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What do you think of sites like Kialo.com?
For those unfamiliar Kailo.com is a site somewhat similar to tildes in that it want to encourage rational discussion. Although it is also significantly different than tildes because it seeks more to organize the discussion into claims that are evaluated independently.
I tend to think the site has some potential and there might be ideas related to it that could benefit tildes. I'm interested in what aspects the community here likes about the site and what aspects might be worthwhile to incorporate.
As a side note, do sites wanting to encourage rational thinking need more facilities to encourage the use of sources. One thing I've noticed about Kailo is that it's not every concerned with sourcing their claims with evidence.
The topic of discussion is "Is it okay to physically torture prisoners" and the specific claim to be debated is "physical torture of prisoners is an acceptable interrogation tool."
I politically matured during the Bush years and this was a hot-topic of debate in media, in university, and on the internet. I don't see how this is unacceptable to discuss. I'm reminded of a Chomsky quote, "the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum -- even encourage the more critical and dissident views" which leads into another quote from the same discussion "when you come back from the Third World to the West - the U.S. in particular - you are struck by the narrowing of thought and understanding, the limited nature of legitimate discussion, the separation of people from each other. It's startling how stultifying it feels, since our opportunities are so vastly greater here."
I agree, and from what I've seen those kinds are topics aren't atypical. That being said I don't think those topics shouldn't be asked. Its just as you said, there's no real mechanism for the better argument to take hold. The post should end up as a quality source debunking arguments for torture and highly favoring the side against. But If that were fixed there might be something to those types of discussions.
I think it's an interesting way to dissect debate and I made an account -- thanks.
It doesn't make immediate sense to me to incorporate the design of kialo's nested claims and impact voting into tildes. Though I notice that the tree-like structures of comments and child comments here are similar to the structure of claims and child claims there. The differences would be the overriding concept of the sites and the different shapes that the evaluation tools take.
Tildes used to have comment tags, and probably will again (See docs: https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics#comments). Individual comment tags can be seen as a proto evaluation scheme similar to the one on kialo; where one tag here represents a numerical association there. If there's something to be gleaned from kialo it's that it's important to have tools for evaluating comments, and I look forward to seeing that key feature develop. Especially because features like these have a definitive impact on the progression of a site's culture -- features shape the userbase.