The number of supporters is a misleading metric on three counts:
It is irrelevant to formal (deductive) logic, where the truth is derived solely from the argumentation structure. Supporters are needed only for informal (inductive) logic, where they have to judge how plausible (likely) the argument is.
In a more complex graph, a person will start from top and go down+right, and click his support. But soon he would get bored and leave his effort halfway. Thus the nodes at the top will always have more votes, and nodes at bottom will always have less/no votes. This bias defeats the very purpose of having this metric.
Often we may vote for a node, and if someone adds a very convincing "BUT" node to it, we may get convinced to withdraw our support for that node. But when we look at the graph, we cannot know which nodes have our votes, and whether we supported it or opposed it. In other words, Arguman does not provide us with an easy way to re-evaluate our votes (and change them when necessary).
Because of these problems, this metric is of any use only if used in a very disciplined manner:
Allow voting only if the node has an inductive argument (it is nonsensical for deductive argument). This calls for a flag that identifies the type of argument (I=Inductive, D=Deductive)
Allow voting only if the graph is produced by a closed user group (not by casual visitors)
Vote only after the closed user group has finished adding nodes.
Each user must apply his yes/no vote for each of the nodes; and not abstain from voting. For example, if there are 10 people in the team, each node must get 10 votes, regardless of how many "yes" and how many "no" votes it gets.
This should be included in the user manual. It also calls for a change in the design.
The number of supporters is a misleading metric on three counts:
Because of these problems, this metric is of any use only if used in a very disciplined manner:
This should be included in the user manual. It also calls for a change in the design.