Publications (1)0 Total impact
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ABSTRACT: There are several web platforms that people use to interact and exchange
ideas, such as social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+; Q&A sites
like Quora and Yahoo! Answers; and myriad independent fora. However, there is a
scarcity of platforms that facilitate discussion of complex subjects where
people with divergent views can easily rationalize their points of view using a
shared knowledge base, and leverage it towards shared objectives, e.g. to
arrive at a mutually acceptable compromise.
In this paper, as a first step, we present Widescope, a novel collaborative
web platform for catalyzing shared understanding of the US Federal and State
budget debates in order to help users reach data-driven consensus about the
complex issues involved. It aggregates disparate sources of financial data from
different budgets (i.e. from past, present, and proposed) and presents a
unified interface using interactive visualizations. It leverages distributed
collaboration to encourage exploration of ideas and debate. Users can propose
budgets ab-initio, support existing proposals, compare between different
budgets, and collaborate with others in real time.
We hypothesize that such a platform can be useful in bringing people's
thoughts and opinions closer. Toward this, we present preliminary evidence from
a simple pilot experiment, using triadic voting (which we also formally analyze
to show that is better than hot-or-not voting), that 5 out of 6 groups of users
with divergent views (conservatives vs liberals) come to a consensus while
aiming to halve the deficit using Widescope. We believe that tools like
Widescope could have a positive impact on other complex, data-driven social
issues.
11/2011;
