Using Voting
Kialo’s voting system is designed to measure the impact that each claim has on users’ opinion of the next claim up. Functionally, that means that voting on a claim (usually) measures the synthesis of two factors: the truth or persuasiveness of a claim, and its relevance to its parent claim. With this in mind, you can use Kialo debates to measure and understand the views and beliefs of others – simply provide them with a completed discussion to vote on. You can also vote or have others vote on a discussion from a chosen perspective other than your or their own – see Understanding Perspectives.
In general, we recommend waiting to start voting until a discussion is a significant way towards being finished. Voting earlier can mean wasting time – if a discussion is restructured, many of your votes will be wiped as claims are moved around. If you are setting up a new discussion, it can be worthwhile to leave voting turned off until it has had time to develop (see: Enabling/Disabling Voting in a Discussion).