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Re: Could we Try out our Various Ideas for Improving Discussions HERE?

Okay, then I'll copy below part of your message on the TB forum from http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=16016#p108972

[Evaluating a Paper?]

If the objective is just to find the points of interest, ... just post the paper to be reviewed to QDL. Then users read it, and whatever statements they find debatable, they select with the mouse, and then they add a comment. The comment will appear at the end of the paper, but the statement in question will get a footnote number next to it. So if somebody has commented on a statement, it's obvious — you don't have to read the whole paper, and then all of the comments, to find out if somebody commented on that statement — if there is a footnote number next to the statement, somebody commented. And the comment itself is visible if you hover your mouse over the footnote number.
- If you want to discuss the same statement, and/or somebody's comment thereon, you just click the footnote number, and it takes you directly to the comment, and then you enter your comment tacked onto that one. All such comments appear at the end of the main paper being discussed, but the point is that you can go directly into the discussion, without any prep work. And you can follow the train of thought in the discussion, just by following the links, if you don't want to read the whole paper, or all of the comments. So you're automatically building the structure of the debate.

[Questionnaires]

Jeffrey's idea of doing multiple-choice questionnaires, which I implemented, seemed to work nicely, to get an overview of who agrees or disagrees with what, at least in terms of the most general ideas.
- link to it: QDL / Topics / Science / Questionaire
These are easy for users to set up — you just do a bulleted list, with the answers nested under the questions, and you mark it as a questionnaire.

[Theories Comparison?]

Here's an example of a folder containing multiple hypotheses that attempt to explain a set of phenomena:
QDL / Topics / Science / Astronomy / Stellar/Solar Models / Stellar Formation / Hypotheses
- Aside from being able to add sub-points to each hypothesis in nested sub-folders (including criticisms), users can rank each hypothesis. Then, a summary page can be created, that automatically displays the averages of all of the rankings. For example, here's the rankings for everything in the Astronomy folder. The initials of the modeler are across the top, and the topics are down the left side. If the modeler weighed in on a particular topic, there will be either a number, which will be the average of all of the rankings, or a tilde ("~") if nobody ranked the hypothesis yet.
QDL / Topics / Science / Astronomy / Conclusions / Rankings

I think the first thing I want to learn is inserting footnote comments. Then I'd like to make a questionnaire. I'll see if I can figure those two out from your instructions above.


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