This is the third part in a three part series. The first part can be found here. The second part can be found here.
Hello, I'm James Tolley, the founder of Shared Reality, and this is Part 3 of How to Author a Shared Reality Argument Map.
So, I can set the invited owner for a particular node. Setting the invited owner is an interesting feature because in Shared Reality itself has very little to say. We don't want to say anything, all we want to do is facilitate productive and meaningful conversations between other people. And so, if I were to quote someone, as I did here, quoting “John”, I might want to check in with John. John might not have said what I quoted him as saying. I might have heard it in a newspaper or read it somewhere but perhaps he was misquoted, it was reported wrong, or maybe he just changed his mind and would like a chance to say so. Now, I could set the owner of the original claim, or perhaps I want to set John as the owner of the rebuttal node, because it links to his denial, and I want to know if he can provide evidence for that denial.So, if I think it's true but I’m not 100 percent sure, but of course John is, I can invite John to tell us.
Now, we could be more specific here: John Smith, or John Q. Public, some public figure.
So John Q. Public is invited to actually be the author of this node. So, when I add him here - and let's say he has a verified Twitter account that's JohnQPublic - I set the invited author, it's saved and then you can see that there on the right side of the node.The name links to the invitee user account, if he has already has one, otherwise it just points to an invitation page, and the Twitter handle links to their Twitter account. So, once this happens John Q. Public can actually log in as a user on the Shared Reality system with his verified Twitter account and he immediately has access to this node. He can then do one of three things:
Well, first, he could decline the invitation entirely. That's a possibility. Or, if he accepted the invitation, (1) he could confirm that he did say it, or (2) he could disavow that quote - maybe he changed his mind, maybe he never said it to begin with, etc - or, (3) he can modify it so that it fits better with the truth as he sees it.
This, in short, allows John Q. Public to speak for himself. So, the idea is for Shared Reality to be as thin a layer as possible between the people who make, sometimes controversial, claims and the people who the public wants to respond to, discuss, or debate those claims, so that we can all better understand those issues. We just make that connection as direct as possible.
So, we want to really honor John Q. Public, the fact that he might have changed his mind, and the fact that he might have been misquoted, it might be complete disinformation; or he might have said it, and even if he said it we want him to come and explicitly confirm that he said it so there can be no doubt about it, and in that case this information icon which shows the author (at the moment, it is a Shared Reality team member), this would change to John Q. Public's user account on the Shared Reality system. Now, next, I can delete the node – as the editor, I can do this. As an author, I can delete an unpublished node, a draft node, of course. But, as an author I cannot delete my own published nodes without further negotiation. So, once something is published it's more or less set in stone and it takes quite a bit of effort to redo a conversation from that point, because once there's a published node, we want other people to come in and rebut what's in that node. We want to continue the conversation, we don't want to keep backtracking a conversation, and we want people to take the creation of a node seriously and put thought into it before publishing it. Down on the bottom left of the map editor, there are two links. We have “Upload file/s” and “Invite another author”. So, “invite another author” is a little bit of a long dialog box. If it is too long for your screen, you can correct that situation by pressing CTRL and the minus sign. This makes the whole page a little bit smaller so we can see the submit button at the bottom. So, I might want to invite Tina Q. Public, and grant her an author role. As editor, I can the authors. I might expect Tina Q. Public to argue the “pro” side. Maybe John does not want to argue the “con” side, but we can invite someone else who wants to, so we can have a productive conversation. We bring together two sides, not in order to have a fight between two “teams”, but instead to bring all the perspectives together in one place so people can see see all arguments right next to one another. The rules of the site and mediation help to protect this intention. So, Tina Q. Public will get a message telling her what the map is about, or whatever the editor of the map decides is best to include in the invitation.So, the new author has been invited. If they are already a registered Shared Reality user, the message will say that. If not, the editor will be reminded to let them know that they have been invited, so that they can register.
I can upload files as well. That's a pretty simple process.
So, this is the process of authoring an argument map. As an editor it's a very similar process to that of an author, except, as we have seen, there are some limitations around what an author can see and what they can edit compared with an editor, who also has additional duties in the are of moderation.