Unzip dat.zip, e.g., run unzip ./dat.zip

For the raw data from the Internet Argument Corpus which we use in this paper, you'll need to visit this link and download it: https://nlds.soe.ucsc.edu/iac

Downlaod all contents into this directory. You should have a ./data/ folder after the download which contains 'fourforums' and 'MechanicalTurk' subdirectories.

To reproduce the experiments as they are in the paper, you only need the processed and pickled/serialized data from the ./dat/ directory.

To compute the ATE estimates for a reply type:

1. cd src
2. python compute_ate_estimates.py --annot=[reply type] (add --topiconly to run the debate topic only baseline)

The unadjusted baseline estimate is always reported.

To compute the cross validation metrics for a reply type:

1. cd src
2. python cross_validation.py --annot=[reply type] (add --topiconly for the debate topic only baseline)

If you want to re-run LDA with a new number of topics:

1. cd src
2. python fit_lda.py --n_topics=[num topics]

**NOTE: latent topic and document proportions will then be output to ./dat/[debate topic]_N=[num topics]/ You will need to include the --n_topics=[num topics] option to cross val. and ATE estimation scripts from now on.

Finally, if you downloaded the raw data as described above, and you want to process the data as we have in the paper:

1. cd src
2. python preprocess.py

**NOTE: please note that your directory structure needs to match exactly what we had -- read the first two paragraphs.

For questions beyond this, please email: dhanya.sridhar@columbia.edu.