A Framework for Enriched, Controlled On-line Discussion Forums for e-Government Policy-making
Adam Wyner, Tom van Engers · 2010
The paper motivates and proposes a framework for enriched on-line dis-cussion forums for e-government policy-making, where pro and con state-ments for positions are structured, recorded, represented, and evaluated. The framework builds on current technologies for multi-threaded discus-sion lists by integrating modes, natural language processing, ontologies, and formal argumentation frameworks. With modes other than the stan-dard “reply comment”, users specify the semantic relationship between a new statement and the previous statement; the result is an argument graph. Natural language processing with a controlled language constrains the domain of discourse, eliminates ambiguity and unclarity, allows a log-ical representation of statements, and facilitates information extraction. However, the controlled language is highly expressive and natural. On-tologies represent the knowledge of the domain. Argumentation frame-works evaluate the argument graph and generate sets of consistent state-ments. The output of the system is a rich and articulated representation of a set of policy statements which supports queries, information extrac-tion, and inference.