Is ProCon.org neutral?
I had never seen ProCon.org until a few hours ago. Having looked over it, I’m surprised that I didn’t know about it before.
ProCon.org is a cluster of issues-oriented websites written and maintained by a staff of hired writers (bright young researchers fresh out of college, from the looks of it), all under the management of a non-profit group with a $700,000 yearly budget. For example, here is their Euthanasia homepage. There are homepages about many other hot-button issues, including “Should marijuana be a medical option?” and “Should prostitution be legal?” and “Is sexual orientation determined at birth?”
The general concept seems, on my first glance, to be very interesting and solid, and the results have the earmarks of being well-executed. There are several standard resources, such as a “1-minute overview,” “Top 10 Pros and Cons,” etc. These would appear to be very valuable resources for students and researchers, although I would suspend judgment on that until I had read through a few of these in great detail, and gotten some expert opinions, which I haven’t done. In addition, there is a wonderfully refreshing full (and well-organized!) disclosure of information about the organization itself (and see this and this and this).
But the most interesting aspect of the site may be its voluminous collection of pro-and-con issues pages. They are organized around groups of topics, and within each topic there are one or more questions. There is a separate page about each question. On the question page, there are two columns, listing “pro” and “con,” and in the columns, quotations from various named sources. Each source is exhaustively described.
The whole project looks wonderful, from the point of view both of a researcher and of someone who loves neutrality in educational resources. My compliments also to whoever designed the site and its software. It is remarkably well-laid-out.
I’m writing about ProCon because I think it is fascinating in several ways. In one way, it represents a wholesale rejection of the idea of community editing, which in this day and age is fascinating. I am impressed by what happened when somebody decided simply to pay a dozen researchers to create free, reliable (apparently), open (in the sense of “full disclosure”), and neutral content. Could Wikipedia have assembled this website? I’m laughing. How about CZ? Well, maybe! But probably not, because this sort of highly organized content, with specific, agreed-upon rules (such as the five-tier “credibility ranking” system) would be rather hard to execute by the herded cats of CZ (much less Wikipedia). Why do I say that? Because I have tried to organize complex content types and complex projects within my various online projects. I’ve occasionally succeeded (as with subpages, sort of), but it is very hit-or-miss (again…as with subpages). Besides, I can also tell you from similar experience that a lot of the work that has gone into ProCon.org is “gruntwork,” and not the sort of work that people sign up to do as an online volunteer.
I am also impressed by the apparent care and thought that went into making the resource as a whole both neutral and open. They seem to have really thought out just what you would have to do in order to create a neutral debate site, and have gone far above and beyond the approach that most newspapers or encyclopedias take. Among other things, I am glad that they both let partisans state their own views as forcefully as possible, and give amazingly full information about the partisans and their affiliations. In short, I am heartened that — it seems — there might be somebody out there who believes as much as I do in the possibility and beneficiality of neutrality. Of course, I am aware that there might be some people who are not convinced on this point. I know that a lot of people detest all attempts at neutrality and insist that it is in principle impossible. (But I think they are confused.) So I open the question up to you: is ProCon.org neutral? Does it illustrate ideals that the likes of CZ and Wikipedia should be following?
(By the way, I have no connections at all, that I know of, with ProCon.org.)
Larry (?),
As the Founder and Chair of http://www.procon.org, I think your write up above was comprehensive and fair—you seem to really understand the complexity of remaining neutral on important topics in a world that often seems anything but—and put together by folks that have their own biases—as we all do.
Regardless, we take our charge of neutrality seriously and appreciate that you have the skills to peak under procon.org’s hood—and that you understood–and liked what you found there!
Thanks for your insightful comments,
Steve Markoff
Chair
Procon.org
0-310-587-1470
Comment by Steve Markoff — December 15, 2008 @ 6:04 pm
Dear Mr. Sanger,
Thanks for your thoughtful analysis of ProCon.org. It is great to see others who really value the public service we provide and appreciate how difficult it can be to produce the nonpartisan in-depth research we share for free.
I could go on with my gratitude for letting others know about ProCon.org, but I do have a pressing question for you.
You mentioned that you had trouble reaching our subpages. Would you mind elaborating on what kind of trouble you had?
So far, I have checked our traffic tracking software, Urchin, and the traffic patterns look completely normal today (no unusual fluctuations). Marcus (our IT Manager) contacted Rackspace (our website hosting provider) to see if there were any problems with our server today and none were apparent. Were pages loading slowly or not loading at all? Did those problems occur on multiple pages or one particular page? Any information you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
I welcome your additional feedback, and any comments (pro or con) that your readers and fellow Citizendium bloggers would like to share.
Thanks again for kindly shining the spotlight on ProCon.org’s educational efforts.
Sincerely,
Kamy Akhavan
Managing Editor, ProCon.org
kamy@procon.org
Comment by Kamy Akhavan — December 15, 2008 @ 6:22 pm
Larry,
I think your understanding and analysis of procon.org was accurate, insightful and fair, which we appreciate given particularly that few seem to understand the difficulty of maintaining a neutral site on topics that are emotional to many.
We all have biases aplenty but part of procon.org’s task is to keep bias off our sites and give our visitors what we advertise–the best pros and cons available on controversial topics, politically neutral by design and implementation, and a site that is transparent as to its workings.
Thanks you for your kind words about us.
Steve Markoff
Founder and Chair
Procon.org
0-310-587-1470
Comment by Steve Markoff — December 15, 2008 @ 7:17 pm
Steve, thanks for showing up here and replying. You’re very welcome. I do have a question for you. Who funds it? Was there one main funder? Why a neutral debate site, i.e., what was the funder’s main motive, or if someone persuaded that person, what arguments were used?
Kamy, thanks also to you. What a great job you have! You asked: “You mentioned that you had trouble reaching our subpages. Would you mind elaborating on what kind of trouble you had?” Just before posting the blog post, but not as I was writing it and not now, I tried to load for example http://euthanasia.procon.org/viewresource.asp?resourceID=125 and (weirdly) the title loaded, but the page remained blank for 1-2 minutes, and never did load. This was the case for all the pages on the site except http://www.procon.org/ . Very strange!
Comment by Larry Sanger — December 15, 2008 @ 8:46 pm
I am surprised the issue of abortion and bioethics issues do not seem to be discussed (its at least not in the ones they promote on the home page). If this is deliberate - and I am not saying it is not - this would be a strike about neutrality, in my opinion, because if an issue weighs heavily on the hearts and minds of a large group of the populace and there is no forum for it, one cannot help but wonder if some would rather suppress the conversation.
~Nathan
Comment by Nathan — December 17, 2008 @ 8:58 am
Nathan — interesting — but in “suppressing the conversation,” do they subtly show themselves to be pro-life or pro-choice? I don’t see that “suppression” of the debate would tend to favor one side or the other.
I also don’t understand how failure to characterize a debate suppresses the conversation. People don’t engage in conversations on ProCon.org. They read about them. Not having a sub-site about abortion prevents reading about abortion…no wait…people can still read about it elsewhere. Well, I’m not getting it.
There are zillions of hot-button issues they don’t cover, actually. They haven’t been at it that long, I’m sure that’s all there is to it. And they might just be bored by the abortion debate; many people are. That would reflect not a desire to suppress debate but a desire to give information about other things that haven’t been debated ad nauseam.
Comment by Larry Sanger — December 17, 2008 @ 10:57 am
I hope ProCon will cover homeopathy soon, maybe we (at CZ) can learn something.
Comment by Paul Wormer — December 17, 2008 @ 12:15 pm
Prompted by this post, I spent a couple of hours this evening looking at the site and digging all around the internet for info - I now have, for example, a detailed understanding of the occupants of 233 Wilshire Blvd and how they funded political candidates in the last year.
The good news is that I haven’t found anything that looks suspicious or mysterious. I will say that the Wikipedia page is very suspect, having been authored essentially by only one source - I’d sure like to see more independent reportage there. This post is a substantially better representation of Procon than the Wikipedia page.
And that said, I do find the selection of issues to be odd, and in some cases, oddly worded. The topics that interest procon are not topics that would, in the main, interest (say) a modern progressive left-leaning voter. The selection weighs heavily on socio-morality issues, such as guns, the death penalty, marijuana, prostitution, and the like. And some of the selections are just odd. How does “milk” become a topic? And how is a question like “Is the ACLU good for America?” even remotely neutral?
The wording is, in som instances, strangely passive (and not in the good, ‘neutral POV way’). For example, the question “Should the death penalty be allowed?” is a passive wording, as though the death penalty is something that happens natirally, and would have to be prohibited (rather than, say, the death penalty being an explicit act of the state).
Inside, the wording is again often misleading. A one-minute summary states, “While capital punishment has been banned throughout parts of the world, execution remains a legal option in many countries.” The “parts of the world” referred to here include essentially every other democracy, while “many countries” includes mostly places like China, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The depiction of the ‘con’ argument is likewise lightweight, emphasizing practicalities (it doesn’t work, it targets minorities) rather than the deeper justice, rights and morality-based arguments used by more opponents of the death penalty.
The wording in the ‘born gay’ (another very odd topic selection) is also noticeably slanted. Compare how “Proponents feel…” but “Opponents believe…” And, of course, the issue isn’t about being ‘born gay’ at all: “They believe that because homosexuality is something people are born with, these individuals are entitled to the same legal rights and protections as any other person, such as marriage and protection from discrimination.” Which is not the argument at all: supporters of gay rights argue that *all* people (not just gays) deserve rights, and they do not believe that gays should be denied rights simply because they are gay (this would be the case whether or not a person is born gay or whether it is a lifestyle choice).
The same sort of pattern is evident throughout. Again, in the absence of subsidiary information about the organization or its motives, I cannot make any statement about intentions here. But the conclusion, based on the evidence of the site, is pretty apparent: the site has not successfully offered a balanced perspective on the issues.
Comment by Stephen Downes — December 17, 2008 @ 10:05 pm
While you’ve raised a few somewhat interesting points, Stephen, a lot of what you say looks like a lot of nit-picking throw-away remarks — most of these remarks make me respond, “Maybe that’s evidence of bias, but it’s going by so fast that so far I don’t see clear evidence that there’s any bias here.” If you look at any text whatsoever, you can read a bias into it, if you’re motivated to do so. I remain skeptical about the ultimate merit of the website’s presumption to neutrality, but I don’t think your off-the-cuff remarks establish the negative thesis.
Comment by Larry Sanger — December 19, 2008 @ 1:48 am
They don’t sidestep abortion and bioethics completely. In the section on the American presidential candidates, there is discussion of their various stances on abortion and parental consent.
A very nice resource, marred only by the fact that it describes itself as “pro and con”. Not every question can be reduced to a binary option. There are plenty of people who, on a wide range of topics, aren’t simply for or against. Take terrorism. Nobody is ‘pro’ terrorism. But the questions are whether or not certain groups are terrorists, what the best approach is to responding to terrorism, what security measures are appropriate and so on.
The only other problem I see is that we don’t all naturally think in discrete units. We have ethical beliefs which affect a variety of our positions: if you are religious, say, you will have an underlying ethical belief that might affect your position on abortion, stem-cell research, assisted dying, abstinence-only sex education. Reducing it only to ‘pros and cons’ seems to ignore the fact that the reasons for political and moral beliefs transcends only those issues and affects ‘worldviews’ (a word I generally dislike).
Despite this, I’m impressed by ProAndCon and wish it luck.
Comment by Tom Morris — December 20, 2008 @ 6:02 pm
Many public, school, and college libraries have for years had “current-issues” shelves containing pro-and-con books, from many competing publishers, on controversial issues. While ProAndCon clearly has several unique features that these book series don’t have, the general idea of a neutral resource on debatable issues is not exactly an innovation. I admire and praise ProAndCon’s achievement; but the similar work that many others have done before, though in a different medium, should not go unnoticed amidst all the gee-whiz. Just as CZ points out that there is more than one encyclopedia in the world, teachers should continue to point out to students that there is more than one source of pro-and-con debate material.
Comment by Bruce Tindall — January 27, 2009 @ 12:41 am