Getting average know-nothings to create content for your site is easy enough and well understood by now. But how do you get experts to create in-depth topic pages about the hot-button issues of the day, complete with videos, links, and healthy commenting? Russell Fine is trying to do that with Opposing Views, a site that launched a few hours ago. It pits experts against each other on topics such as the economy, global warming, health issues, and politics. “We are trying to create a site where people can get well-informed on a topic quickly,” says Fine.
Opposing Views is an information portal disguised as a debate site. Experts debate hot-button issues, and readers can comment and vote on who they think is right. For instance, the site has a Barack Obama adviser and a John McCain adviser debating about “Who Has the Right Plan For America’s Economy?” A NASA scientist and a Hudson Institute fellow debate, “Have We Reached Peak Oil?” The National Autism Association and a doctor go head-to-head on: “Are Autism and Vaccines Linked?”
Opposing views finds experts and associations willing to argue one side or the other, and sometimes multiple experts weigh in on a single topic. Each argument is broken down into a list of simple points with a headline that readers can click on to go deeper. The experts can argue each point, and embed supporting videos and links. Readers can add their own arguments in comments and vote on who they think is winning the debate. (The best comments can be elevated to the starting page of each debate by the experts).
In the end, fine hopes to create an information-rich site that ranks highly on Google for each topic. In that sense he is competing with About.com, Helium, and even Wikipedia and Google’s newly-launched Knol. The debate format ensures that the content will change constantly, and the participating experts and associations will lend their (link) authority to the site.
The company was founded in September, 2007 and has raised $1.5 million in angel funding from Applied Semantics co-founder Gil Ebaz, Frontera Capital, and Fine (who is also the chairman of sports forecasting company Accuscore and was previously the founder of Youbet.com).
I think this is a great idea for a site. At least conceptually. Time will tell if it manages to avoid/remove spurious content and keep things focused. But right now my biggest problem with the site is that the ‘debates’ are almost impossible to follow – there doesn’t appear to be a simple way to read the entire back&forth dialog without a hell of a lot of clicking (and page refreshes that scroll back to the top of the page and require scrolling back down to see the content).
So, good concept, bad design. Hope it gets fixed.
Experts don’t give advices for free. unless you put them on 30 mins TV debate.
will a lawyer gives you free legal advice? accountant? to unknowns?
Agree, good concept, but thaz all
Free publicity? Why not?
man by what you said i don’t even want to check it out. I will let the hype lead me back to it.
Erick,
Do they pay the people who debate? What is their incentive otherwise? Notoriety?
I think the whole idea might be to get the chance to forward a position using a more democratized (hopefully less censored) platform.
To Ron,
you raised an important issue, the fact you cannot follow a debate.
at AllRise.com (another debating platform, not for experts but for “the people”, you have the tools to follow each conversation within a debate.
smart and simple
http://www.allrise.com
I don’t like this site at all. It legitimizes dangerous view points (such as abstinence-only sex education) by placing two parties at loggerheads, seemingly equal in the number of people they represent.
There’s no context. Is one of the groups just a single voice going against a majority flow of opinion and scientific evidence?
I can’t wait for the Intelligent Design debate.
Free speech is wonderful and important, but it has to be contextualized. This is what we look for in the news media; to filter the wheat from the chaff.
Wheat is to some, as chaff is to others. Don’t count on corporate-controlled mainstream media to call the shots for you. Alternative press is generally smarter.
I am more curious as to how Opposing Views chooses/rates its experts. I think an exhaustive qualification of the experts might alleviate some anxiety.
Do they pay the people who debate?
I would place my bets on ‘no.’
Dear lord… $1.5M for a “who’s got a bigger internet d*ck” forum?!
I think the concept’s pretty interesting but there’s a big problem with the citation system – most people are using their own publications/website as ‘evidence’ for their point of view. Needless to say their own sites tend to back up their opinions…
And the comment moderation takes waaaaaaaaaaay to long. I’ve been waiting 2 hours to see a not-particularly-controversial comment appear on the site. I can see why they’re doing it but you need resourcing for pre-moderation and they clearly don’t have it.
Wait a minute…
It pits experts against each other? I wouldn’t call to guys from obama and mccain’s campaign experts on which candidate would be better for the economy. I mean, these guys actively avoid discussing the real economic challenges. Salesman are not experts.
I agree with Lewisham. This site follows the mainstream-tv-news approach of issue reporting that gives equal weight to opposing viewpoints regardless of their factual merit. For example, there really isn’t a “debate” in the scientific community on whether or not global warming is a crisis, and yet on this site a false dichotomy is presented on this issue, with equal weight given to “both sides.”
Instead of creating informed dialogue, the site’s structure kills the context around issues, and provides false dichotomies. I guess it’s a good place for PR folks to continue to spin the issues though. Maybe that was the real intention?
Sorry to spoil the party and all, but what’s the business model?
en, 3Q!!
” This site follows the mainstream-tv-news approach of issue reporting that gives equal weight to opposing viewpoints regardless of their factual merit”
I think it’s different than tv because it isn’t time-boxed and soundbite driven. For example, on this debate (http://www.oppo...omes-worthwhile) the nasa guy demolishes the hudson institute fellow. On t.v. this would turn into two people talking over one another, but I was wholly convinced by the details from Dr Schoppers.
This isn’t like anything I would have heard on a “here’s both sides” tv show.
Thank you very much for all your comments. I’m pleased with our initial launch and we have a long way to go… your thoughts and ideas help us focus on what we need to do next.
I wuold like to comment on the issue mentioned above regarding the equal weight problem. We absolutely do our best to launch debates on items that the public is thinking about. You might not believe that a large population of the public is still wondering if global warming is a crisis, but in fact they do. And we can’t be the people to decide who is right and wrong… as a neutral platform we need to bring in representative views of both sides. If one of them has lesser evidence or credibility it is the job of the experts on the other side and the debate format to flush that out — that’s why they are there.
Thanks again for your comments and feedback. We are doing our best and will continue to improve our platform.
Russell Fine
CEO
Opposing Views Inc.
Debate sites thrive when they are able to take advantage of the wisdom of crowds. The problem with limiting the debate to “experts” is that there is a loss of diversity of opinion (and independence). Also, its not clear how this site plans on turning private judgments into a collective decision.
Check out http://www.CreateDebate.com for an example of a debate site startup really trying to harness the wisdom of crowds.
I agree. This whole thing smacks of Nupedia.
Russell,
It’s all well and good to provide a forum of opinion, but the public don’t have time to sit and read all the evidence at hand. They don’t have time to find the overwhelming scientific consensus for something. We rely on the media to tell us what the generally held consensus is.
If this was a soapbox column site, then that would be fine. However, Opposing Views is positioned as a site of debate, where the real truth will be argued out. You and I both know that whoever shouts loud enough will win. No-one owns the view point, like an Op-Ed column. At least Bill O’Reilly gives us that. You’re saying that the public will find the truth here, and they won’t.
Shouting loudly is why Intelligent Design is doing so well. The media is scared of appearing unbalanced with respect to the debate, but I can assure you there is not one actual scientist who refers to the Theory of Evolution as Darwinism. The ID campaign has managed to latch onto the fears and beliefs of real people, and market aggressively to spread the message. The news media has failed the public there.
Opposing Views, as you have said, goes one step further and completely removes itself from any sort of editorial authority. The winner is the one that cites the most “evidence”. How on earth is anyone supposed to make a decision when the most ardent supporters on each side will be able to argue ad infinitum?
You’re saying you’re trying to help educate the public, but you’re making the current sickness with the American news media worse.
I didn’t realize you could shout louder than someone via text
“but the public don’t have time to sit and read all the evidence at hand. They don’t have time to find the overwhelming scientific consensus for something. We rely on the media to tell us what the generally held consensus is.”
Is this how you make medical decisions for your family? It isn’t how I decided which vaccines, if any, to give my children.
“How on earth is anyone supposed to make a decision when the most ardent supporters on each side will be able to argue ad infinitum?”
I’m curious how they will solve this one as well. The biggest problem I have when trying to learn anything on the internet is sifting through all the noise.
A very intriguing site, which I hope will become successful and well known, however I have my doubts. On the one hand, the masses have a hard time dealing with lots of reading. The reason the majority of the people on sites like TechCrunch (or even Digg in many cases) side with the majority scientific opinion in relevant debates (Intelligent Design, Global Warming, Sex Education) is because we are willing to actually read through an article and will understand many of the background concepts necessary to comprehending the argument being put forward. As far as I have seen, those who come on the other side of these arguments rarely actually RTFA, or just cite multiply-refuted sources of information as if they are flat out truth.
I have a bad feeling that the people who will actually read fully through these debates are going to be the ones who have an educated opinion already, and those who need to see a well laid out debate about these issues are going to just get bored by the wall of text.
Someone needs to figure out a way of simplifying these debates without losing their ability to provide point and counter-point, so that the major-news-network-watching crowd will actually give it a read.
I hope this succeeds.
@Lewisham and @mark appear to be unwitting users of the democratic fallacy: if enough officially credentialed-ordained scientists concur about something, than it *must* be true and not worthy of debate.
I’m hopeful this website will vet consensus-held memes: some are probably true, some probably aren’t true.
Is global warming truly a “crisis?” Are there not hundreds of benefits from global warming (more arable land, warmer beaches)? Perhaps the costs outweigh the benefits, but let’s not jump to that conclusion, let’s debate it…enter opposingviews.com
Love the idea.
To the naysayers, never underestimate the power of an intellectual’s desire to share knowledge and engage in challenging and stimulating debate.
Our immortality comes in the form of positive ripples across history. The opportunity to create such ripples is often hard, if not impossible to resist.
What a great idea–that true authorities can debate each other in a succinct format on a single site with accountability. Why hasn’t this been done before? Especially on subjects that are relevant.
I have been reading the earlier comments, but it seems pretty intuitive to me to navigate. Maybe it is because I can actually read.
Opposing Views retains tight control over both topics of discussion and participants. It must itself decide what is of interest to people and who are the experts in that field. Another site, smargue.com, on the other hand, allows anyone to create topics and write opinions. To keep the quality of discussion high, they have an opinion ranking system in order to help better opinions rise to the top. An open system like that is much more scalable and in the end results in much more, much higher quality content.
There are MANY tough decisions ahead relating to all sorts of democratic decisions — such as climate changes to come… why not let some people pay more to consume solar-based super vehicles… surely we can discuss this. Try thinking in triage terms- save, leave to manage or allow to die – ActonClimate