1 Towards Web 2.0 Argumentation Simon Buckingham Shum Knowledge Media Institute The Open University Milton Keynes, UK Proc. 2nd International Conference on Computational Models of Argument, Toulouse, May 2008 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 License

2 Overview  The Web 2.0 phenomenon  Key aspects for COMMA end-user tools  Web argumentation state of the art  Cohere  Limitations and future work

3 The dizzy world of “Web 2.0”

4 Defining “Web 2.0”

5 Web 2.0: user experience: simple, engaging multimedia

6 Open applications that serve one activity very well

7 Web 2.0: user experience: simple, engaging multimedia Open applications that serve one activity very well

8 Web 2.0: social networks, media sharing, and mass collaboration

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10 Web 2.0: information structuring: emergent, not predefined, semantics

11 Web 2.0: information structuring: emergent, not predefined, semantics  Tagclouds: simple visualization of keywords by popularity, reflecting emergent community “folksonomy”

12 Web 2.0: information structuring: emergent, not predefined, semantics  Wikis: designed to enable a community to add structure as and when they need, not be locked into a set of predefined forms

13 Web 2.0: interoperability, mashups, embedded content

14 Web 2.0: interoperability, mashups, embedded content RSS as data exchange lingua franca easily embeddable media helps them spread virally APIs enable data mashups + services

15 The bottom line: The bar has been raised for the Web user and developer experience Are COMMA tools up to the challenge?

16 Web-based Argumentation: state of the art  Debatepedia — a wiki structured into arguments for and against a question 

17 Web-based Argumentation: state of the art  TruthMapping — distinguishes unsupported premises from evidenced claims 

18 Web-based Argumentation: state of the art  DebateGraph — an IBIS-based tool providing a structured outline view 

19 Web-based Argumentation: state of the art  CoPe_it! —IBIS-based tool providing threads, maps and decision-support 

20 Web-based Argumentation: state of the art  ClaiMaker/ClaimFinder — semantic annotation and search of scholarly literature 

21 Web-based Argumentation: state of the art  ArgDF — first platform implementing AIF in RDF 

22 Conclusion: there are currently no “Web 2.0” argumentation tools  There are no tools satisfying all of the following criteria:  Provide an engaging, “walk up and use” interface  Make it easy to link to, and embed argumentation in other websites (like a YouTube movie)  Enable end-user definition of the semantics  Promote networking between participants  Provide an open architecture with API services

23 Cohere is introduced not as an argumentation tool, but as a tool for making meaningful connections between ideas. Argumentation is just one possible application that some users may want to pursue

24 Cohere homepage: people + ideas + connections

25 Cohere: creating a new Idea for Google’s “Knol”, linked to a website

26 Cohere: embedding an Idea or Map in another website (a blog post)

27 Cohere: raising issues about Google’s “Knol” Idea

28 Cohere: from tag clouds to idea webs

29 Ideas may be assigned a Role in the context of a given connection  your assumption may be my problem…  my claim may be your evidence…  The default Idea role can be specialized to one of the preset examples or user-defined

30 Cohere: extensible connection language doesn’t lock users into one ontology, except to classify connections as positive, neutral or negative to assist subsequent filtering

31 Expanding the neutral and negative connection menus default connection labels are listed first user-defined connections can be appended

32 Cohere: all incoming and outgoing links from a focal Idea

33 Cohere: Argument from Expert Opinion with Critical Questions (from Walton & Reed)

34 Cohere: semantically filtering a focal Idea by “contrasting” connections

35 Cohere: semantically filtering a focal Idea by “contrasting” connections

36 Cohere: a mashup visualization merging different connections around a common Idea

37 Cohere usage statistics  We are logging a range of statistics — yet to be analysed, e.g. Approx 1-3 new users/day register, consistent for last few months

38 Cohere usage statistics (cont/d) manually created in Cohere Imported into Cohere from Compendium RSS feeds from del.icio.us

39 Limitations, and future work  Interface not responsive on all platforms (Windows is currently best) or with large datasets  moving from Java to Flash visualizations  re-architecting the interface to be more efficient  Usability trials have shown weaknesses  now being tackled in a new version of the user interface  Much requested user-groups management added to strengthen the social/collaboration dimension  Cohere not currently an open platform  v2 has a RESTful services API enabling data read/write through URLs

40 Database (MySQL) Cohere v1 (the current public release) is a closed application

41 Database (MySQL) Application (PHP) API (REST services) Other Services Other Applications Firefox Extension Cohere v2 is an open data platform + API providing REST services User Interface

42 Limitations, and future work (cont/d)  RDF import/export now working (+ basic AIF)  RSS feeds to be added  New mashup possibilities  arguments merged with GIS (GoogleMaps)  or timelines (Simile), etc  An open platform for COMMA researchers?  add your own user interfaces and reasoning services…

43 Thank You! Resources…  Cohere: cohereweb.net  Cohere blog: kmi.open.ac.uk/technologies/cohere  Hypermedia Discourse research: kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/hyperdiscourse