Couple of points, but first, I'd like to remind of the DebateGraph that is entertaining a similar subject that David Price already transcluded in another thread here. In that DebateGraph, I added a few nodes that would serve as part of a response to this thread. Should we not use that DebateGraph?

First point: this thread really relates quite closely to my thesis topic. I have heard horror stories about the ways in which some dissertations were sabotaged by "prior art" found elsewhere. I guess I need to look more closely into such matters, but, at the same time, I have already put the lion's share of my thesis in public in the form of papers, most of which can be found online. In the largest sense, my thesis says something like this: all forms of hypermedia discourse, including blogs, forums, emails, dialogue maps, coherence maps, and so forth, are sources of sensemaking information resource producers and hosts. Sensemaking occurs when one discovers the gestalt entailed in various threads of those many resources. Federation of those resources in a subject-centric manner, not unlike the index in the back of a book--but this one covering the entire Web--is a necessary, but not sufficient component of a sensemaking suite, particularly if sensemaking is to be holistic, and global.

Second point: all human hypermedia discourse activities are going to create an enormous amount of noise. Signal to noise ratio is of great important if we are to be effective sensemakers (response to another of George's threads here). We are more than likely to wrestle with many of the same issues that Wikipedia is already wrestling with, some would argue problematically, but that's another branch of the dialogue map that covers this thread. In short, we will probably, make that absolutely, need a reputation and trust system. Please google the paper "Augmented Social Networks" for more on that. With a reputation and trust methodology in place, the topic map that federates all resources can then provide a one-stop index into the vast and growing sea of sensemaking ideas and results, and it can provide user-controlled filters that allow one to ignore that which has been determined to be less valuable. Subject-centric federation, as I define it, is all inclusive: nothing is censored, though some resources will take on very low R&T metric values, thus effectively making them less visible.

I will offer the argument that the processes I just suggested, an R&T facility coupled with a subject-centric index into our universe of discourse will then provoke serious bloggers and contributors to make the increased effort to create cleaner, more thoughtful, more trustworthy resources. That is to say: we have the ability to improve the level of discourse just by creating the right tools and facilities where people congregate--not unlike the village tree or water well from years past.

It's another discussion, possibly an enormous one, where we launch an R&T dialogue, but for now perhaps it's well enough to think in terms of something like "page rank" for each contribution, augmented by a few other metrics that track the authenticity of references cited and so forth.

George, I'd like to reframe "a pre-specification list of all the features and functions we think would be necessary for a comprehensive sense-making tool" into a requirements effort. That is, I think we have the cart before the horse, although this may just be my own semantic confusion or just showing my age.

I'd like to create a high-level description of the system (or suite of tools) we are going to produce. You might call it a requirements document. Part of that would be a clear statement of the problem(s) we are trying solve. Another part would be a set of use cases we want to address. Yet another part would describe characteristics of the users of the system and features/functions/structure of the information we need to handle (e.g. interfaces).

Once we have that in hand, we can begin to talk about design in a way in which many people can contribute.

Sounds daunting. Doesn't have to be. We don't have to do it all at once. I'm not a believer in the waterfall process, but I am a believer in having some kind of clearly articulated process that everyone involved understands.

I have the sense that many people here have a good grasp on the problem and various solutions, but I'm certain these are not yet a shared conceptions.

I'd like to find one small problem that we can all agree is part of the overall challenge then drive out requirements, functions, tests, and code to address it. (Also find some real world users to tell us if we've done something helpful.) That would serve to invigorate the group activity ("look, we can do something useful") and inspire us to setup (and shake the bugs out of) a working environment.

To me, a "comprehensive sense-making tool" is way too big a challenge to try to tackle as a unit. Is it possible to factor out a small piece of it and work on that?

Offered in the spirit of agile software development and extreme programming.

Much discussion support (both computerized and non-computerized) has been oriented to small groups. Even so, argument/dialectic as a process seem quite scaleable but the support for organizing, tracking, participating and such that seem suitable for groups may not be suitable for much larger groups using argument/dialectic as a means for sense-making.

IBIS, for instance, provides a means for articulating issue structure that seems quit robust. Challenges arise when the map gets large and when there are multiple parties attempting to jointly map a domain. In FtF groups, there seems to be a smaller cost for the participants to coordinate their activity as "IBIS mapping" (a good facilitator can help the group overcome these costs). But, as the number of participants grow, it seems that additional support will be needed to enable the larger group or community to coordinate their activity as "IBIS mapping." A facilitator provides the discipline and special labor mapping requires. How will this be provided in a large groups? Any attempt at specification should consider not only the layer of argument/dialectic but the additional layers of support often associated with the facilitator in small group settings.