WEB APPLICATION FOR DEBATE MAPS

• US 20120015342A1
• Filed: 07/03/2011
• Published: 01/19/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 10/20/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Thoughtgraph Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Thoughtgraph Ltd.
• Inventors: BALDWIN, Peter Jeremy, PRICE, David Alexander
• Application Number:
  US13/175,858
• Publication Number:
  US 20120015342A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 434/365
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/21 Design, administration or maintenance of databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2246 Trees, e.g. B+trees
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/284 Relational databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/287 Visualization; Browsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/289 Object oriented databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/955 using information identifiers, e.g. uniform resource locators [URL]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/35 Discourse or dialogue representation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

A fully web-enabled software system for building, editing, evaluating, rendering, navigating and storing an integrated repository of debate in which schematic representations of individual debates are bound together to form an over-arching repository of debate by a multiplicity of user-specified semantic cross-relationships that allow the emergence of clusters of related debates. The system is comprised of: a) Application software that allows users to build and edit debate maps made up of discrete elements representing entities such as issues, claims, positions, and simple and compound arguments in accordance with rules that foster sound argumentation practices, and b) Application software that enables users of the system to create an additional layer of semantic cross-relationships between individual debate elements where such elements may be in the same debate map, or in different debate maps, thereby enabling the representation of relationships between debates as well as the structure of individual debates.

Claims

1. A fully web-enabled software system for building, editing, evaluating, rendering, navigating and storing an integrated repository of debate in which schematic representations of individual debates are bound together to form an over-arching repository of debate by a multiplicity of user-specified semantic cross-relationships that allow the emergence of clusters of related debates;

said system comprising;

a. Application software that allows system users to build and edit debate maps made up of discrete elements representing entities such as issues or questions, claims, positions, and simple and compound arguments, scenarios and debate protagonists in accordance with a set of constraints herein termed a map grammar that ensure that such maps are constructed in accordance with sound argumentation principles, and in which the set of all such maps are stored in a single, unified data structure.

b. Application software that enables users of the system to create an additional layer of semantic cross-relationships between individual debate elements, or nodes, where such elements may be in the same debate map, or in different debate maps, thereby making possible the representation of relationships between debates as well as relationships within elements of single debate maps.

2. The system as recited in claim 1 wherein each cross-relationship must be one of an allowed set of cross-relationship types in a set stipulated for the particular map, each with a defined semantic significance.

3. The system for creating semantic cross-relationships as recited in claim 1 wherein the formation of cross-relationships is constrained by a set of rules reflecting sound argumentation principles, herein termed a link grammar.

4. The system recited in claim 1 wherein the user may view an individual element in a particular map together with a group of other elements each defined by different logically defined contexts within the debate map. Such logically defined contexts are herein termed planar views.

5. The planar views as recited in claim 4 wherein a detailed view of the individual element, including its heading, concise expression and long expression, metadata about the element, together with different articulations of the element by real-world debate participants and any free-form comments on it, is presented to the user.

6. The planar views as recited claim 4 whereby the element is viewed together its parent and immediate children in the debate map tree hierarchy.

7. The planar views as recited in claim 4 whereby the element viewed together with its parent and grandparent, and its children and grandchildren in the debate map tree-hierarchy.

8. The planar views as recited in claim 4 whereby the element is viewed together with its complete subtree in the debate map tree hierarchy.

9. The planar views as recited in claim 4 whereby the element is viewed together with its complete ancestral path, up to and including the root of the debate tree hierarchy.

10. The system as recited in claim 4 wherein any of the planar views may be combined with the display of cross-related elements in the same or other debate maps to provide multi-dimensional views, herein termed depth-wise views, that show both how an element is related to other elements in an individual debate map as well as with elements that may be cross-related in other ways and which may be in other maps and arbitrarily distant in the overall debate database.

11. The system as recited in claim 10 whereby the display of related elements in either a planar or depth-wise view may be ordered to reflect user evaluations of the significance of the elements displayed, or by other metrics including the size of the subtree attached to an element.

12. The system as recited in claim 1 whereby users of the system may build and edit individual maps, and create and evaluate cross-relations within and between maps.

13. The system as recited in claim 10 whereby any of the planar or depth-wise views include, for each element, an indication of the presence of any cross-related elements, whether incoming to the element or outgoing from the element, together with a means to load and display such elements into the view by clicking an icon or link or other method.

14. The system recited in claim 10 whereby the user, having displayed a depth-wise view focused on a particular element that includes cross-related elements as well as proximate elements in the debate tree, may navigate to any displayed cross-related element by loading a map view focused on said element in its own native map context, and from there in turn navigate to other elements related to any element in the newly displayed view, and by repeating these steps follow a path through the debate repository.

15. The system recited in claim 1 whereby application programming maintains metrics of the number and strength of cross-relationships that cross map boundaries and applies such measures to generate clusters of related maps.

16. The system recited in claim 1 whereby the user is able to filter out parts of a debate map deemed to be of lesser significance.

17. The filtering method recited in claim 16 including a method of filtering maps by excluding certain element types, such as subsidiary issues raised in the context of a map, or component parts of positions taken in debates.

18. The system recited in claim 1 whereby clusters of related maps are displayed to the user so as to indicate the closeness of the relationships using a menu or other user interface element or in a graphical presentation.

19. The system as recited in claim 1 whereby visibly rendered channels may be used to navigate around contextual views by viewing preview information that indicates the target element at the head of each channel and by clicking any such channel to traverse to the said target element.

20. The channels as recited in claim 19 whereby the user may, by scrolling over a succession of adjacent channels, readily view the ancestral path of any element.

21. The system as recited in claim 1 whereby protagonists in a debate may be represented in a debate map, and all arguments, positions or other debate elements may be visibly rendered or highlighted as associated with said protagonists.