Transcript UsingIBIS

IBIS Conversations With
MediaWiki
A Brief User’s Guide
Jack Park
Latest: 20100324
“Dialogue Mapping™ is a proven method
for building shared understanding and
shared commitment. If you deal with
wicked problems, that's a capability you
are going to need.”—Jeff Conklin*
*http://www.cognexus.org/
Outline
• What is an IBIS Conversation?
– IBIS Conversation Basics
• Basic Node Types
– Various views of IBIS conversations
• Starting a Conversation
• Participating in a Conversation
• Conversation Best-Practices
What is an IBIS Conversation?
• IBIS = Issue-based Information Systems
– Created for solving Wicked Problems
– Structured conversation
• Wicked Problem:
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Highly complex
Many world views, passionate beliefs
No obvious known solution(s)
Frequently don’t know what the right question(s) to
ask are
– Requires lots of conversations
• Collect and organize—structure—those conversations
IBIS Conversation Basics
• IBIS Extension for MediaWiki
– Install to facilitate IBIS Conversations
• To participate
– Must be logged in
– Must be willing to participate in thoughtful ways
– Must be willing to listen deeply to what others are
saying
What goes into a conversation?
• IBIS collects and organizes conversations in maps
• IBIS conversations are structured collections of
nodes:
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Maps to collect conversations
Questions to describe issues or ask questions
Answers to take positions when answering a question
Pro nodes to support a position
Con nodes to refute a position
A Conversation—Graph View
A Conversation—Debategraph View
A Conversation—Wiki View
Starting a Conversation
• Click on the new conversation tab
• Describe the conversation
• Click Save
New Conversation Ready to Join
• Now ready to add nodes
• Click the response link
Asking a Question
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Select Node Type
Ask the question (end with a ? )
Explain with details
Click Save
The Conversation Grows…
Answering the Question
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Select Node Type
Answer the question
Add details
Click Save
Conversation Best Practices—Goals
• Goals for any conversation
– Collect and structure questions, ideas, and
arguments about a particular situation
– Maximize the amount of signal (beneficial
information)
– Minimize the amount of noise (useless
conversation)
– Maintain the integrity of the social setting
• No personal attacks in arguments
Conversations Can and Cannot Be…
• An IBIS Conversation be:
– Like a chat room where people want to get to know
each other better
– Like a design room where people are collecting design
ideas
– Like a situation room where people are trying to
organize information resources about some situation
– Like a debate room where arguments are collected
and structured for varieties of purposes
• A Single IBIS Conversation cannot be all of the
above
Conversation Nodes are Topic-Centric
• The purpose of any node in a conversation is to provide
a root node for further conversations about one topic
– A question should be about one topic
– Each answer node to a question should cover one topic
– Example:
• Question: “what are the known causes of climate change?”
• Answer : “ CO2, Methane, and Waterfalls cause climate change”
– Reasons that answer is a poor one:
» We might agree with the first two topics—no further dialogue
needed
» We might disagree with the third topic captured in that single
answer.
– By breaking that one answer into three separate nodes, we gain the
opportunity to treat each topic individually, as if it is the beginning of a
new conversation
On Arguments
• Goals to keep signals high and noise low call for
care in forming arguments
– Example arguments:
• “I disagree”
– The only information conveyed is that someone disagrees. A
conversation benefits when everybody learns why there is a
disagreement
• “I disagree because…”
– Possibly a valuable argument, but that will depend upon the
nature of what follows because
» e.g.: “because I read it in the newspaper” further begs the
credibility of the argument
» e.g.: “because (Smith, 2007, p-34) argues that…” is liable to
convey beneficial information to the conversation