Seminar talk: Frontiers and Connections between Argumentation Theory and Natural Language Processing BiCI seminar series, Bertinoro (Forlì-Cesena), Italy, 2014-07-24 http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Serena.Villata/BiCi2014/program/index.html Topics: - Examples of argumentation support - Supporting Collaborative Online Arguing - Structuring scientific argument: Micropublications model My paper covers related (but not identical) ground: http://jodischneider.com/pubs/frontiersargnlp2014.pdf

1. Jodi Schneider
Frontiers and Connections between Argumentation Theory
and Natural Language Processing
BiCi seminar series, Bertinoro (Forlì-Cesena), Italy
24 July 2014

2. Topics
• Examples of argumentation support
• Supporting Collaborative Online Arguing
• Structuring scientific argument:
Micropublications model

3. Create new spaces for civic debate
http://Consider.It
"Supporting reflective public thought with ConsiderIt." CSCW 2012
Travis Kriplean, Jonathan Morgan, Deen Freelon, Alan Borning, and Lance Bennett.

4. Create new spaces for civic debate
http://Consider.It
"Supporting reflective public thought with ConsiderIt." CSCW 2012
Travis Kriplean, Jonathan Morgan, Deen Freelon, Alan Borning, and Lance Bennett.

5. Choose
task-
appropriate
formalisms:
SEAS
"Template-based structured argumentation." In Knowledge Cartography, Springer London, 2008.
John Lowrance, Ian Harrison, Andres Rodriguez, Eric Yeh, Tom Boyce, Janet Murdock, Jerome Thomere, and Ken Murray.

6. Choose
task-
appropriate
formalisms
discoursedb.
org

7. Support
incremental
formalization
argunet.org

8. ClimateCoLab
climatecolab.org
http://www.climatecolab.org/ Circa 2010

9. Topics
• Examples of argumentation support
• Supporting Collaborative Online Arguing
• Structuring scientific argument:
Micropublications model

10. General Approach (from Informatics)
1. Analyze requirements
2. Consider which argumentation models to use
3. Build a prototype support tool
4. Evaluate and iterate

11. 500 Wikipedia debates each week:
Should we delete this article?

12. Requirements:
Support argumentation tasks
• Convince others of your position, using
community norms
• Determine the overall consensus decision

13. Compare two argumentation theories
• Walton’s Argumentation Schemes
(Walton, Reed, and Macagno 2008)
– Informal argumentation
(philosophical & computational argumentation)
– Identify & prevent errors in reasoning (fallacies)
– 60 patterns
• Factors/Dimensions Analysis
(Ashley 1991; Bench-Capon and Rissland, 2001)
– Case-based reasoning
– E.g. factors for deciding cases in trade secret law,
favoring either party (the plaintiff or the defendant).

14. Walton’s Argumentation Schemes
Example Argumentation Scheme:
Argument from Rules – “we apply rule X”
Critical Questions
1. Does the rule require carrying out this type of action?
2. Are there other established rules that might conflict
with or override this one?
3. Are there extenuating circumstances or an excuse for
noncompliance?
Walton, Reed, and Macagno 2008

15. “Rule” Argumentation Scheme
“Arguments about Deletion: How Experience Improves the Acceptability of Arguments in Ad-hoc Online Task Groups”
CSCW 2013

16. “Evidence” Argumentation Scheme
“Arguments about Deletion: How Experience Improves the Acceptability of Arguments in Ad-hoc Online Task Groups”
CSCW 2013

17. Evidence + Rule -> Conclusion
“Arguments about Deletion: How Experience Improves the Acceptability of Arguments in Ad-hoc Online Task Groups”
CSCW 2013

18. Supporting Tasks with Walton
• Convince others of your position, using
community norms
– To win an argument, use popular schemes:
• Argument from Evidence to Hypothesis (19%)
• Argument from Rules (17%)
• Determine the overall consensus decision
– Ask critical questions to check others' arguments

19. Factors/Dimensions Analysis
• Factors (case-based reasoning)
– All or nothing
• Either present ("applicable") or absent
• When present, a factor always favors the same side
• Dimensions
– More complex/subtle
• Can be applicable to a varying degree ("sliding scale")
• Favor plantiff on one extreme; defendant on the other
Ashley 1991; Bench-Capon and Rissland, 2001

20. Example factors analysis
(Aleven 1997)
Aleven 1997

21. Wikipedia Factors Analysis
Factors determined
by iterative annotation
4 Factors cover
– 91% of comments
– 70% of discussions
“Other” as 5th catchall
Factor Example (used to justify `keep')
Notability Anyone covered by another
encyclopedic reference is
considered notable enough for
inclusion in Wikipedia.
Sources Basic information about this
album at a minimum is certainly
verifiable, it's a major label
release, and a highly notable
band.
Maintenance …this article is savable but at its
current state, needs a lot of
improvement.
Bias It is by no means spam (it does
not promote the products).
**Other I'm advocating a blanket
"hangon" for all articles on
newly-drafted players

22. Wikipedia Factors Analysis
Factors determined
by iterative annotation
4 Factors cover
– 91% of comments
– 70% of discussions
“Other” as 5th catchall
Factor Example (used to justify `keep')
Notability Anyone covered by another
encyclopedic reference is
considered notable enough for
inclusion in Wikipedia.
Sources Basic information about this
album at a minimum is certainly
verifiable, it's a major label
release, and a highly notable
band.
Maintenance …this article is savable but at its
current state, needs a lot of
improvement.
Bias It is by no means spam (it does
not promote the products).
**Other I'm advocating a blanket
"hangon" for all articles on
newly-drafted players

23. Wikipedia Factors Analysis
Factor Example (used to justify 'keep') Example (used to justify 'delete'
Notability Anyone covered by another
encyclopedic reference is considered
notable enough for inclusion in
Wikipedia.
There is simply no coverage in
reliable sources to establish
notability.
Sources Basic information about this album
at a minimum is certainly verifiable,
it's a major label release, and a
highly notable band.
There are no independent
secondary sources (books, magazine
articles, documentaries, etc.) about
her.
Maintenance …this article is savable but at its
current state, needs a lot of
improvement.
Too soon for a page likely to be
littered with rumour and
speculation.
Bias It is by no means spam (it does not
promote the products).
The article seems to have been
created by her or her agent as a
promotional device.
**Other I'm advocating a blanket "hangon"
for all articles on newly-drafted
players
it appears to be original research by
synthesis
Deletion Discussions in Wikipedia: Decision Factors and Outcomes. WikiSym 2012.

24. Supporting Tasks with Factors
• Convince others of your position, using
community norms
– To win an argument, talk about the right topics
• Notability, Sources, Maintenance, Bias
• Determine the overall consensus decision
– Group messages by factor
– Summarize prevalence

25. Factor-based Summarization

26. Argument Schemes vs. Factors?
• Argument Schemes (kappa=.48)
Details of how to put together an argument
– Could support WRITING detailed arguments
– Critical Questioning
• Factors (kappa=.64-.82, based on factor)
Topics of discussion
– Basic support for writing arguments
– Summarization supports decision-making

27. Argument prevalence depends on the
corpus
• Wikipedia
– Argument from Evidence to Hypothesis (19%)
– Argument from Rules (17%)
• Arucaria
– Argument from example (38%)
– Argument from cause to effect (27%)
– Practical reasoning (14%)
– Argument from consequences (11%)
– Argument from verbal classification (10%)

28. Topics
• Examples of argumentation support
• Supporting Collaborative Online Arguing
• Micropublications model: Structuring
scientific argument

29. Micropublications

30. Model Data,
Methods,
Materials,
References
Micropublications: a Semantic Model for
Claims, Evidence, Arguments and
Annotations in Biomedical
Communications
Tim Clark, Paolo N. Ciccarese, Carole A.
Goble
http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3506

31. Direct Annotation with Domeo
http://swan.mindinformatics.org/ Paolo N Ciccarese

32. Micropublication: Claim + Support
(e.g. Attribution)
Micropublications: a Semantic Model for Claims, Evidence, Arguments and Annotations in Biomedical Communications
Tim Clark, Paolo N. Ciccarese, Carole A. Goble
http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3506

33. Constructs claim-argument network
across scientific papers
Micropublications: a Semantic Model for Claims, Evidence, Arguments and Annotations in Biomedical Communications
Tim Clark, Paolo N. Ciccarese, Carole A. Goble
http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3506

34. Argumentation Mining papers
Arguing on Wikipedia
• “Arguments about Deletion: How Experience Improves the Acceptability of Arguments
in Ad-hoc Online Task Groups” CSCW 2013.
• “Deletion Discussions in Wikipedia: Decision Factors and Outcomes” WikiSym2012.
Arguing in Social Media
• “Dimensions of Argumentation in Social Media" EKAW 2012
• “Why did they post that argument? Communicative intentions of Web 2.0 arguments.”
Arguing on the Web 2.0 at ISSA 2014
Arguing in Reviews
• “Identifying Consumers' Arguments in Text” SWAIE 2012
• “Semi-Automated Argumentative Analysis of Online Product Reviews" COMMA 2012
• “Arguing from a Point of View” Agreement Technologies 2012
Structuring Arguments on the Social Semantic Web
• “A Review of Argumentation for the Social Semantic Web” Semantic Web –
Interoperability, Usability, Applicability, 2013.
• “Identifying, Annotating, and Filtering Arguments and Opinions in Open Collaboration
Systems" 2013 Thesis: purl.org/jsphd
• “Modeling Arguments in Scientific Papers” at ArgDiaP 2014
http://jodischneider.com/jodi.html

35. Argumentation mining today
• No unified vision of the field. Multiple:
– Interrelated problems
– Application domains
– Tools handling one aspect of annotation
• Few corpora
• Need for
– Common definition(s) of argumentation
– "Challenge problems"
– Shared corpora
– Applications

37. Example: "Stop at a red light"
1. Does the rule require carrying out this type of action?
Were you driving a vehicle?
2. Are there other established rules that might conflict
with or override this one?
Did a police officer direct you to continue without
stopping?
3. Are there extenuating circumstances or an excuse for
noncompliance?
Were you driving an ambulance with its siren on?
Critical Questions from Argument from Rules based on Walton, Reed, and Macagno 2008

38. None of Wikipedia's top-used schemes
are prevalent in Arucaria.
Classifying Arguments by Scheme. Vanessa Wei Feng. Master's thesis, Toronto, 2010.

39. Goal: large-scale arguing
• Search for issues, claims, and opinion clusters
• Link to evidence when writing your opinion
• Publish and navigate claims networks

40. Online argumentation support
interfaces can:
• Promote "listening" in online conversations
• Support incremental formalization
• Slice and dice the views
• Collect crisp examples
• Support distributed sensemaking

41. Argumentation mining could be the
basis for support tools
• Help participants write persuasive arguments
– How: provide personalized feedback on drafts
– Requires: knowing which arguments are accepted;
identifying argumentation in a drafts
• Find weaknesses in others’ arguments
– How: suggest & instantiate relevant critical questions
– Requires: identifying argumentation schemes
• Summarize the overall conclusions of the debate
– How: identify the winning and losing rationales
– Requires: identifying rationales and contradictions