Should Gordon stay or go?

In the aftermath of the historically poor results in the European and local elections, and with the prospects for the general election bleak, Labour MPs face a critical choice this evening; a dilemma on which their careers, the future of the Labour Party, and the future of the country may turn: should Gordon stay or should he go?

Help us reflect on this choice by adding your thoughts and ratings to The Independent’s interactive visual map of the arguments for (green) and against (red) Gordon Brown’s continuing leadership. As before, the whole structure of the map is like a wiki – every aspect is provisional, and open to further iterative improvement – and everyone can add new points and comments to the map.

The aim with interactive collaborative maps of this kind is to weave together and rate all of the salient issues, positions and arguments distributed through the community into a single rich, transparent structure – in which each idea and argument is expressed just once – so that anyone can explore quickly and gain a good sense of the perceived merits of the relevant choices.

You can move around the map by clicking on the spheres: clicking on the smallest coloured spheres takes you deeper into an argument, clicking on the largest sphere takes you back up.

To rate the arguments, click on the arrows that connect the spheres. A 1–9 rating scale opens when you click on an arrow (although you will be asked to log in first time – to stop people voting for the same idea multiple times). A “9” rating means that you think it’s a very strong argument: a “1” rating that it’s a very weak argument. As the community begins to rate the different ideas the thickness of the arrows changes to signal which ideas are perceived to be strongest and weakest.

The “i” button below the map opens a help page and the adjacent “screen” button opens the map to a full-screen view. The other buttons let you access fuller underlying content (expressed in a different visualization, which is also where you are able to add your own ideas to the map). Finally, you link to, share and embed any view of the map directly by clicking on the button next to the search magnifying glass.

As with the other maps in the series you can you can keep up to date with developments on this map via the Independent Minds blog and @TheIndyDebate on Twitter. And you are welcome to embed the map on your own website or blog (like a YouTube video) using the code shown below:

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