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Threaded chat article and demo

While nothing major, managing threaded conversations in chat has bothered me for quite a while. Yesterday I had an idea on how to improve matters:
  • Works using existing chat infrastructure. Needs only augmented clients.
  • Plays well even if other party uses a non-thread aware chat tool.
  • Separates threads automatically based on interaction patterns.
I've written an article and have created an online demo about it. Discussion welcome.

Comments

Peter Arrenbrecht said…
My friend Marco posted a lengthy response. Shall ponder this in detail later on.
06 February, 2008 14:39
Daniel LaLiberte said…
I worked on a threaded chat idea years ago: http://www.hypernews.org/~liberte/threaded-chat.html

Your idea is much simpler and probably easier for users to learn and use.

One issue that became apparent when I was trying the demo is that it is not clear what I might be merging, if the other user has typed more than one extra input, or if the other user has resumed an earlier thread. The transcript is also not clear about what has been merged.
25 September, 2009 17:14
Peter Arrenbrecht said…
Daniel, I saw your interesting work when I did a bit of research. But, as you said, it seemed a bit too complex. Your points are well taken, though. I do not yet see how to address them without complicating the model too much. I'm also still thinking about how to do this on IRC with lots of background threads flowing by.

Alas, the project is on hold at the moment. I'm waiting to see what Wave brings to the table on this front.
09 October, 2009 09:21
Anonymous said…
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08 November, 2009 23:17
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