While working at a second-hand book shop one summer, I overheard a call from a man looking to sell a complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His offer was met with a gentle, web-weary sigh.

“To be honest mate, you’d have a hard time giving those away right now.”

After he’d hung up, he turned to me and explained an uncomfortable truth for someone paid to sell books: encyclopaedias are dead, and the internet killed them.

It’s easy to see how.

You wake up, sign in to Quora and read about the Most Important Lessons History has Taught Us as voted by tens of thousands of people across the world (“Don’t invade Russia” – go figure).

You follow @philosophyquotz on twitter and spend a comfortable train ride soaking up the limitless wisdom of Plato, Descartes and Nietzsche – all conveniently distilled into 140 characters or less.

Bored one night, you spend an hour or two idly wandering through Wikipedia articles. With a start, you realise you’ve managed to click your way from an incomprehensible page on Nihilism to the life and crimes of Ed Geins. Vaguely discomforted by your newfound knowledge, you open YouTube in another tab and load an episode of QI, finding solace in the warm schoolmaster voice of Stephen Fry.

With such a wealth of knowledge a search-bar away it’s hard to remember a time when those late-night yelling matches over the finer differences between Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon couldn’t be brought to an abrupt end with an iPhone and three seconds on IMDb.

But with so many answers within easy reach, it’s easy to forget about the questions that we still haven’t managed to answer – the questions that may be the most important of all. And at a time when truth is becoming increasingly crowd-sourced, how can we know who to trust?

Ben Williamson, a software engineer from Canberra, was awarded an ACT innovation grant for his work on a site that aims to bring a much-needed structure to those debates that can’t be swept away with a single citation: Reasonwell.

“It’s been a project that’s been turning itself over in my head for some years now,” Ben tells me. “One of the early sparks for the idea was lunchtime arguments with my colleagues about matters of public policy that I didn’t really know much about – but I had opinions on. I remember wishing at times that my wife was there.” He laughs. “She knows a lot more about certain aspects of public policy than I do.”

Inspired by the overwhelming success of collaborative knowledge-driven sites such as Wikipedia and Quora, Ben set about creating a site in which each fact is not assumed, but fought for.

“We have Wikipedia, this awesome resource that has answers to this whole class of questions – things about the world, what’s in the world.  If it’s not contentious, Wikipedia has the answer.”

“Reasonwell’s really about building a structure that’s appropriate for contentious material.”

For all its convenience, Wikipedia’s accuracy lives or dies on the bias behind its latest edit. While it’s hard to find much wriggle-room in the current number of seasons of Mad Men, many of the articles on the more divisive topics are the subject of furious rewriting and debate as each faceless editor fights over the right to the last word – and all behind the scenes. At Reasonwell, this debate isn’t the problem; it’s the point.

“You look at the contentious pages on Wikipedia, like global warming, and it’s being edited all the time by people trying to sway the tone of the page a little to the left, a little to the right and adding their own bits of evidence here and there,” Ben explains.

“It doesn’t really give anyone a place to say ‘this is what I think’ in a way that’s safe from being edited by everyone else.”

What Ben proposed was a site that would strip down all debates – ranging from controversial government policies, human rights disputes or even the daunting spectre of Intelligent Design – to their most fundamental form. In an almost Socratic refutation of the all-too-familiar kind of rhetoric that favours flair over fact, Reasonwell forces you to reduce your position to a single, well-articulated claim that you must support through arguments based upon reliably-sourced evidence. Without this foundation of fact, your claim flounders and sinks into obscurity.

Imagine how different QandA would be.

Much like Quora or Wikipedia, Reasonwell is based upon the idea that the advent of the Digital Age has brought with it a degree of connectedness that is unprecedented in human history. Through this community, Ben seeks to promote a forum in which each individual claim is mercilessly judged on its own merit, free of obfuscation and misdirection – something that Ben believes is fundamentally lacking in public debate in Australia today.

“Right now so much of what goes in the political sphere is really missing the point, there are people who are experts in particular fields – energy, health, economics – they hear the sorts of things that are used as justification for public policy and they’d be smashing their heads,” he says. “I think the benefits of having that greater focus on collaboration would be enormous.”

Rather than merely add another dissenting voice to the clamour, Reasonwell encourages its users to take responsibility for their own beliefs through self-examination and debate.

“A fundamental principle in Reasonwell’s design is that there is no central point of truth for anything,” Ben explains. “It’s up to people individually to make those decisions for themselves, to deal with any challenges to their opinions. The collaborative aspect comes in in that group filtering – the best arguments and the best challenges come to the top.”

Still in its early stages, Reasonwell is not without its teething troubles – as Ben himself is only too ready to admit. In part, he says, this comes from some users’ unfamiliarity with the site’s stripped-back approach to discussion.

“Some peoples’ experience has been underwhelming. Their initial experiences of trying to use it have been frustrating and confusing and that’s something I need to address in the next phase of development for this project.”

Despite these problems, Ben remains optimistic about the future of Reasonwell.

“People are excited about the idea. This could lead to a very democratic, open, anyone-can contribute, ideas-are-promoted-on-their-merits way of doing things.”

When I finally ask Ben what his dream is for Reasonwell, he answers me without a second of hesitation. With enough momentum behind it, he says, Reasonwell can be a place not just for discussion – but for change.

“My definition of success is that public debate on Reasonwell becomes the go-to place for journalists covering politics. It could be a focal point for getting the really good evidence-based information in front of the policy debate, challenging bad policy and breaking down the misapprehensions.”

“There’s a lot to do.”

First published in Issimo Magazine October 2013