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<P><FONT size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR>From: David Wiley [<A
href="mailto:david@wiley.ed.usu.edu">mailto:david@wiley.ed.usu.edu</A>]<BR>Sent:
Sunday, August 11, 2002 4:07 PM<BR>To: 'air-l@aoir.org'<BR>Cc:
david.wiley@usu.edu<BR>Subject: RE: [Air-l] Abstract: Measure of Discussion
Activity in Threaded Discussion Spaces<BR><BR>Thanks for your feedback! I'll try
to address these issues all at once.<BR>First, as for the semantics of the d
value, d is the average reply depth;<BR>in other words, d simply tells you what
level of reply the average message<BR>is at. So, for the tiny thread:<BR><BR>A
(Reply depth of 0)<BR>-B (Reply depth of 1)<BR>--C (Reply depth of 2)<BR><BR>The
unadjusted reply depth would be (0+1+2)/3 = 1. The paper presents
some<BR>adjustments to fine tune this value, which almost always lower it. So,
the<BR>difference between d=13 and d=2 is that the d=13 thread would have to
look<BR>like
this:<BR><BR>A<BR>-B<BR>--C<BR>---D<BR><snip><BR>-----------L<BR>------------M<BR>-------------N<BR>--------------O<BR>--------------O<BR>--------------O<BR>with
many more 14th level replies for the value to ever get over 13, while<BR>a d=2
thread looks much more normal, something
like:<BR><BR>A<BR>-B<BR>--C<BR>---D<BR>---D<BR>---D<BR>---D<BR><BR>d=13 tells
you that one group is discussing something to a much more<BR>significant depth
than the group whose d=2.<BR><BR>As for the value seeming to grow in size as the
number of messages grew,<BR>this should not happen as d is intended to be an
average, and should<BR>therefore be unaffected by the size of the archive. The
discussion<BR>in the paper is obviously not be clear enough (which is why I
asked AoIR<BR>for feedback!). I will try to fix this. Also, would you be willing
to send<BR>me the archive whose d=13 so that I could run it through our
software<BR>here? I would love to see it!<BR><BR><FONT color=#0000ff>Perhaps it
is domain specific, but in newsgroups dedicate to humanities you'll find very
deep threads. Two examples I digged: alt.culture.fyrom and alt.news.macedonia .
I checked your thumbnail in Hebrew public newsgroups (philosophy, to that
matter), therefore I can't send you that archive.<BR></FONT><BR> <BR>Have
only just skimmed this but it looks excellent! Our goal was to create<BR>a value
that provides a thumbnail of the level of discussion activity<BR>whose
calculation is easily automated, so that it could be integrated into<BR>Course
Management Systems and the like. It looks like this paper you've<BR>referenced
could help improve our calculation. Many thanks for this<BR>pointer and your
other feedback!<BR><BR><BR><FONT color=#0000ff>Avner</FONT></FONT><FONT
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