Scalable Online Discussions

Large discussions such as the debate over national health care in the United States could be aided if people could discuss issues with each other more effectively. Generally, the pros and cons are not all gathered together into one central location - news outlets and blogs post their opinions on options they believe are best, and some even discuss both sides of the issue, but both have difficulty doing a complete treatment of the discussion. Invariably, points are left out either through ignorance or bias. But if a central discussion page were to be created that would allow all people to publish the points in the debate as they see fit, if the points were consolidated to eliminate duplication, if points were ranked by importance, and if methods were made available to allow people to collaborate about conflicts regarding the combination of points and their relative importance, the discussion could be rationally made and more people could be educated and convinced as to the rightness of the right side of the discussion.

Discussions of all kinds could take place, from the best way to fix local community problems to choosing the appropriate response to actions by multinational companies and states. Some problems need to be resolved, such as preventing a few people from stifling the opinions of others by removing points simply because they have a majority of users of the site, and to provide proper communication methods to allow people to quickly and effectively discuss resolutions to conflicts. Perhaps the site hosting the discussion pages could provide voice communication so that people can talk to each other. Methods would be put in place so that groups can choose a moderator that would take charge of giving people the floor, and methods to replace moderators with a vote in case the moderator is stifling the opinions of the opposing side of the discussion and to take the floor away from someone that is either intentionally not contributing to the discussion or is attempting to filibuster and the moderator is not already taking the floor away from said person. Such a communication system would also have to support perhaps millions of listeners and participants. The system could also allow the division into groups so that more people can voice their opinions rather than having to wait in a line of 10,000 people.