Conversation thumbnails for large-scale discussions

ABSTRACT

We present a new interface for large-scale online conversations. Our technique, the Conversation Thumbnail, differs from existing discussion interfaces in two respects. First, it employs a focus+context visualization technique that exploits message-level metadata to provide an easily navigable overview of a discussion. Second, it helps reduce conversational redundancy and improve coherence via a fast automatic search mechanism that highlights related messages during message composition. The Conversation Thumbnail Viewer is currently implemented as a Java applet that can be applied to a variety of discussion data sources.

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INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
computer mediated communication, social Computing and social navigation, virtual community and community computing, visualization, world wide web and hypermedia