Existing public debates on some of our greatest global challenges (Terrorism, Climate Change, Iran's Nuclear Program, etc.) are often shallow or overcome with partisan rhetoric. Effective public policy requires an informed electorate but the technical minutiae and constant back-and-forth can be numbing. The internet has the potential to correct this by allowing for larger numbers of citizens to engage with each other but in practice it tends to reinforce these negative tendencies.

What is needed is not another website where users can argue back and forth but a way for users to work together to build the best-possible version of an argument, then let other users edit and organize these arguments into positions. The goal of the Open Debate Engine project is to create an open-source publishing tool that will enable organizations or individuals to create and manage structured debates on the policy topic of their choosing. For example, a human rights group could setup the software on a new domain 'debateguantanamo.org' and invite others to buildout the best arguments for or against the U.S. policy of indefinite confinement.

Users will also be able to quickly integrate or embed arguments from one site to another so a user who is blogging about Guantánamo could embed an argument from the debateguantanamo.org site on their blog or a user who has setup a 'humanrightsdebate.org' site could pull arguments from the Guantánamo site into their own argument tree. Other users could setup networks or search engines to comb all existing open debate engine sites to help users find the debate they are looking for. Instead of having one site where all debates could occur, this model allows these debates to develop organically -- initiated and maintained by those with the most interest in the topic.