=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2012/paper_10
|storemode=property
|title=Reusable Statements in Dialog-Based Argumentation Systems
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2012/AI3-2017_paper_10.pdf
|volume=Vol-2012
|authors=Alexander Schneider,Christian Meter
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/aiia/SchneiderM17
}}
==Reusable Statements in Dialog-Based Argumentation Systems==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2012/AI3-2017_paper_10.pdf
Reusable Statements in Dialog-Based
Argumentation Systems
Alexander Schneider and Christian Meter
Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf, Universitätsstr. 1, Düsseldorf 40235, Germany,
firstname.lastname@hhu.de,
WWW home page: http://cn.hhu.de
Abstract. Discussions on the Internet are usually conducted in isola-
tion on a single platform, although there are many discussions on the
same topic going on simultaneously all over the Internet. We argue that
it is possible to connect similar discussions by reusing arguments, thus
gaining a connected network of statements, supports and counterargu-
ments which helps eradicate redundant and repetitive parts of common
discussions. To achieve this goal we outline challenges that need to be
solved and propose a possible architecture to tackle those challenges.
Keywords: dialog-based argumentation, arguments, statement reusabil-
ity, argument networks
1 Introduction
Nowadays a lot of discussions are conducted online on social media, webpages
of news outlets and forums. Those discussions are often unstructured and be-
come hard to follow after they reach a certain size. Dialog-based argumentation
systems like D-BAS [5] allow the user to formulate arguments while conducting
a conversation with the system. A user can utilize any arguments that other
participants of the discussion contributed to deliberate and express her opin-
ion. As field tests of D-BAS have shown, more people participate when they
can reuse arguments made by other participants compared to when they are
required to formulate their own thoughts into a formal argument. The flaw with
such dialog-based discussions is that they are localized and users thus can only
re-use arguments made in their specific instance of the system. To solve this issue
we propose an architecture to network several discussion and content providers,
which host dialog based discussions. The goal is to generate the possibility of (au-
tomatic) argument exchange between those providers thus generating a network
of reusable arguments and later on whole discussions. The thought of arguments
as a persistent reusable resource which can be improved as time goes on is quite
compelling. To achieve this goal it is imperative to design and implement this
argument network in a fashion which does not appeal solely to argumentation
experts, but rather to the general public and the content providers. Since such
a system heavily relies on being widely distributed and being used by a lot of
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people that in turn create arguments, it is the foremost goal to design the system
in a fashion which is suited for this target group.
This paper has a twofold purpose. The first is to argue for – and bring atten-
tion to – the importance and possibility of an interconnected argument network
which can be widely used and distributed. The second is to raise awareness of
the specific challenges arising when dealing with arguments which are distributed
over several systems.
The remainder is structured as follows. We give an overview on related work
in Sect. 2 followed by an outline on the importance of distributing and reusing
arguments in Sect. 3. Following, we discuss open challenges for such a system
in Sect. 4 and propose a possible architecture in Sect. 5 before concluding the
paper in Sect. 6.
2 Related Work
There are a few papers about a system for storing and reusing arguments called
“The Argument Web” [1, 2]. The main difference to our proposal is that the
Argument Web aims mainly at storing discussions in databases for later uses
by a multitude of tools, while we aim to actively distribute and propagate user-
generated arguments to be used by other non-expert users in a dynamic network.
Heras et al. [3] have researched the formalization of user-generated argumenta-
tion on social networks. While we also work with user generated arguments, we
go the opposite way and require user-interfaces that facilitate the arguments
to be input in an already formalized structure albeit being natural language
as proposed by Meter et al. [6]. Similarly Toni and Torroni [4] researched a
methodology to convert user-generated comments into arguments.
3 Importance of Distributed Arguments
Reuse of arguments in a dialog-based discussion could help the users deliber-
ate more efficiently. The user can recycle arguments already made by others or
be confronted with their opinion on a matter without the strain of necessarily
formulating ones thoughts into a formal argument. Since discussions on the In-
ternet are not carried out by experts in the field of argumentation, the quality
of arguments varies considerably. Well written and structured arguments would
probably be propagated more often and as such heighten the quality of future
discussions. Furthermore, a lot of discussions on the same topic happen in paral-
lel on the Internet. As an example, in 2016 there is a high number of discussions
about the “Brexit” going on, since every news outlet published stories about it
and most of them also allowed discussions on the articles of some sort. Factor
in more private discussions on social networks, like Facebook, and the number
grows even higher. All of those discussions contain numerous arguments and
trains of thoughts that were already stated in another similar discussion some-
where else. If those discussions were at least partially linked, one probably would
not see the necessity to restate the same opinions, but would just express their
3
view by agreeing or disagreeing with the available statements or by reusing them
in a new discussion. An as of yet untested but likely side-effect of this recycling
could be that the users would reach a point where they can continue with a
branch of the discussion which is “new” and produces original arguments and
statements faster than without recycling.
Another advantage of an argument network would be that new discussions
would not have to start empty, since they could be seeded by already ongoing
arguments to similar discussions or whole parts of the same discussion at another
argument provider. The content providers hosting the discussions would benefit
as well, since arguments made on their platform and shared could contain a
reference to the place of origin in turn incite traffic to the content providers and
argument hosts.
4 Current Challenges
To distribute arguments, one faces unique challenges which are not encountered
when dealing with arguments as a single entity belonging to one specific dis-
cussion. This section tries to describe the challenges that need solving to fully
realized distributed arguments in a real world setting outside of academia.
Development of a Distributed Architecture. Naturally, for arguments to be dis-
tributed there has to be the technical foundation allowing content and argument
providers to store arguments and subsequently share them. All possible archi-
tectures have to be performant enough to support a large number of providers
sharing arguments simultaneously. We acknowledge that this challenge is more
geared towards the networking community, but want to emphasize its impor-
tance nonetheless. We furthermore provide a sketch of a possible architecture in
Sect. 5.
User-Friendliness. A system relying on the participants to reuse arguments has
to provide the right tools making it as easy as possible for the participant. One
example could be a kind of universal bookmarks. E.g. if a user participates in
a discussion on news-outlet X and sees a clever argument that she likes, she
should be able to mark it for future use during a discussion on any platforms Y
and Z. Optimally this should be hardware independent so the user can fluently
switch between devices. Another possible helper for reusing arguments could be
a service which suggests existing arguments of other platforms while the user is
typing. Although, this solution requires a knowledge of most arguments in the
network, which could turn out as an impossible task to solve efficiently.
Update of Arguments. In a system where arguments propagate between dif-
ferent systems and hosts, there is also the problem of how to handle updated
arguments. In a user-driven system arguments are subject to change because
of spelling or grammatical errors. These changes should optimally propagate to
all systems reusing said argument. If and how this happens depends mainly on
4
the architecture. From a networking view the choices are to build a highly in-
terconnected network where updates are distributed as widely as possible but
require a structured network that needs to be maintained. The other end of the
spectrum is a loosely related network of federated hosts that exchange updates
at will. This solution has a low overhead but also does not necessarily distribute
all updates. In our architecture sketch we use a federated network, which uses a
subscription system for arguments and topics to receive updates. Furthermore,
the community of an argument host can be allowed to curate the acceptance or
rejection of propagated changes as the system is mainly user-driven.
Context-Dependence of Arguments. Ideally, we do not only want to reuse ar-
guments but also automatically import all supports and attacks of a reused
argument as this would deepen the discussion without any effort at all. The
problem here is that some arguments posses a context, which makes it impossi-
ble to import more than the argument itself. For example in a discussion about
raising the quality of life in a town with little money, there could be the argu-
ment A “Lets build a park, since it raises the quality of life”. An attack B on
this argument could be “A park is too expensive for the current town budget”.
Now there is a similar discussion going on in a more wealthy town. Some par-
ticipant reuses A, because she finds it a compelling argument. If B is imported
automatically as well, it does not fit because the context of the town in ques-
tion having a tight budget does not apply. Possible solutions for this problem
can be found with natural language processing techniques that try to determine
whether statements posses context or are context-free. Another possible solution
would be to allow the participant that imports the argument to choose whether
attacks or supports shall be imported as well. Although this could have an ad-
verse effect on the participation rates, since it heightens the amount of work for
the participant.
5 Architecture Sketch
A possible architecture for a distributed argument network should consists of in-
terchangeable parts or modules to accommodate the heterogeneous requirements
of different content providers. The modules need to be exchangeable as long as
they fulfill a certain set of requirements. The main modules we propose are the
user interface, the execution logic engine, the database, and a module which we
call the aggregator. The database is used for plain storage of arguments that a
host collected over its lifetime. The database in turn connects to the aggrega-
tor, which has a multitude of tasks. The most important task of the aggregator
is to communicate with the aggregators of other hosts to exchange arguments
when needed and also tend to fetching and retrieving updates on existing argu-
ments. For faster access the aggregator should also provide a cache of the most
used arguments, to be able to quickly answer queries without the need to com-
municate with the database too often. Furthermore, the aggregator coordinates
information flow between the user interface and the execution logic. When a
5
user interacts with the system through the user interface, the provided data is
forwarded to the aggregator which provides additional arguments if needed and
queries the execution logic engine for the next steps before sending the result
back to the user interface. As such the aggregator is the communication hub in
the envisioned architecture. An explanation on how the execution logic engine
works is out of scope for this paper, but can be found in detail in the D-BAS
paper [5].
In general, the network that would form between discussion hosts would be
a federated network, imitating the Web. A provider of content that is willing
to host discussions can deploy an implementation of the proposed architecture.
After that the different hosts start to connect loosely every time arguments
are exchanged between them. The first exchanges are initiated through users
recycling arguments they have seen on other hosts. This is the exact reason why
the system needs to give a user the capability to “bookmark” arguments. Hosts
that know each other can establish a more solid relationship by interchanging
arguments based on set rules instead of on demand by users. Much as the web,
a federation of every willing provider should be possible, regardless of the size
or power of the provider. Whether a private web-blog or a huge media outlet
or a social media network decides to provide an argument host should make no
difference on the network and the users.
6 Conclusion
In this paper we argued for the need of a system that facilitates reuse of (user-
generated) arguments and discussions. We emphasized the benefits of such a sys-
tem and pointed out big challenges which need to be solved before putting such
a system in place. We also provided the sketch of an architecture for such a sys-
tem. The proposed architecture utilizes a federated network of content-providers
which share user-generated arguments and discussions. For future research on
this matter an enhanced prototype implementation of the proposed architecture
incorporating as many solutions to the open challenges as possible offers itself
up.
References
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56.10 (2013): 66–73.
2. Rahwan, I., et al.: “Laying the foundations for a world wide argument web.” Arti-
ficial intelligence 171.10-15 (2007): 897–921.
3. Heras, S., et al.: “How Argumentation can Enhance Dialogues in Social Networks.”
COMMA. (2010): 267–274.
4. Toni, F., Torroni, P.: “Bottom-Up Argumentation.” TAFA 7132 (2011): 249–262.
5. Krauthoff, T., et al.: “Dialog-Based Online Argumentation.” COMMA. (2016).
6. Meter, C., et al.: “discuss: Embedding Dialog-Based Discussions into Websites.”
International Conference on Learning and Collaboration Technologies. Springer.
(2017): 449–460.