Swarm debate

Empowering swarm intelligence for tackling complex issues

A web platform to debate issues in a comprehensive and flexible way

Mission & ObjectivesMission: incite people to join forces and collaborate online on complex issues by providing them with a powerful tool for debate and actionObjectives: Solve complex questions

collaborativelySimplify, Classify, Evaluate Foster creativity (new ideas) Stimulate participation

Debating online

Current solutions: discussion forums

Issues:• All entries have the same value: Irrelevant

entries can drown the whole discussion• Entries are unconnected to each other• One can have many replicates• There is no big picture view of the debate

Debating online

Current solutions: Stack overflow

Solves ± the issues of irrelevance and replicates but appropriate only to find the solution to a well-defined problem, not for open debate

Swarm intelligenceCollective behavior of decentralized self-organized systems

The integration of the contributions of many non-experts leads to better performance than a single expert

Graph theoryMathematical theory for dealing with networks

Many algorithms such as shortest path finding, PageRank, centrality, etc…

Central idea

Users post contributions and make links between them network of contributions

Then use graph theory to isolate clusters of ideas, allowing to simplify and classify the debate

Simplest version undirected, unlabeled edges probably enough

Example: should we invest in wind energy?

Modularity class

Example: should we invest in wind energy?

PageRank

Example: should we invest in wind energy?

Too costly It spoils the landscape

There are not enough interesting sites in Belgium

Example: should we invest in wind energy?

Too costly It spoils the landscape

There are not enough interesting sites in Belgium

It’s a bad investment overall

Fuel is much less expansive

Example: should we invest in wind energy?

Too costly It spoils the landscape

There are not enough interesting sites in Belgium

It’s a bad investment overall

Fuel is much less expansive Fuel is much less expansive

It’s bad for tourism

It decreases the value of the land around

EvaluationDegree, centrality, etc… can provide some form of evaluation, but are probably insufficient

Need for parallel vote-like evaluation

Allows to uncover contradictory propositions (users voting YES on X vote NO on Y)

Example: should we invest in wind energy?

It’s a bad investment overall (38% agree) Fuel is much less expansive (48% agree)

It’s bad for tourism (12% agree)

It decreases the value of the land around (28% agree)

Website

First and foremost: a social network

Short comments (tweet-like)

Different visualization options:keynote-liketext-likegraph-like

Need for tools linking debate to actions!

Outstanding questions

• Are undirected unlabeled graphs enough?

Labeled graphs (agree/disagree) would allow to highlight opposite views better but would be more complicated to use and analyze

No obvious use for directed graphs

Outstanding questions• Should we add other functionalities such as requesting

expert advice (in other words, how to avoid the lotto issue) or fact checking?

Work plan

Implement the simplest version, then experiment, identify issues and missing functionalities, and progressively fix it.

Implementation: Java? (lots of libraries for graph analysis)Ruby on Rails? (much easier)Databases? (mix of graph and document databases)

Neo4j? Hadoop?