Seeing the differences among position drafts

[David Hilvert]

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:26:55 -0400
Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com> wrote:

> Another approach (stepping back) is to implement a diff in the
> pollserver.  Or (further back), a general-purpose diff tool for Web
> pages.

The last would be nice.  Questions that would arise include how to handle
differences in HTML and other formatting between pages (ignore this?),
extraneous text not part of the draft but part of the web page, and
rearrangements of sections.  (This would be applicable to diffs in general.)
More difficult issues would include how to follow the movements of text
fragments and replacement of words with synonyms in the case of a rewrite.

Unfortunately, searching the web doesn't seem to immediately suggest an
appropriate tool.  Traditional diff algorithms are covered in some depth,
however (e.g., see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff ).  One place to start
might include tools designed specifically for determining originality of works,
since this is a subset of the larger problem of determining changes in general.

> There are recombinant toolsets (textbender, TextFlow and MixedInk).
> They aren't suitable, either.  Basically they don't grapple with the
> essential problem, in our case, which is visualization.

The proposal seems to be to allow the drafter to naturally put together what he
or she considers a best draft, and allowing software to determine and highlight
differences between drafts; instead of, on the other hand, requiring the humans
to do their own mark-up, or requiring the use of a particular toolset.

This seems to be a step forward, if possible, and, for a sophisticated enough
difference algorithm, could allow a fairly broad scope of use (e.g., comparing
the positions of two random newspaper editorials on some particular topic).
The difficult part would lie in developing the algorithm, but this is perhaps
an easier problem than the task of convincing all of humanity to use a
particular bit of software (whether stet, co-ment, MixedInk, or similar).

> Either I'll transfer it, or Thomas will, or his voters.  Any remaining
> yellow marks will reflect an actual difference of opinion between our
> voters (Thomas's and mine).  This difference will then become the
> topic of discussion.  Generalizing on this, it seems we've discovered
> two rules:
> 
>   a) Text flows across a differential, like water over a weir.
> 
>   b) Where text does not flow, there is something to discuss;
>      otherwise not.
> 
> The entire debate on social norms (laws, plans and policies) can
> therefore be mapped, in perfect detail, by a survey of textual
> differences.  This is a strong statement, and very interesting.

Perhaps for Votorola, it would be most appropriate at first to use manual
mark-up of the sort Thomas demonstrates, since a drafter will usually have an
idea of which other drafts his own can be best contrasted with (e.g., the draft
of a delegate).  In this way, the drafter shares his own knowledge of the
differences in drafts with readers, rather than relying on an automatic tool to
attempt to reconstruct such knowledge.  (Although an automatic tool could be
used as a fallback initially, and might serve as a complete replacement for
human mark-up in the long run.)