| Concepts and Terminology |
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This document gives an overview of the terminology that you must understand in order to use
the "Pollite Lens" Opinion Database (The P.L.O.D.).
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We begin with a summary of the nouns we need to define, and then proceed to an overview of the verbs.
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If you have difficulty understanding this page, it may be helpful to peruse the
"How To" document
to get some perspective.
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| Structural Summary (the nouns) |
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This section describes the "things" the P.L.O.D software knows about.
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These names are used on all the P.L.O.D. screens.
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You must know what the mean in order for the Lens software to make sense.
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CLAIM - A short document making an assertion (or observation), or asking a question.
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PROPOSAL - A claim with a restricted set of possible votes -- suitable for assertions.
These can be formally revised.
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SURVEY - A claim with an unrestricted set of votes -- suitable for questions.
These cannot be formally revised.
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VOTE - A word or short phrase summarizing one's reaction to a claim at issue.
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REASON - A reference to (citation of) another claim (the cited claim) to support a vote on an
issue claim. The amount of support for a reason describes the amount of people who have added
this reason to their position.
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POSITION - One person's set of reactions to an issue claim. May include multiple reasons and
even multiple votes; when this is the case, each reason receives an equal weight,
and each vote is weighted by the number of reasons supporting it in the position.
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COALITION - The set of positions supporting a particular vote on an issue claim
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PLATFORM - All the claims authored by, and positions taken by, a particular user
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CITATION - A use of a claim as a reason for voting on some issue claim.
This is the most subtle concept you need to understand.
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ACCOUNT - One person's identity in the Lens. Identified publicly by a username, and
privately by an email address.
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SESSION - The period of time a person spends between logging in to an account and logging out.
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| Procedural Summary (the verbs) |
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This section describes the things you need to be able to do to access all the features of the PLOD.
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CREATING AN ACCOUNT - To create an account, you must select a unique "Login Name",
and supply a valid email address. An initial password is chosen randomly, and sent to you via email.
You can change your password after you log in.
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LOGIN AND LOGOUT - You must login to enter any claims or responses. To login you need your "Login Name"
and password. When you are finished working you should logout. You can login from any _________
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BROWSING CLAIMS - You can begin by searching for claims in several different ways, and then navigate
among related claims by traversing the links automatically created when users cite reasons for their votes.
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PUBLISHING CLAIMS - You can create a new claim by typing it interactively, or by uploading an HTML file
from your computer. You must also decide whether the claim will be a "proposal" or "survey"
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RESPONDING TO CLAIMS - You can respond to a claim by choosing a short "Vote" and one or more other
"Reason" claims.
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EXAMINING CLAIM DETAILS - You can see the responses to a claim presented in a variety of different "views."
You can see statistics about describing the amount of support for each vote and reason, and also see how
a claim is used to support broader conclusions. Information about your own position, if any, is displayed
prominently, as is the position of the claim's author.
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LOOKING AT PLATFORMS - You can see all the claims a particular user has published or responded to, in order
to understand their complete point of view.
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