‘Weaving’ is the process of periodically summing up an ongoing discussion and pointing up similarities and differences in the ideas brought forth so far.

TextWeaver is a tool that attempts to make this a more ‘automatic’ part of online discussions. It consists of a composition interface, an ‘active reading’ interface, and a filing interface.

The composition interface includes a view of the archive, allowing the user to refer to the discussion-so-far as they type their response. The active reading interface lets the user set up keywords on the fly. The filing interface is a way to file pieces of the discussion according to user preferences.

TextWeaver appears to require users to change the way they read and respond to discussion. Most people read for overall context and to formulate a response. Adding the role of categorizing and archiving at the same time will be a change that may obscure and slow the discussion itself. Thinking that one will go back later and archive gets away from looking at the process of technology adoption as one of finding ways people want and need to work and developing ways to help them.