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DebateGraph provides a powerful way for geographically distributed groups to collaborate in thinking through complex issues.

It does so by enabling groups of any size to externalise, visualize, question, and evaluate all of the considerations that anyone thinks might be relevant to the issues at hand – and by facilitating an intelligent, constructive dialogue around those issues.

Whether the group is a small team, an organization, a network of organizations, or society as a whole, the ability to augment our individual capacity to choose wisely in the face of the complex, multi-dimensional problems we confront today is ever more pressing.

The basic building blocks of the maps

In essence, building the maps involves three steps:

1. breaking down the subject into meaningful ideas;
2. figuring out the relationships between those ideas; and,
3. expressing the ideas and relationships visually.

(Explorer and Hub views)

Issues (or questions) are raised, Positions (or answers) suggested in response to these Issues, and Supportive and Opposing Arguments advanced for and against the Positions (and each other).

(Zoom view)

Each building block has its own color to make it easier to see the types of ideas and relationships at a glance.

There's a wider set of building blocks beyond the three core ones, but the core set of Issues, Positions, and Supportive and Opposing Arguments can be combined and recombined many times to build rich maps on any scale.

Why build?

• complex issues can be mapped comprehensively, so that all of the relevant arguments (from all perspectives) can be woven together into a single, coherent and iteratively improvable visual structure;

• the process can be opened up transparently via the web so that many people can contribute to, visualize, learn from, and evaluate our collective understanding of the issues; and,

• these collaborative, visual maps can help us make sense of and act more efficiently and effectively in relation to these issues.