Conversation thumbnails for large-scale discussions

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.