A rational debate appears! Could Kialo help improve the quality of contentious conversations?

Working Groups Signaling Ring
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Hey everyone! I presented Kialo at the DGOV node at Web3 Summit. Kialo describes itself as a "platform for rational debate."

I’ve had some conversations with the team that created this tool, and it is pretty clear that they have put in a lot of work - it seems to be pretty far ahead of many of the debate mapping/tracking tools I have tested over the last few months.

A few notes from my conversations with the team over there and my experience playing with it thus far:

  • One of the cool things about this tool is that it separates “writers” from “viewers.” Viewers can submit claims to writers who help moderate the debate. So it is permissionless yet maintainable, similar to this forum but built for debate rather than conversation.

  • Viewers and Writers can all rate claims on their veracity, and these viewpoints can be filtered so we can see how different stakeholder groups are positioned on an issue.

*** You can also filter out specific users who have clearly made outsized contributions to the debate,** to see what it would look like in the event they were not a part of it. While this won’t always be useful (oftentimes the creator of the thesis is going to be very involved, so filtering their perspective wouldn’t be practical), but it has been successfully used to refine the overall sentiment without “brigaders’” viewpoints taking over.

  • It is pretty clear that this should not be used to MAKE the decision, rather GUIDE the debate and provide a clear reference point on what the arguments are for and against a thesis. “Votes” for or against should be considered a simple signal, rather than a binding choice.

  • There is a “Teams” feature that allows an additional layer of moderation optionality, much like we have Admins here on Discourse. (I have access to this Team and started inviting a few folks from DGOV, the EF and Magicians’ Signaling Ring).

Some questions I have:

  • How do we determine the allocation of Ethereum Team spots.

  • How do we determine that debate has reached a level of contention that requires a Kialo instance?

  • What do we do once we have all the viable pros and cons fleshed out? Does it get included as a signaling reference point in related EIPs?

Maybe we should use the tool to talk through some of these ideas, ya think?

Here it is:

Thanks for your thoughts!

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Video of the talk is coming soon. But I really support the idea. Hudson also finds it interesting if community will know and use it. We’ve tried if for this debate: https://www.kialo.com/ethereum-ecosystem-should-be-funded-through-some-form-of-taxation-30287?path=30287.0~30287.1

Regarding the questions:

  • Can it be on-demand? is it limited?
  • IMHO if somebody feels like creating it – he/she creates. It’s just won’t be promoted/won’t get enough participation if not contentious/important
  • There’s also signalling on the importance – we can attract people to mark the strength of each argument. And there’re can be a campaign-like approach. E.g. the decision will be done on date X, so we promote participation until this date, and by this date we provide kinda report on what info we got.

Also, we in EthSignals planned to setup some monthly open call to talk about signalling – if you or anybody else is up to we can have a discussion on the kialo.

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A lot of these questions are getting raised in the Kialo discussion itself, let’s try them out there! Have I invited you as a Writer on this one?