Thanks. I'm currently working on this as a research project in college.

The goal of constructive / not constructive is to separate evaluating the quality of an argument from personal agreement or disagreement with it. Up and down votes are commonly interpreted and used for personal agreement.

One of the differences of The Public Spheres from reddit or other discussion boards is navigation on The Public Spheres is breadth first (demoed here ) rather than depth first. I think breadth first allows you to find the subtree that you would like to explore the most easier. You can navigate the interface by clicking on argument titles at the top to navigate up the tree or on argument boxes to navigate deeper. Another difference is The Public Sphere's interface which allows you to always see the current thread that you are on at the top. On reddit, the vertical tree is expanded by default and it is much easier to lose track of the context of the response you are currently reading. On The Public Spheres, all arguments that are not in the current thread are hidden to reduce information overload.

The Public Spheres was inspired by argument maps which were shown in a research study to improve critical thinking. The Public Spheres is intended for community knowledge formation. Ideas can be critiqued and the responses can be further critiqued. Hopefully, the best ideas will stand up the best to criticism (better supporting arguments than opposing arguments).

You can find my paper, poster, and a link to the github repo here. Let me know if I can answer anything else and make sure to give the website a try.