1. A Brief User’s Guide
Jack Park
Latest: 20100905
© 2010 Jack Park; License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

2. “Dialogue Mapping™ is a proven
method for building shared
understanding and shared
commitment. If you deal with wicked
problems, that's a capability you are
going to need.”—Jeff Conklin*
*http://www.cognexus.org/

3.  What is an IBIS Conversation?
 IBIS Conversation Basics
 Basic Node Types
 Various views of IBIS conversations
 Starting a Conversation
 Participating in a Conversation
 Conversation Best-Practices

4.  IBIS = Issue-based Information Systems
 Created for solving Wicked Problems
 Structured conversation
 Wicked Problem:
 Highly complex
 Many world views, passionate beliefs
 No obvious known solution(s)
 Frequently don’t know what the right question(s) to
ask are
 Requires lots of conversations
 Collect and organize—structure—those conversations

5.  IBIS Extension for MediaWiki
 Install to facilitate IBIS Conversations
 To participate
 Must be logged in
 Must be willing to participate in thoughtful ways
 Must be willing to listen deeply to what others are
saying

6.  IBIS collects and organizes conversations in tree
structures
 IBIS conversations are structured collections of
nodes:
 Maps to collect conversations
 Questions to describe issues or ask questions
 Answers to take positions when answering a
question
 Pro nodes to support a position
 Con nodes to refute a position

10.  Click on the new conversation tab
 Describe the conversation
 Click Save

11.  Now ready to add nodes
 Click the response link

12.  Select Node Type
 Ask the question (end with a ? )
 Explain with details
 Click Save

14.  Select Node Type
 Answer the question
 Add details
 Click Save

15.  Goals for any conversation
 Collect and structure questions, ideas, and
arguments about a particular situation
 Maximize the amount of signal (beneficial
information)
 Minimize the amount of noise (useless conversation)
 Maintain the integrity of the social setting
 No personal attacks in arguments

16.  An IBIS Conversation be:
 Like a chat room where people want to get to know
each other better
 Like a design room where people are collecting design
ideas
 Like a situation room where people are trying to
organize information resources about some situation
 Like a debate room where arguments are collected and
structured for varieties of purposes
 A Single IBIS Conversation cannot be all of the
above

17.  The purpose of any node in a conversation is to
provide a root node for further conversations about one
topic
 A question should be about one topic
 Each answer node to a question should cover one topic
 Example:
 Question: “what are the known causes of climate change?”
 Answer : “ CO2, Methane, and Waterfalls cause climate change”
 Reasons that answer is a poor one:
 We might agree with the first two topics—no further dialogue
needed
 We might disagree with the third topic captured in that single
answer.
 By breaking that one answer into three separate nodes, we gain the
opportunity to treat each topic individually, as if it is the beginning of
a new conversation

18.  Goals to keep signals high and noise low call for
care in forming arguments
 Example arguments:
 “I disagree”
 The only information conveyed is that someone disagrees. A
conversation benefits when everybody learns why there is a
disagreement
 “I disagree because…”
 Possibly a valuable argument, but that will depend upon the
nature of what follows because
 e.g.: “because I read it in the newspaper” further begs the
credibility of the argument
 e.g.: “because (Smith, 2007, p-34) argues that…” is liable to
convey beneficial information to the conversation