Author here, all the code is available on Github if you want to play around with the visualization or have ideas to improve it: <a href="https://github.com/whichlight/reddit-network-vis" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/whichlight/reddit-network-vis</a>.<p>Also, you can see a sort of meta discussion here on the /r/dataisbeautiful subreddit: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1jqz3f/reddit_conversations_visualized/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1jqz3f/redd...</a> It's kind of hilarious because people leave threads of comments to create new branches.<p>What I find most interesting is that you can quickly get an idea of how much conversation is in one of these discussions by the number of nodes that are colored (signifying users who have posted more than once).
The Reddit visualization I'd most like to see is one of votes/comments over time on highly partisan (not necessarily political) topics. When I was using Reddit I perceived distinct "tides" in those cases.<p>Comments would swing up and down by double and triple digits as early burying/back-patting is overcome by more moderate opinions as the post rises in exposure. Likewise, having a post linked on other large forums would result in new waves of like-minded moderation.
Good stuff! I wonder if you could somehow classify the conversation trees using depth or branching factor or whatever to predict and/or discover hot topics. Like you said, AMAs tend to have a pretty obvious structure but maybe that could be extended to discover "controversial" threads -- or even people!
It would be pretty interesting to see this applied to HN. I realize it would be more difficult because there isn't an API and pg is pretty harsh with the rate limiting.
I found it extremely beautiful, especially with the context you provided. Some large framed prints with the text in little gallery placards would make an interesting exhibit.