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Ah another Opinion Network™[0][1] Serious criticism - what's the goal of these sites? What problems are they solving? Debates and opinions are, in my opinion,
by mbesto 13y ago
Ah another Opinion Network™[0][1]
Serious criticism - what's the goal of these sites? What problems are they solving?
Debates and opinions are, in my opinion, eternal. (high user engagement ya!) My understanding is that these sites want to collectively either catalog the debate (so the debate becomes eternally dynamic) or end the debate (so the debate becomes static). However there is one flaw - without full context (or lack of missing context), trying to catalog subjectivity is near impossible.
To contrast this with StackOverflow for example, the context is less important. If someone says "ActiveRecord errors out for undefined local variable" and someone gives an answer, I can effectively take the same logic and apply to my own context. This is not the same for every subject in the world. Also, what Spolsky has correctly identified is that trying to be THE q&a for everything is a poor design decision, because the name (and thus environment of the community) adds to the context of the questioning. (try asking "What should my salary be" in StackOverflow and you'll be sent right to Programmers SE site).
Whenever I see these sites, my gut reaction will always be "wishful thinking". Good luck though!
[0]https://www.quora.com/ https://www.quora.com/
[1]https://state.com/ https://state.com/
- jjoonathan 13y agoI agree with you that figuring out how to structure debates in an automated fashion is a Hard Problem, but that's not the only way a debate site can add value. Finding primary sources and extracting relevant information from them is such a difficult process that disturbingly few people do it, even though it really ought to be central to a good debate. Reducing friction in the resource-finding process, curating already-discovered relevant resources (one sentence summaries + search), figuring out a way to reward evidence-based arguments, and punishing fabrications would all be huge value-adds. The real trick, of course, is figuring out how to keep people at the lower end of the spectrum engaged. I recently had the pleasant surprise of stumbling across procon.org, which appears to address some of those value-add categories (it looks curated, so there's still space for somebody to automate the process, thereby extending it to small or recent issues). I was investigating healthcare reform, so I landed here: http://healthcarereform.procon.org http://healthcarereform.procon.org Pay particular attention to to "Projects" sidebar on the left. It's a goldmine of relevant quantitative information and the arguments surrounding their interpretation. This is what arguments should look like. Anyone who can figure out how to structure a forum system to organically generate something akin to the "Projects" sidebar might have a shot at making themselves a "citation hub" and becoming the Wikipedia of arguments. The world doesn't need another opinion network, but it does need another way to argue, and such a site might arise out of an especially clever opinion network.
- adrianmacneil 13y agoTo be fair, HN is also an Opinion Network, so the same logic could be applied. People love to discuss things, and without experimentation with different formats, we would all still be using usenet (or sitting around a dinner table, which would arguably be better). This was a personal project of a friend of mine though, hacked together in 5 days to learn Rails. So I believe it was less about "What problem is this solving?", and more "What would be a cool thing to build?".
- mbesto 13y agoTotally. Sorry if I detracted from your friend's development, but I thought a criticism over the explicit purpose of the site was important for the overall meta-discourse of this topic. Kudos to him or her for a job well done!