Today sees the release of the first application built on the Argument Web that is aimed at non-specialist audiences: Argublogging. For bloggers and online commentators, argublogging offers a way of expressing agreement and disagreement in online conversations using the rich language of the argument web, but in a style that is at least as easy to use as existing online comment systems.

Argublogging contributes to the growing set of resources available in the language of the Argument Web, AIF, and argublogged argument can be visualised using OVA, analysed using Rationale, Araucaria and Carneades, and will soon be extendable using further Argument Web compatible tools.

For more information, visit argublogging.com or see the argublogging demo video:

(Download the video here)

A full beta of several key parts of the infrastructure for the Argument Web are released today.

AIF-compliant Argument Web servers at Dundee provide the backend support, though you can also download the database schema if you want to host your own.

The databases here include examples from a number of popular tools including Rationale, Carneades and Araucaria, along with additional arguments analysed and produced as a part of the EPSRC-funded Dialectical Argumentation Machines project.

Access to the databases is via a search interface which provides access to both entire argument maps and a dynamically navigable claim-to-claim view.

Finally, the AIFdb at Dundee also provides import and export functionality to form Argument Web interfaces to Rationale, Carneades and Araucaria, as well as providing export to DOT and SVG. Existing files in these formats can be uploaded online, and argument maps can be downloaded from the AIFdb interface.  The ontology which drives the Argument Web is expressed in OWL, and all resources are also submittable and available from the databases in RDF.

In the coming weeks, additional tools for updating, manipulating, searching and navigating argument web resources will also be made available along with APIs and other programmatic interfaces.

We are delighted to welcome Marcelo Acuña to the group for the next few months. Marcelo is a student at Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, where he works with the Centre for Studies of Argumentation and Reasoning, CEAR, and where he has built up experience of using the Argunaut argument analysis tool.

Marcelo will be working with us to build bridges between ARG:dundee and CEAR and to explore cognitive aspects of argumentation in an Argument Web setting.

A first glimpse of how AIF is supporting interchange on the Argument Web

Prototype development on infrastructure and basic tools has reached the point where we can get a first glimpse of how the Argument Web will support a wide range of argument-related practice online. The video shows how different argument analysis tools can interact with each other, and how tools for analysis can work in harmony with tools for argument authoring and debate.

All the software is currently available, and going through some final testing before release. Later on in January, we will open access to the AIF database, and the first set of import/export filters. Then in February, we will release a public beta of the first practical Argument Web tool: FireBack, a Firefox plugin for argublogging. Tools for debate, analysis and automated computation will then follow later in the Spring.

(Download the video here).

We’ve just heard that a consortium including Indiana University, the University of East London and ARG:dundee are one of eleven successful teams in the Digging into Data Challenge call, funded by JISC, ESRC and AHRC in the UK, NEH in the US, SSHRC in Canada and NWO in the Netherlands. We will be investigating how big datasets from sources such Google Books can support navigation through debate. More information will follow.

OVA-gen user interface

OVA-gen alpha-2 is the second release of our tool for constructing and analysing Dung-style argumentation frameworks.

What’s new:

• Acceptability semantics can be individually selected (instead of computing all semantics and scrolling through)
• When semantics are selected, acceptability renderings will be updated automatically
• Integration with the new version of Dung-O-Matic, which allows the following new semantics to be computed:
  - admissible sets
  - all preferred extensions
  - all stable extensions

OVA-gen can be found at http://ova.computing.dundee.ac.uk/ova-gen

As ever, we welcome your feedback.

We are delighted to be hosting a visit from Prof. Tom Gordon from Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communications Systems (FOKUS) and  Institute of Computer Science of the University of Potsdam. Tom is here to work with us on interactions between the EPSRC-funded DAM project and the EU FP7 IMPACT project, and to explore in detail connections between the AIF and LKIF (used in Tom’s Carneades system) in particular. Tom is also giving a seminar here, on Wednesday, 28 September at 12 noon in Wolfson, entitled,

The IMPACT Argumentation Toolbox for Policy Deliberations

Abstract. IMPACT is a European Framework 7 research and development project on the theme of information and communications technology for governance and policy modeling. IMPACT is conducting original research to develop and integrate formal, computational models of policy and arguments about policy, to facilitate deliberations about policy at a conceptual, language-independent level. These models will be used to develop and evaluate a prototype of an innovative argumentation toolbox for supporting open, inclusive and transparent deliberations about public policy on the World-Wide-Web. Four integrated web applications are being developed for the IMPACT toolbox: 1. Argument Reconstruction Tool; 2. Structured Consultation Tool; 3. Policy Modelling Tool; and 4. Argument Visualisation and Tracking Tool. All four tools are based on the same underlying computational model of argument and exchange arguments using the Legal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF), an XML format for argumentation schemes and arguments inspired in part by the Argument Interchange Format (AIF) developed partly at the University of Dundee’s School of Computing.

With so many people in this geographical region working on computational models of argument, Nir Oren finally took the initiative to do what so many of us had been threatening to do: namely, to run a workshop meeting. So, the first meeting of what we hope will be an enthusiastic schedule of collaboration is being held today, and the whole ARG:dundee group is heading up to Aberdeen. If you’re interested in tracking it and finding out more, drop us an email, or join the LinkedIn group.

With Katarzyna Budzynska, Chris is this week delivering a course at the European Agent Systems Summer School, EASSS 2011, in Girona. The topic is Dialectics in Multiagent Interaction.

Together with Marcello Guarini, Chris is this week delivering a graduate school on Reasoning & Argument: Computing & Cognitive Science Perspectives. The school is run in affiliation with the Centre for Research on Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric (CRRAR) at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, and runs immediately prior to the OSSA-2011 conference.