  Terms like 'misinformation', 'fake news', and 'echo chambers' permeate
current discussions on the state of the Internet. We believe a lack of
technological support to evaluate, contest, and reason about information
online---as opposed to merely disseminating it---lies at the root of these
problems. Several argument technologies support such functionality, but have
seen limited use outside of niche communities. Most research systems
overemphasize argument analysis and structure, standing in stark contrast with
the informal dialectical nature of everyday argumentation. Conversely,
non-academic systems overlook important implications for design which can be
derived from theory. In this paper, we present the design of a system aiming to
strike a balance between structured argumentation and ease of use. Socratrees
is a website for collaborative argumentative discussion targeting layman users,
but includes sophisticated community guidelines and novel features inspired by
informal logic. During an exploratory study, we evaluate the usefulness of our
imposed structure on argumentation and investigate how users perceive it.
Contributing to arguments remains a complex task, but most users learned to do
so effectively with minimal guidance and all recognized that the structure of
Socratrees may improve online discussion and results in a clearer overview of
arguments.
