Debate mapper/icons

Introduction

Debaticons are like emoticons for showing the structure of an argument or discussion. In much the same way a "smiley" or "frowny" emoticon is a graphical shorthand to indicate happiness or unhappiness with a statement, debaticons are graphical shorthands to indicate a given statement's position with respect to the overall debate.

See Issuepedia:Structured Debate for details on how debaticons are used in the context of Issuepedia's proposed rules.

Icons

key icons

Main point / claim

Supporting point

Counterpoint

Information stipulated by both sides, or from an agreed-on authority

auxiliary

It's less certain how useful these will be; possibly handy for experimentation.

quote open/close; see Template:Arg/quote

possibly statements posted by one side and agreed by the other (where the "I" debaticon indicates items agreed to beforehand)

• "X" icons, generally intended to indicate some clear error or misuse (e.g. a logical fallacy or factual error):

discovery of error supports main claim; see Template:Arg/support/fact

discovery of error weakens main claim; see Template:Arg/counter/fact

Error: early, less-clear version of red X icon

Related Pages

• the debaticons category is where we will keep all our debaticon images and templates

Examples

Stuff exists!

Indeed, surveys show that nothing could be more true!

That is an utter load of foetid dingo's kidneys!

Even if stuff is a load of foetid dingo's kidneys, foetid dingo's kidneys do in fact exist and therefore so does stuff!

Stuff made by Big Phatt Lyar Industries is better than the stuff made by Quality Products, Inc.

A spokesman for Bigg Phatt Lyar Industries said: Our products are absolutely the finest quality of any products anywhere, so there is no need for people to go criticizing them. Criticism hampers quality control, which only harms the consumer.

A company spokesman would probably say that whether or not it was true.

Rules

Points are supporting () if they support the current main point (). If a point supports the current counterpoint (), then it is also a counterpoint. If it argues against the current counterpoint, then it is a supporting point. (This way you don't have to go up through the levels counting in order to figure out which "side" a point is on.)