ABSTRACT
Online deliberation enables structured, topical discussion about particular questions or concepts. A number of Web-based deliberation systems have been independently introduced in recent years, and reported on as single-point examples. This article reviews several of these systems, focusing on the design principles behind them and how they worked out. From this literature, we distill another iteration of design considerations that can be used to design online deliberation systems to “inform the debate.” These considerations focus on the mutually reinforcing goals of attracting contributions, navigating through content, improving usability, focusing on quality content, and promoting wide-scale tool adoption.
Notes
1. See http://online-deliberation.net for links to each conference Web site. This site is maintained by Todd Davies.
2. “Inform the debate” is a tagline or trademark that concisely identifies the goals and design scope of the tools on which this article focuses.
3. A “watchlist” displays a list of all recent edits to all articles that an editor has chosen to “watch.” Some editors have also built custom tools to help them characterize, identify, and revert vandalism quickly and easily.