Kialo

A different kind of online debate

By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor

In this new-fangled age of computers and the internet, it’s not hard to find differing opinions if you’re longing for an intellectual debate. Finding someone with a reasonable argument? That’s a little trickier. Often, debating anything on the internet can feel like shouting into an echoing void that a million different people are already screaming into. Whatever point you had is lost in all the noise, a din that also disguises any valid counterarguments.

Kialo is a website dedicated to changing that. It is designed specifically to encourage intellectual and fair debate. Armed with technology that lays out the main points of a debate—both pros and cons—in a visual web that can be edited by people involved in either public or private discussions, Kialo seeks to allow its users to organize their thoughts and points. This helps prevent debates from derailing, as they so often do on forums.

Kialo also allows for mini-debates within larger discussed issues. This means that any point made can then be argued to determine validity, while still remaining connected and accessible through the larger, all-encompassing debate itself. This makes it a great platform for classrooms or businesses.

This method of organization provides the tools necessary for rational debate, as opposed to relying on simple statements made by users that can be either uninformed or simply seeking to “troll.” Having a separate platform, one that requires an account in order to participate, also further deters anyone whose main motivation is to watch the world burn.