<story><title>Kialo – a platform for rational debate</title><url>https://www.kialo.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aidos</author><text>I like the idea but found it a little hard to follow the arguments. Especially difficult if you follow down the cons thread, because a con of a con is a pro of the original point.&lt;p&gt;I worry that it won’t really result in more rational outcome but I do wish it luck. Is there anyway to downvote the points for being, for example, strawman arguments?&lt;p&gt;Edit: maybe I’d parse it better if they were labelled “agree” and “disagree”?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>electrograv</author><text>I tried it a while ago, then left when I realized a terrible aspect of its’ design was being abused: The creator of a debate topic gets to moderate it, which basically includes full censorship powers of any pros or cons you don’t like.&lt;p&gt;It boggles my mind anyone designing Kialo would have thought that to be a good idea, or that they wouldn’t foresee it being abused regularly to nudge the tide of an argument in the preferred direction by the moderators.&lt;p&gt;I’ve seen it all the time: Depending on the agenda of the moderators, one side of the argument mysteriously receives an overwhelmingly large amount of “moderation” for minor technicalities or even outright nonsensical reasons.&lt;p&gt;I’ve even seen Kialo’s own confusing design you mention here used as a way to subtly suppress one side of an argument: Take any argument beyond the top level, and it’s very easy to simply claim it is a duplicate of a top level argument. For example, if I write a con of a con, moderators can remove it saying it resembled an argument they saw in a top level pro. Or if I write a pro or a pro, they can remove it by saying it’s a duplicate of its own parent!&lt;p&gt;And this technique applies any number of levels deep in the tree. When this “moderation” gets applies overwhelmingly on one side of an argument, you can shift the entire balance of a Kialo argument quite easily without revealing overt corruption on the surface of your actions.</text></comment>
<story><title>Kialo – a platform for rational debate</title><url>https://www.kialo.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aidos</author><text>I like the idea but found it a little hard to follow the arguments. Especially difficult if you follow down the cons thread, because a con of a con is a pro of the original point.&lt;p&gt;I worry that it won’t really result in more rational outcome but I do wish it luck. Is there anyway to downvote the points for being, for example, strawman arguments?&lt;p&gt;Edit: maybe I’d parse it better if they were labelled “agree” and “disagree”?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Kialo</author><text>You can &amp;quot;mark for review&amp;quot; claims that aren&amp;#x27;t clear, duplicates, etc...&lt;p&gt;Mind you, we aren&amp;#x27;t a site for commenting or opining, but for capturing and visualizing the reasoning for your opinions.&lt;p&gt;Thus to &amp;quot;show&amp;#x2F;capture&amp;quot; your opinion, you vote the individual claims and theses (in the case of multi thesis debates, like this one: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kialo.com&amp;#x2F;2027&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kialo.com&amp;#x2F;2027&lt;/a&gt;). Then later you can select the different perspectives (opinions) and see the reasoning of different individuals, all in the same document. Works best in team environments, as public users often only vote 5 claims.&lt;p&gt;We tried agree&amp;#x2F;disagree, but this became problematic on mobile browsers.</text></comment>