflect the current situation. Additionally, the debate is heating up over the pending nuclear deal (I've postponed the launch of this site as many times as they have the talks but I was determined to get it out before the final deal was reached) and both sides are making challenging, new arguments to bolster their case that we will try to keep up with.
In the end, I hope for this to be a community effort and will post here shortly with a list of ways visitors can help out to make the arguments on both side of the debate as strong as possible. In the meantime, thanks for visiting and for your interest in this project! Please let me know if you have any questions or feedbacks in the comments below or through our contact form.
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