Academicians at MIT and the University of Naples in Italy are experimenting with an online platform combined with moderators that will overcome the social limitations of wikis and discussion forums when applied to solving complex problems. Wikis are subject to “editing wars” where people who disagree on a topic repeatedly “correct” their opponents by deleting or writing over what they’ve posted on the page. Discussion forums often devolve into emotional running flame wars or result in people with opposing viewpoints setting up separate conversations that “talk past” each other. The more complex or charged the topic, the less effective these social platforms become in reaching workable solutions.

Given the urgency of finding workable solutions to climate change threats and impacts, the concept of the Collaboratorium was invented and put to its first test last December. The results are still being analyzed, as described in this abstract on the MIT/Sloan Management Review site.

The Internet does a great job of facilitating knowledge sharing through tools such as wikis and forums. But these tools have their limitations. For example, on controversial topics, wikis can be subject to “edit wars” between people of opposing views, and it can be hard to efficiently sift through the volume of information posted on forums — especially because that information may vary greatly in quality. Could there be better Internet tools for fostering group deliberation on complex issues?

That’s a question researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Naples (Italy) have been exploring — with the aim of promoting collaboration about addressing climate change. In December 2007, Mark Klein of the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT, Luca Iandoli of the Department of Business and Managerial Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II and Giuseppe Zollo of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II conducted the first field test of a new Internet-based collaboration platform that Klein calls a “Collaboratorium.”

The “argument-based structure” of the Collaboratorium keeps all remarks relevant to each specific argument in the same place and guards against repetition and duplication. It achieves this not through technology but through good old-fashioned human moderation. The system’s designers estimate that between 5% and 10% of the total users will need to serve in the moderator role or it to work. Users will be able to rate posttings, but the final placement of their contributions will be determined by the team of moderators.