What is a comment cloud?

Have you ever visited a page on the internet and been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of comments on the page? Especially in cases where the threads of discussion meander off in different directions.

How can you quickly find the parts of the debate that focus on what you want to talk about?

We've created a tool that could help: Introducing the comment cloud.

What this cloud does is scan through all the comments on a page, looking for most popular words - we're training it to set aside the gluey bits of speech, like 'the' and 'but' and 'or', and hopefully it'll get better at this as time goes on.

Then, it presents the most popular terms in a cloud formation (you can request a more basic list) allowing you to see what ideas and concepts are driving the debate. Click on a word in the cloud, and you'll find that term is highlighted down in the comments area.

We hope you'll find it a useful addition to the tools available on OpenLearn - if you've any observations on the cloud, why not... well, add a comment at the bottom of this page?