As you would expect there evaluation of the person, isn't just if you liked the person or not, but if the person can be said to support the conclusion or not.

However, just because someone who is very smart or informed supports or opposes a cause, doesn't mean that that cause is right or wrong.

The purpose of this algorithm is to, in the global war of ideas, identify how much of the water is being carried by a certain person, vs. a book, website, song, video, etc.

So the website would try to identify the person's expertise in the issue at hand, as well as how much the person suppered or opposed the conclusion being discussed. For instance Einstein should have gotten a high score in 1906 on the debate of if E=MC^{2 or not. He would also get a high score if Theses was trying to assert that E=MC}2.

With this information, someone could identify the Person as making the largest case for a cause, and then they could focus their attention on proving the person wrong, if they are so inclined.

On the one hand you might assume that arguments from an expert should carry a lot of weight because, spend a lot more time thinking about these things than us. However there are many experts on both sides of an issue. There is no way to come to the truth of an issue, without taking all the arguments made in by people, and smashing them together, organizing them, categorizing them, removing duplication, finding the person who said things best, demoting bad logic, faulty assumptions, contradictions, and evaluating each assertion on their own merits.

Arguments from the person would have to be quoted and put into the reasons to agree and disagree, and categorized in order for real progress to be made, because this is the only way that we can merge the data from one person together with data from other persons.

But this does not change the fact that many people take experts as their reasons to believe something. For instance many people that because Einstein was, or was not, an atheist (depending on your point of view) that it should affect their beliefs. It would be interesting to see the list of the top persons that support and oppose an issue, and further than that, which persons support and oppose specific aspects, and conclusions drawn about an issue.

We have to reflect the way people come to conclusions, before we can change the way people come to conclusions.