Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse

[Lloyd]

Toward Better Scientific Social Media etc

I just saw a couple Thunderbolts videos of Chris lately discussing flaws in science or in society that prevent much better progress in science. In one he discussed how business learned to use findings about how people base decisions on emotions. In the other he discussed the problem with feelings of certainty. The sense of certainty is a bar to discussion and progress. So he discussed the need to observe the framework of perception, which is what produces the naive sense of certainty. It doesn't matter how intelligent one is, as long as one fails to observe the framework, one is prone to this naivete. People tend to get the impression that the things they feel certain about makes alternative ideas unrealistic and not worth expending time and effort to investigate objectively. Just a little effort spent to consider unfamiliar details would often easily undermine the sense of certainty, but the effort is too soon imagined to be not worthwhile.

Chris suggested that we need to develop better scientific social media and that's something I'm interested in as well. What about the rest of you? How can we do that?

I tried to organize friendly debates on the forum a couple years ago, but there was very little effort on most members' parts to contribute meaningfully to the debates or to be friendly.

I looked into several interesting ideas online that attempt to improve discourse, but they didn't have enough participants or enough sophistication, I think.

I'm glad to see that the EU team seems to have some open-mindedness with respect to how rock formation occurs etc. I saw a couple videos with Michael Steinbacher that show some of Billy Yelverton's findings with electrodes etc that may show how the canyon on Mars formed etc. The team seems less open-minded in other respects, but at least there's some. Eh?

[jacmac]

Lloyd said:

I tried to organize friendly debates on the forum a couple years ago, but there was very little effort on most members' parts to contribute meaningfully to the debates or to be friendly.

Lloyd, I remember enjoying reading some of those debates and tossed in a comment or two once in awhile myself.
I think debates between EU supporters and "debunkers" were less productive than debate, or discussion, within the general EU community.

The discussion I would like to revisit is on our sun; how does it work ? I have come to believe it holds the key to wider acceptance of EU ideas. Perhaps we are all waiting for SAFIRE to give us answers? Perhaps it is time for a do over ?

The one question I remember not being answered by EU is: If the sun is externally powered would not a current powerful enough to light up the sun be itself visible ?

I am ready to join in. Thanks for your past efforts Lloyd.

Jack

[Lloyd]

EU Debate?
Jac, thanks for the suggestion. Since Chris is kind of on the EU team, maybe the team may like to see the forum try out some of his ideas for improving science discourse. Maybe they'd be willing to find someone to moderate a debate on the forum. A few years ago Dave Talbott tried to get a debate going with a former member, Nereid, on the forum, who pretended to refute EU ideas as an authority on other science forums. But she didn't cooperate, despite Dave's considerable efforts. After that I proposed to Dave a debate on the EU model versus other models, but for some reason he and others didn't seem interested. Maybe now's a better time.

Evaluation Process?
Whether for a debate or not, it seems that an evaluation process should be helpful for determining which theories or hypotheses are best. The process would, I think, need to involve stating the theory or hypothesis in sufficient detail and having knowledgeable people say why each main point is likely true or false, by referring to relevant facts or findings. The forum doesn't seem to be flexible enough presently to make the process efficient, but I think it could be modified easily enough to do so. In the mean time, I guess we could still try out a process here as best we could.

[fractal-geoff]

Just my 2 cents
May I point out that the primary conspirators of this heresy have subtly different perceptions of the nature of electricity and while I’m a supporter of EU, I think the universe didn’t even have a start.
So the observation is that the wider EU community has some diversity in even the base concepts, we are still exploring / discussing.
If the debates are internal how far from the founders ideas do think we can argue or would they be willing to argue?
I mean when you are arguing against convention doesn't it all become harder to judge?
Formal debates with outsiders would require the EU to start putting formal lines in the sand.
Obviously the “core guys, it’s their show”, but there are some ideas that I wouldn’t want to see become fixed just yet…
small cog no, 0205 ...Geoff

[Zyxzevn]

.. we need to develop better scientific social media ..
How can we do that?

Even mainstream scientists from different disciplines have different views on similar subjects.
The reason they get along together is because they do not interfere with the subjects that other
disciplines are working with. It upholds the myth that "specialists" know it better.
So psychology and particle physics do not interfere.
And specialists on quantum physics do not interfere with people that are doing calculations on black holes.

This causes a dead-lock and stops all science from progressing.

Labels

My idea is to build a discussion forum that allows different theories and opinions on the same phenomena.
To make that possible I suggest not to use comments as a basis for communication, but labels.
(Scientists like to label everything already )
Not just like/dislike as we see in facebook and other social media.

There are different sets of labels for different subjects.

For a theory it would be:
- understand the theory
- do not understand
- interesting (whether you understand it or not)
- i see conflicts with (certain experiments/other theories/the theory itself)
- too far off (for me).
- I learned something (in positive sense).
- explain more.

For a news-item it would be:
- interesting
- i see conflicts with (...)
- what is relations with (...)
- funny.
- explain more.

After placing a label, you can add a comment. But often it will not be necessary.
There is still a like button to keep track of the interest for each post and comment.

To keep discussions logical, there can be logical fallacy labels.
To keep discussions real, there can be "I did this experiment" and "I witnessed this" labels.

The good thing would be that it easy to comment on something without adding any real comment.
The system should make criticism more constructive.

Perspective labels

There are also "perspective" labels:
"Personal theory"
"Mainstream science"
"Electric Universe"
"General Relativity"
<etc>

Each idea is based on certain theories, certain models of reality.
So these are different than key-words.

When you are member of the forum, you can subscribe or un-subscribe to certain theory-labels.
These can relate to things that you belief in and want to discuss about.

So you can discuss about gravity from the "mainstream science" perspective.
Or about "general relativity" from the "Electric Universe" perspective.
These discussions will be completely different.

With this system you will not directly see stuff that you are not interested in or do not believe in.
That means I can post about the relation between the paranormal and quantum physics, without
having to deal with people that do not believe at all in the paranormal.
But you can change the perspective if you like, but many posts you will see can be
in conflict with the theories that you find important.
The labels that you can place would default to "from another perspective (your theory)"

We have all our personal knowledge and ideas. We are all specialists in a small field.
Some/many will have the urge to push their ideas onto others, which will never work in my opinion.

[Lloyd]

Hi Geoff. Ready to debate?

Hi Dirk. Do you want to try out your idea? It seems a bit complex and I don't know if all of the labels would be very worthwhile. If we try it out, we could get a better idea which labels work best etc.

The approach I used a couple years ago was to break a paper down into individual statements. Then in front of each statement I'd label it either F, T, or Q. Maybe I used one or two other labels too. F meant Fact. T meant Theory. Q meant Question.

I'll post below the statements in the most recent TPOD and I'll put any of the following labels before each statement: y, m, p, u, n, q, or x.
y=Yes. m=Maybe. p=Probable. u=Unlikely. n=No. q=Author'sQuestion. x=Extraneous.

It would probably help to rate each EU statement according to importance too. "A" could mean Very Important. Less important statements would not need a label.

I'll number the statements and I invite you others here to evaluate the same statements, using the numbers, so you don't have to copy the statements.

Here are my evaluations:
y<1) y<2) y<3) y<4) u,A<5) p<6) u,A<7) y<8) y<9) n<10) u<11) y<12) p<13) u<14) m<15) m<16) u<17) y<18) m<19) y<20) u,A<21) u<22) y<23) u<24) u<25) u,A<26) u<27) m<28) u,A<29) y<30) y<31) u,A<32) m,A<33) y<34) y<35) y<36) y<37) y<38) y<39)

You can copy these numbers and put your own evaluations before each one:
<1) <2) <3) <4) <5) <6) <7) <8) <9) <10) <11) <12) <13) <14) <15) <16) <17) <18) <19) <20) <21) <22) <23) <24) <25) <26) <27) <28) <29) <30) <31) <32) <33) <34) <35) <36) <37) <38) <39)

[Lloyd]

TPOD Evaluation

Here is my preliminary evaluation of the latest TPOD, Star Wires. I hope others here will copy the numbers in the previous post and put your own evaluations with them and post them below. (I'm willing to try out Dirk's suggestion too. Lead the way, Dirk.)
y=Yes. m=Maybe. p=Probable. u=Unlikely. n=No. q=Author'sQuestion. x=Extraneous, A=VeryImportant

The "A" statements are in Bold and those statements might be the best to focus debate on, if we were debating.

y<1) Galaxies are threaded through with filaments.
y<2) The Herschel Space Observatory was launched with the largest spaceborne mirror ever constructed: 3.5 meters in diameter.
y<3) Herschel was set to orbit around LaGrange point L2 in July 2009, to protect its liquid helium-cooled infrared detectors.
y<4) However, Herschel’s helium coolant system was built to last only three years, so on April 29, 2013 its mission came to an end.
u,A<5) According to a recent press release, astronomers working with data provided by Herschel found evidence for electric circuits in space, although that is not how consensus astronomers label their observations.
p<6) They identified “… an intricate pattern of filaments dotted with a few compact, bright cores: the seeds of future stars.”
u,A<7) Filaments of electric charge can flow in closed circuits through plasma.
y<8) It is electric circuits in space that distinguishes Electric Universe theory from most conventional viewpoints.
y<9) “Mysterious” phenomena are readily explained when observational evidence is coupled with laboratory experiments.
n<10) That alone distinguishes Electric Universe concepts from others.
u<11) Gravity-based theories are impossible to model in the laboratory.
y<12) As Philippe André, Principal Investigator for the Herschel Gould Belt Survey, wrote:
“The greatest surprise was the ubiquity of filaments in these nearby clouds
p<13) and their intimate connection with star formation.”
u<14) It is those braided plasma filaments that confirm the existence of circuits in space.
m<15) Celestial bodies are not isolated from one another but are connected across vast distances. m<16) Electric discharges in plasma create magnetic sheaths along their axes.
u<17) High current discharges cause the sheathes to glow while creating other sheaths within.
y<18) Double layers form when positive charges build up in one region and negative charges build up nearby.
m<19) Electric fields develop between regions, which accelerates charged particles.
y<20) Electric charges spiral in the magnetic fields, emitting X-rays, extreme ultraviolet, and sometimes gamma rays.
u,A<21) Electromagnetism “pinches” those channels, otherwise known as Birkeland currents, into filaments that tend to attract each other in pairs.
u<22) Electric fields along the plasma strands generate electric forces that can be 39 orders of magnitude greater than gravity.
y<23) However, when Birkeland currents approach each other, instead of merging, they twist into a helix that rotates faster as it compresses tighter.
u<24) It is those “cosmic transmission lines” that make up galactic circuits.
u<25) The cosmos is laced with those interacting circuits, each of them composed of untold numbers of twisting Birkeland currents.
u,A<26) There are power-consuming loads in those circuits converting electrical energy into rotational energy. They are known as galaxies.
u<27) Galaxies exist within the filamentary circuit of electricity threading the cosmos like power lines through a city.
m<28) They should be evaluated according to electrodynamic principles rather than mechanical behavior—with mysterious magnetic fields added to save the theory.
u,A<29) In an Electric Universe, large-scale plasma discharges form coherent filaments that exhibit electrodynamic behavior.
y<30) Gravity and kinetic energy do contribute to the behavior of star clusters and galaxies but it is not their fundamental energy source.
y<31) Stars in galaxies can form like silver beads on a string, lining-up for great distances.
u,A<32) When plasma moves through a cloud of dust and gas, some of the neutral molecules in the cloud are ionized, initiating electric fields, and thereby creating magnetic fields that tend to align and constrict the charge flow.
m,A<33) Since Birkeland currents are electromagnetic, they isolate regions of opposite charge and prevent them from neutralizing.
y<34) Planetary nebulae are spun from intricate webs of lighted tendrils.
y<35) Herbig-Haro stars and energetic galaxies emit braided jets.
y<36) Some galaxies look “hairy,” with threads of material extending from them.
y<37) Presumptions are hard to ignore.
y<38) Conventional researchers do not understand several factors, which hampers their ability to grasp the fundamental nature of the cosmos.
y<39) In particular, the adherence to redshift for cosmic distance measurements and a lack of knowledge when it comes to electricity.

[CharlesChandler]

My idea is to build a discussion forum that allows different theories and opinions on the same phenomena.

Good luck like that. I put a lot of effort into supporting such functionality on QDL. For every set of observations, there can be as many hypotheses as there are people to advance them. Criticisms can be entered under the hypotheses, and rebuttals can be entered under the criticisms. It's all logically organized into expandable folders and sub-folders, so you can focus on what interests you, and not bother with stuff that doesn't. If multiple hypotheses have stuff in common, it can be cross-linked, instead of copied-and-pasted, such that all criticisms and rebuttals concerning that material are accessible from either folder. Users can go through the hypotheses and rank each one of them, and there is a summary of the rankings, so you can see which models are performing the best (in the opinions of the users) across the full list of observations being addressed by the hypotheses.

But I never succeeded in getting the users to agree on anything at all, including just the simplest consensus on how to have a productive debate on how to continue building a system that would support debating. The whole thing broke down when one of the users kept insisting that it had to support 6 different chat boxes all open at the same time, all getting dynamically updated, not understanding the performance limitations on dynamic updating, and not caring. Not coming to an agreement just on how to have a chat, we never developed a consensus on how to develop a consensus. All in all, it was just a big time-sink.

My suggestion is to put more effort into picking the right collaborators than in picking the right technologies and design strategies. Some people just want to explore, but they don't want to discover anything.

[Zyxzevn]

...
But I never succeeded in getting the users to agree on anything at all, including just the simplest consensus on how to have a productive debate on how to continue building a system that would support debating.
...
Not coming to an agreement just on how to have a chat, we never developed a consensus on how to develop a consensus. All in all, it was just a big time-sink.
...
My suggestion is to put more effort into picking the right collaborators than in picking the right technologies and design strategies. Some people just want to explore, but they don't want to discover anything.

Yes, thanks for sharing. I really wondered about your experiences with your forum.

And I agree that people will not agree with each other. Even on a simple chat.

Currently there are six big sites that show different ways of community sharing:

1. Wikipedia.
+ good as source of information
+ easy to add a new item
- real discussions are blocked by "skeptics"
- easy to add bad information

2. Reddit.
+ quick spread of information
+ separation of information in sections (subreddits)
+ allows discussions
+ treestyle of discussions in simple readable weblog format.
- voting can hide interesting information/discussions
- circle jerking / shaming

3. 4Chan.
+ anonymous
+ lot of information
- anonymous
- a lot of garbage (which is often why people like it)

4. Slashdot
+ weblog style.
(works well with small website)
+ discussions possible, but separate.
- interesting discussions are hidden inside the structure.
+ voting with classifications (funny/ informative)

5. Facebook
+ weblog style
- not good for discussions
- not good for clear information sharing

6. Stack-exchange
+ questions and answers
+ you can have related posts
+ voting
- not good for discussions
- posts and information are very much hidden


So my idea was to have just one style. A bit of a mixture between slashdot and reddit.

The weblog style of slashdot is very easy to work with, and works well with a small community.
The section style of reddit works well. This creates different categories of information.
The discussion style of reddit works well. A lot of content is inside these discussions.
The voting of slashdot is better. To improve it, I made my own label-system.
A label system that also encourages constructive criticism (something that is hard in science).

Still we have the problem that no-one will agree on the same thing.
Different sections can already separate different groups from each other. It works OK in reddit.
To improve communication on conflicting subjects, I added perspective-cathegories.
These describe what you do agree on. By applying (simple) filters, you can discuss with
people that have the same perspective.
These perspective-cathegories are managed by the moderators of the section.

So we have:

sections (topics)
"cosmology"

subsections (sub-topics)
"sun"
"planets"
"stars"
"galaxies"
"cosmic background radiation"
"quasars"

each section has some perspectives related to the topic.
sections for "galaxies"
"gravity only (general relativity)" (15)
"gravity and electric" (30)
"electric universe" (18)
"holofractal" (12)
"other" (4)
The posts and discussions that are marked different from my perspective have a
low priority in my weblog and discussion tree.
I can change my "width of view" to see more, but can not add comments from a different perspective.
Such comments should always be constructive (it is not your terrain).
They will not be visible to others unless they widen their view.

Each subsection is presented like a weblog.
"new findings in dark matter"
"origin of galaxies"
"is background radiation from our own galaxy?"

discussion for each item in the weblog.
"new findings in dark matter"
_ [text]
_ _ [comment 1]
_ _ [comment 2]
_ _ _ [comment 2.1]
_ _ _ [comment 2.2]
_ _ [comment 3]

anonymous voting with labels on each item in the discussion (and weblog).
Example:

Code: Select all

GALAXIES
   [Electric Universe]

I think that the concept of dark matter is a wrong idea.
       [8x like the idea]         
 * The velocity of stars in galaxies are much faster than possible with just normal matter
         [5x like the idea]
         [2x I still see a problem with that idea]
 * I think that electric forces are responsible]
         [4x I still see a problem with that idea]
         [3x like the idea]
         [1x <other>]
    * The electric forces are not that strong between stars
           [2x like the idea]
           [1x I think that you are seeing it wrong]
    * Where do these electric forces come from?]
           [1x I like the idea]
           [1x not interested in discussing it now]
 * You are wrong
        [5x not interested in discussing it now]
        [1x trolling]

As you can see the labels can replace the circle-jerk part of discussions, and allow for voting.


Summary:
I propose an agreement to disagree in a constructive way.

[CharlesChandler]

Where is this?

[Lloyd]

ZZ's Example
Dirk gave this example of a possible Discussion.

GALAXIES [Electric Universe]
I think that the concept of dark matter is a wrong idea.
[8x like the idea]
* The velocity of stars in galaxies are much faster than possible with just normal matter
[5x like the idea]
[2x I still see a problem with that idea]
* I think that electric forces are responsible]
[4x I still see a problem with that idea]
[3x like the idea]
[1x <other>]
* The electric forces are not that strong between stars
[2x like the idea]
[1x I think that you are seeing it wrong]
* Where do these electric forces come from?]
[1x I like the idea]
[1x not interested in discussing it now]
* You are wrong
[5x not interested in discussing it now]
[1x trolling]

The example I gave several posts above is for evaluating papers. ZZ's example is how to have effective lay discussion, I think. But I don't know quite what the goal is. Is it for finding collaborators? My goal was to have an efficient way to come to consensus on scientific truth. ZZ seems to give examples of using labels for Agreement, Problem Suspected, Unready for Discussion, Other. My labels were: for Agreement, Yes; for Problem Suspected, Unlikely, Maybe, Probable, or No; etc. ZZ, do you have somewhere that you think you could try out your idea? Would Charles' forum possibly work?

CC's Forum

CC said: But I never succeeded in getting the users to agree on anything at all, including just the simplest consensus on how to have a productive debate on how to continue building a system that would support debating.

Actually, we did agree to have chats.

The whole thing broke down when one of the users kept insisting that it had to support 6 different chat boxes all open at the same time, all getting dynamically updated, not understanding the performance limitations on dynamic updating, and not caring.

Actually, I didn't insist on having more than one chat box open at the same time on the same page. I merely asked if that could work. So you tried to make that work, but it didn't. When I tried to have another chat at the same time on another website, you seemed to get the idea that I was trying to sabotage your site. But I wasn't. I don't know much about computers or website building, so I didn't know if my ideas would mess anything up. My intent was to use trial and error to find ways to improve discussions.

Not coming to an agreement just on how to have a chat, we never developed a consensus on how to develop a consensus. All in all, it was just a big time-sink.

I guess it was a time sink for you, since you have to work to make a living, but I felt that it was a productive trial and error experiment.

My suggestion is to put more effort into picking the right collaborators than in picking the right technologies and design strategies. Some people just want to explore, but they don't want to discover anything.

You got the wrong idea. I DO want to discover things, including how to have better discussions.

I agree that it's good to find good collaborators. I even said that earlier in this thread. We need to find the right people at the right time, since people change their interests now and then. I was lucky to find you, Brant and Mozina for the Electric Sun discussions a couple years ago. We had good long discussions, but couldn't come to agreement after a while, except that I agreed with your model. The other two got to the point that they wouldn't answer serious questions, so the discussion bogged down. When that happens, I think the one who is able to answer questions should be considered to have the better model. Right?

I think my method above for evaluating papers is pretty good. I broke it into 39 statements and evaluated each statement and then marked the ones that seemed most important. That whittled them down to 8 most important statements. Then you gave your comments on those. So I could have inserted your comments as arguments in support of my evaluations, assuming my evaluations agreed with yours. I think they did.

I asked readers to copy the statement numbers and post their own evaluations with the appropriate statement numbers, especially to see if there's agreement on which statements are most important. On your forum there would probably be easier ways to lay out the statements and the numbers and check-boxes. I gather that your forum is still available to use. I tried to use it recently, but couldn't reset my password. I thought maybe you weren't letting people use it now. If you are, good. At least if I can figure how to reset my password.

Oh, I just tried to log into your site now and it looks like it worked this time. Great.

[CharlesChandler]

I was asking "Where is this?" because it sounded like ZZ was talking about something that he had developed, and I wanted to know if it was online. Or maybe he was just talking about Reddit functionality, but I couldn't tell.

My whole issue with your method of evaluating individual statements is that few people are going to suffer through the tedium of it. Jeffrey's idea of doing multiple-choice questionnaires, which I implemented, seemed to work nicely, to get an overview of who agrees or disagrees with what, at least in terms of the most general ideas. But I don't know who is going to slog through a 5-page article, debating each sentence. Besides, any debate can always go in half a dozen different directions. So any given 5-page article, with 500 sentences, can yield 3000 different sentences that can be debated, all one at a time? I'm afraid that it will be tough to see the big picture if that much emphasis is put on the minutia.

So I preferred listing the essential tenets of a paradigm, with the criticisms nested under them, and the rebuttals nested under the criticisms. That way, you can easily navigate to the topics of interest, and then drill down into the specific issues, including the logical organization of criticisms and rebuttals. Then you just need a way of summarizing the results, since the nesting puts the juicy stuff deep inside sub-folders. So I did summarizing features, including a mechanism for tallying up the votes that people cast on which models they thought were performing best for which things.

[Lloyd]

ZZ's Idea

CC said: I was asking "Where is this?" because it sounded like ZZ was talking about something that he had developed, and I wanted to know if it was online. Or maybe he was just talking about Reddit functionality, but I couldn't tell.

Hopefully, ZZ will reply before long to explain further.

Lloyd's Idea

CC said: My whole issue with your method of evaluating individual statements is that few people are going to suffer through the tedium of it. ... But I don't know who is going to slog through a 5-page article, debating each sentence. Besides, any debate can always go in half a dozen different directions. So any given 5-page article, with 500 sentences, can yield 3000 different sentences that can be debated, all one at a time? I'm afraid that it will be tough to see the big picture if that much emphasis is put on the minutia.

It doesn't have to be tedious. Readers could just look for the most important statements and mark those for discussion. If five or ten readers read a paper and each one only marks one or two statements as most important to them, those statements could be focused on for evaluating and discussion. In my example 2 days ago, the TPOD contained about 39 statements. I marked 8 of those as most important. Those are what you commented on in the NIAMI thread, Most Thorough Model. I thought that was fairly efficient.

Jeffrey's Idea

Jeffrey's idea of doing multiple-choice questionnaires, which I implemented, seemed to work nicely, to get an overview of who agrees or disagrees with what, at least in terms of the most general ideas.

If that's online, could you supply a link to it?

CC's Idea

So I preferred listing the essential tenets of a paradigm, with the criticisms nested under them, and the rebuttals nested under the criticisms. That way, you can easily navigate to the topics of interest, and then drill down into the specific issues, including the logical organization of criticisms and rebuttals. Then you just need a way of summarizing the results, since the nesting puts the juicy stuff deep inside sub-folders. So I did summarizing features, including a mechanism for tallying up the votes that people cast on which models they thought were performing best for which things.

In order to list essential tenets of a paper or whatever, one needs to do something like what I did, reading the paper and marking statements that seem most important. Right? And with the TPOD review example I started with 2 days ago, after I separated out the 8 main points, out of 39, you provided a good critique on them. So we've already done much of what you're suggesting. We just need to put all that stuff in one convenient place, which would probably be best on your site.
- In any case, have you already tried your idea somewhere? And if so, could you give the link here? If not, would you like to start a page or section on your site where you'd like to try your idea? And then give the link?

[CharlesChandler]

Lloyd's Idea
Readers could just look for the most important statements and mark those for discussion. If five or ten readers read a paper and each one only marks one or two statements as most important to them, those statements could be focused on for evaluating and discussion. In my example 2 days ago, the TPOD contained about 39 statements. I marked 8 of those as most important. Those are what you commented on in the NIAMI thread, Most Thorough Model. I thought that was fairly efficient.

I think that there is a lot of labor there, just to get to the point where we have decided what to discuss. Somebody (such as yourself) has to prep the paper, and then tally up the results. And then we're only discussing what somebody decided we should discuss, by being willing to do the prep work.

If the objective is just to find the points of interest, another QDL feature would be a lot easier to use. You just post the paper to be reviewed to QDL. Then users read it, and whatever statements they find debatable, they select with the mouse, and then they add a comment. The comment will appear at the end of the paper, but the statement in question will get a footnote number next to it. So if somebody has commented on a statement, it's obvious -- you don't have to read the whole paper, and then all of the comments, to find out if somebody commented on that statement -- if there is a footnote number next to the statement, somebody commented. And the comment itself is visible if you hover your mouse over the footnote number. If you want to discuss the same statement, and/or somebody's comment thereon, you just click the footnote number, and it takes you directly to the comment, and then you enter your comment tacked onto that one. All such comments appear at the end of the main paper being discussed, but the point is that you can go directly into the discussion, without any prep work. And you can follow the train of thought in the discussion, just by following the links, if you don't want to read the whole paper, or all of the comments. So you're automatically building the structure of the debate.

Jeffrey's Idea

Jeffrey's idea of doing multiple-choice questionnaires, which I implemented, seemed to work nicely, to get an overview of who agrees or disagrees with what, at least in terms of the most general ideas.

If that's online, could you supply a link to it?

QDL / Topics / Science / Questionaire

These are easy for users to set up -- you just do a bulleted list, with the answers nested under the questions, and you mark it as a questionnaire.

CC's Idea
In any case, have you already tried your idea somewhere?

Here's an example of a folder containing multiple hypotheses that attempt to explain a set of phenomena:

QDL / Topics / Science / Astronomy / Stellar/Solar Models / Stellar Formation / Hypotheses

Aside from being able to add sub-points to each hypothesis in nested sub-folders (including criticisms), users can rank each hypothesis. Then, a summary page can be created, that automatically displays the averages of all of the rankings. For example, here's the rankings for everything in the Astronomy folder. The initials of the modeler are across the top, and the topics are down the left side. If the modeler weighed in on a particular topic, there will be either a number, which will be the average of all of the rankings, or a tilde ("~") if nobody ranked the hypothesis yet.

QDL / Topics / Science / Astronomy / Conclusions / Rankings

[Zyxzevn]

ZZ's Idea

CC said: I was asking "Where is this?" because it sounded like ZZ was talking about something that he had developed, and I wanted to know if it was online. Or maybe he was just talking about Reddit functionality, but I couldn't tell.

Hopefully, ZZ will reply before long to explain further.

I have been working on a design, not on an actual implementation yet.
I gave an quick example of how I might see it implemented.

Lloyd, thanks for your alternative to the labels. My labels were just the first thing I thought of,
and just an examples of how labels might work.
I think that labels might differ between certain categories.

I tried to look at different websites to understand WHY they work.
Those websites are huge and have lots of contributors.
And the reasons why they work might help us to build a system that works too,
before we have to program anything.

I am working on a bit of javascript, and I might get it to work on a website like CC has build.
While javascript is not good for simple articles, it works well in a discussion environment.
I plan to try out some different formats.
I will work out Lloyd's discussion example in a new post.

If the objective is just to find the points of interest, another QDL feature would be a lot easier to use. You just post the paper to be reviewed to QDL. Then users read it, and whatever statements they find debatable, they select with the mouse, and then they add a comment. The comment will appear at the end of the paper, but the statement in question will get a footnote number next to it

If I see the front-page of a discussion website, I would prefer to see
some layout like http://www.slashdot.org
They are doing a lot of things right.
A small list with summaries of articles.
As you can see in slashdot, the article-part can contain a question or ask for a discussion.

Additional there could be a browse system, like CC's website,
where you go through a tree structure.

I think that the articles should be simple.
Small summary. Easy to read. Easy to find. Easy to edit by writer(s).
Small list of references (to other papers or discussions).
There will be different keywords and categories for the articles.

The discussion is a whole different thing, and could be like a separate page.
I would prefer a format as is used in reddit: most of the text visible
And a voting system that helps to improve the discussion,
and prevents circle-jerking and trolling.

In my idea, I added another layer of complexity by adding "perspectives".
On a small website that will not be necessary.