Difference between revisions of "Welcome to Opasnet"

Revision as of 15:17, 18 March 2008

What is Heande?

Health, the Environment, and - Everything (Heande) is a wiki-based website for helping decisions about human health, and environmental factors affecting it. The website collects, synthesises, and distributes people's values and scientific information. We believe that all wise decision-making is based on expressing our values about what the really important things are, and understanding how the decision actually affects those things. This is why we need both values and science.

Heande is hosted by KTL (National Public Health Institute, Finland). The Department of Environmental Health has a motto:

Man must be able to breathe, drink, eat and live in the environment trusting on its safety. This is both individual's civil right and a prerequisite for a functioning society and economy.

This is a major challenge. We must ensure that the environment is safe in general. We must teach people to avoid things in the environment that are not healthy. We must be alert for emerging hazards and be prepared when needed. And we must convince people that when all this has been done, they don't need to worry.

By this website, we hope to provide understanding on and guidance for environmental health issues and decision-making. The issues are usually very complex and cross administrative, geographical, and scientific boundaries. Therefore we need information and contributions from many disciplines and areas. This website is built in a way that hopefully makes it easy for you to add information and values. It is also built in a way that mimics the real world. The pages describe things that are usually real, measurable quantities. And if something affects something else, these two things should be linked also in this website. It is a major challenge to describe even the most crucial things affecting human health, but that is what we are aiming to do. We have started from practical case studies to make this effort somewhat manageable.

What is the difference between Heande and Wikipedia?

To our knowledge, Heande is a unique website in its aims and methods. However, in many ways it is also very similar to Wikipedia, which is a well-known concept. It might therefore be useful to compare Heande and Wikipedia.

1. The purpose of Wikipedia is to provide information in general. The purpose of Heande is to give guidance to decision-making related to environment and health.
2. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Heande is more like a decision support system (although the structure is quite different than in typical decision support systems). However, Heande also has some encyclopedia-like contents.
3. Both Wikipedia and Heande are running on Mediawiki software.
4. Wikipedia rejects information that is not established. Heande collects also controversial information but with a certain structure that reveals the controversies. There are also rules that try to solve or at least diminish these controversies.
5. Wikipedia describes everything from neutral point of view. Heande does the same for the scientific content, but it also collects values where neutrality is not required. However, respect to other people's values and relevance to the topic are always required.
6. In Wikipedia, the content is structured as articles. In Heande, there are also encyclopedia-like pages, but the major content is a structured collection of real-world measurable quantities. We call them variables. A synthesis of these variables forms an analysis of a particular decision situation and gives guidance and information for the decision.
7. Wikipedia collects existing information. Heande creates also new information by combining existing information into novel syntheses.
8. A Wikipedia page has links to other pages whenever associations exist. A Heande page has the same, but in addition, there are special kinds of links that describe causal connections between things. There are special rules about how to describe these connectioins.
9. Wikipedia has Talk pages for discussions about the content. Heande has them also, but the discussions have more specific rules. Discussions are used especially for formal argumentation about defined topics.
10. Anyone can edit Wikipedia. Heande also has an open policy for contributions, but we require that editors use their real names. In addition, many pages are protected in such a way that only a draft page can be edited, and the contents are regularly moved to the actual page by the administrators (in a similar way as in Citizendium). This is because the pages have more complicated technical requirements than in Wikipedia, and unskilled authors could disrupt the structure.

How can you participate?

Contributing to a discussion

Contributing to a discussion presents rules of discussion engagement and discussion format, as well rules for editing discussions.

Your contribution in the form of remarks or argumentative criticism on the content of the wikipages is most welcome. It can change the outcome of the integrated risk assessment; it will improve it and make the integrated risk assessment better understandable for decision makers and other stakeholders. The discussions will show the reasoning behind our work; it will indicate the objective and normative aspects in the risk assessment. In this way, decision makers and stakeholders in general can judge themselves whether they agree on our normative weighting. In order to obtain an orderly discussion it is appreciated if you follow the discussion rules and apply the discussion format.

Discussion rules

1. Freedom of opinion. Everyone has the right to criticise or comment on the content of the wikipages.
2. State your critique with supporting arguments or your comment or remarks under the tab discussion D↷ and sign it.
3. Comments, remarks, statements and argumentation must relate to the topic of the wikipage.
4. Only statements made and arguments given can be attacked.
5. Comments, remarks, statements and argumentation can NOT be redundant. They cannot be repeated.
6. You are supposed to be committed to your statements, that is:

a) if someone doubts on your statement (-- : ), you must explain it (edit or defend ← : ).

b) if someone attacks your statement (⇤ : ), you must defend it (← : ).

c) if someone doubts on your argument (-- : ), you should explain it (edit or defend ← : ).

d) if someone attacks your argument (⇤ : ), you should defend it (← : ).

Discussion format

BASIC DISCUSSION FORMAT: For discussing, the discussion format (Blue D in the toolbar on the edit tab) should be used. This is how the discussion format appears:

How to read discussions

Furthermore:

• If you agree with an argument made by others, you can place your signature (in the toolbar) under the argument.
• Arguments may be edited or restructured. However, if there are signatures of other people, only minor edits are allowed without their explicit acceptance.
• If agreement is reached, i.e. the dispute is settled or resolved, the result can be stated at outcome.

N.B. In order to contribute to the discussion you should be logged in. If you have not yet a user account, you can make one.

ARGUMENTATION TYPE INDICATION:

It is recommended that you indicate your argument type, so that readers (decision makers) can see at onces whether the argument is theoretical (T), ethical (E) or practical (P). Theoretical arguments are arguments that can be falsified (even after discussion closure). Ethical arguments are arguments based on ethics. Practical arguments are situation specific arguments. Notation examples:

⇤#(7 E): : This is an example of the notation of an offending ethical argument.

←#(8 T): : This is an example of the notation of a defending theoretical argument.

ARGUMENTATION STRUCTURE:

If you use coordinative arguments*, it is recommended that you use this notation:

←#(3 P): : (3.1) We have no capacity for further research. AND (3.2.) There is no budget to outsource research.

If you use subordinative argumentation, it is recommended that you use this notation:

←#(4 P): : We have no time for further research on this topic.

←#(5 P): : Because there is other research to be done.

←#(6 P): : Because the results of that research have to be included into the report.

The purpose of the numbers is to make it easier to refer to a specific argument. The numbers are simply running numbers and they do not show a position in the argumentation thread. If you add an argument between the two other ones, the arguments do not show up in numerical order. This is OK. However with coordinative arguments, sub-numbering is used because only the arguments together make a whole rational argument. Alone these arguments would not hold against rational criticism.

• Coordinative argumentation is using complementing arguments, that are mutual dependent for the defense of/attack on the statement.

• Subordinative argumentation is using arguments to support arguments.

Editing discussions

• In principle everyone can edit a discussion.
• If you have initiated a discussion, it is expected that you also take care of the discussion editing.
• It is polite to inform the other discussion participants about changes (by placing a notification on their user page).

Rules for editing discussions:

1. Only minor changes can be made to arguments with signatures of other people. However, you can suggest improvements and ask the persons who signed the original argument if they agree.
2. Valid arguments come first ( ⇤# : or ←# : ), invalidated arguments at the end ( ⇤# or ←# ) of the discussion. However, the hierarchy (threads) of argumentation must be maintained.
3. You cannot simply remove arguments that are irrelevant within their context. This is what you can do instead:

a) You can attack the argument with a relevance argument. If you are right, your argument will invalidate the original one.

b) You can cut and paste the argument into a relevant discussion. Please, write a comment on the original argument location describing what was moved, why the argument was moved (you must be able to show the arguments irrelevance), and to where it was moved (add a link to the new page).

Related pages

• Pragma-dialectical argumentation theory