Editing:Editing on Arguably

Guide to editing

The following is a guide to initiate new users into the editing framework.

Arguably.io utilizes a template to organize semantic claims. The template serves to connect a primary claim to its related claims.

Step 1: Choose a claim about some topic of your choosing.

Step 2: Distill your chosen claim into a brief statement. Submit this statement as the Statement of the claim.

Step 3: Determine the nature of the claim. Submit it as the Nature of claim.

Step 4: Research the claim. Take care to provide the strongest argument to validate the claim. The editor is not meant to provide a full-length discussion that includes supporting and contradicting evidence. Save the contradicting evidence for the counter claim, which will have its own separate page.

Step 5: Following research, determine the level of certainty of the claim. Submit this it as the Level of certainty.

Step 6: Determine the counter claim of the primary claim. The counter claim is usually a negative version of the primary claim ([x] is / [x] is not). Sometimes, there may be related claims which do not contradict the primary claim, but are more plausible.

Step 7: The validity of the primary claim may be dependent on one or more other claims, called foundational claims. Include these other claims next to Dependent on. These references are useful to establish a relationship between claims.

Step 8: The primary claim may be a foundational claim for other related claims. Include these other claims next to Dependency of.

List of terms for editing

The Claim Template

• Statement of claim - A statement of a claim is a pithy assertion that includes a subject and a verb.
  • Example of statement: 'Mike Tyson's lisp is a result of brain damage'

• Nature of claim - a category into which a claim is organized. Such natures include:
  • Theoretical
  • Factual
  • Ethical

• Level of certainty - the degree to which the truth of a claim has been established.
  • Proven True
  • Proven False
  • Possible, with some evidence
  • Possible, but lacking evidence

• Counter claim - a pithy assertion that contradicts the primary claim.
  • Example(1): the primary claim may be 'Jesus was a real human being', to which the counter claim would be 'Jesus was not a real human being.'
  • Example(2): the primary claim may be 'Municipal waste water terminates in Lake Ontario,' to which the counter claim would be 'Waste water does not terminate in Lake Ontario.'

• Foundational claim - a claim upon which the truth of the primary claim depends, either wholly or partially.
  • Example: 'Henry can walk' is a claim which is foundational to the claim 'Henry walked around town.' The latter claim is wholly dependent on the former claim.

• Dependent claim - a claim that depends, either wholly or partially, on the truth of the primary claim for its own validity.
  • Example: If 'Henry walked around town' is the primary claim, then 'Henry can walk' is the dependency of the primary claim. The former depends upon the latter, thus the latter is a dependency of the former.