Newswise — Obama or McCain? Global warming or global conspiracy? Open borders or closed immigration? They're the topics that we debate over the dinner table, in the classroom and, of course, on websites and blogs worldwide. But in an online world full of opinion, hyperbole and dubious facts, where can the public go to see a fair and balanced debate that brings the best evidence and arguments straight to the user's fingertips?
Uberspat.com provides users with a forum to intelligently debate the big issues. While users are encouraged to add their comments, Uberspat.com's main strength is that it invites users to submit articles and evidence supporting a particular point of view. Later, the same uberspat community of users evaluates and grades the value of the material submitted. The result is that users are able to quickly see what has been rated as the best articles, evidence, and arguments for either side of a particular debate.
The technology is based on the theory " made popular by James Surowiecki in "The Wisdom of Crowds" -- that independent, diverse, and decentralized groups of people are actually better than experts at evaluating certain results. The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge. There are other sites that use this theory to help give users value on the internet. Moviedatabase.com uses groups to arrive at very highly regarded movie reviews. Google aggregates the crowd " in this case it treats web pages as the crowd " to return the best search results. The strength of Uberspat.com is that is does the same for evidence and arguments in a debate.
Scott Heber, Director of Technology for Uberspat.com said, "When we started Uberspat.com we were looking to build a better mouse trap for debating and getting informed on the issues. We were tired of finding web sites that dealt with only one side of an argument. We were tired of finding low level 'You're a jerk! No, you're a jerk!' type exchanges. We were also tired of having to read through a whole haystack of web documents hoping to find one valuable needle that did a good job addressing a particular argument. With Uberspat.com, users can submit and rate arguments and evidence all the time. The net result is that we are creating a reference for some of the critical issues of our time as well as an arena for lively debate."
Users can register for free at http://www.uberspat.com.
Uberspat, Inc., headquartered in Richardson, Texas is a leading developer of innovative web applications and technology. For more information, visit http://www.uberspat.com
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