Discourse diagrams: interface design for very large-scale conversations

On the Internet conversations between hundreds or thousands of people exchanging thousands of messages have become commonplace. The size of these very large-scale conversations (VLSCs) make them difficult for participants and interested observers to understand and critically reflect upon. To facilitate understanding of the social and semantic structure of VLSCs two tools from the social sciences-social networks and semantic networks have been used and extended for the purposes of interface design. As interface devices, social and semantic networks need to be flexible, layered diagrams that are useful as a means for exploring and cross-indexing the large volumes of messages that constitute the archives of VLSCs. This paper discusses the design criteria necessary for transforming social scientific representations into interface devices. The discussion is illustrated with the description of the Conversation Map system, an implemented system for browsing VLSCs.