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RE: [ba-ohs-talk] Fixed ideas and polarization



On Sat, 14 Sep 2002, Jack Park wrote:    (01)

> Somewhere along the line, I set that on the back burner in order to explore
> the notion that it may be more important to have people just tell stories,
> as I mentioned earlier, and then augment those stories with IBIS arguments
> (or, for that matter, any argumentation ontology desired, e.g.
> http://www.austhink.org).    (02)

Good point, this matches our experience with the GRASS (Group Report
Authoring Support System) project (an early prototype is available at
http://infolab.uvt.nl/grnsd/grass/). This project grew from a working
group on forestry issues in British Columbia. Its aim was to develop a
web-server that can facilitate consensus assessment and structured report
writing on contentious, e.g. environmental issues. The basis for the
report structure is the IBIS-model.    (03)

In testing the method and tool in a Dutch national debate on the
acceptability of gene technology, we found that people prefer to use to
informal kinds of argumentation and story telling via, for instance a
mailing list, and only then use the web-server to model the most important
results post-hoc. However, the formal IBIS-based report structure helped
to focus and summarize discussion. Thus, the right mix and balance between
informal and formal argumentation facilities is essential.    (04)

Some details about GRASS can be found in:    (05)

A. de Moor and Rolf Kleef (2001). Authoring Tools for Effective Societal
Discourse. In Proc. of the 15th International Informatics for
Environmental Protection Symposium: Sustainability in the Information
Society, October 10-12 2001, Zurich, pp.751-756.
http://infolab.kub.nl/people/ademoor/papers/ei01.pdf    (06)

We also have an article coming out on our GRASS experiences in Information
Systems Journal: "From Habermas's Communicative Theory to Practice on the
Internet". I can send you a copy once it's out.    (07)

Cheers,    (08)

Aldo    (09)

==========================================================================
  ---///     e-mail: ademoor@uvt.nl
IN|F/OLAB    phone +31-13-4662914/3020, fax +31-13-4663069
  |///       home page: http://infolab.uvt.nl/people/ademoor    (010)

Dr. Aldo de Moor
Infolab, Dept. of Information Systems and Management - Tilburg University
PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
==========================================================================    (011)