dekstop: weblog

I just completed a simple visualization of IRC communication behavior, you can see the graphics at mardoen.textdriven.com/irc_arcs/ -- this is the analysis of about a month's worth of IRC communication on a single channel.

I especially like irc_arcs_incoming.png (top left) -- it clearly communicates a number of interesting attributes (the strongest ties, passive recipients vs. active senders, well-balanced vs. one-sided conversations, ...)

The visualization concept is roughly based on Martin Wattenberg's arc diagrams (refer to his research page for the paper). But the semantics of these visualizations differ -- e.g., the element order of IRC arcs is not based on their sequence order in the original data.

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