Discussions may either be indivual objects within folders or they are attached to objects such as documents or links. A discussion consists of 'Notes' -- basically short pieces of text "pinned to a bulletin board" for all members of a Workspace to read and react on. One specific type of reaction is to write another note that refers ("replies") to an earlier one, as

• answers to a question;
• counter-arguments to an argument;
• additional pieces of information to a piece of information.

In BSCW, a note may reply to several earlier notes. The author of a note that replies to other notes extends and refines a Web of notes -- inside a discussion or even across the boundaries of discussions. This Web of replies linking notes remains intact when a note is transferred to a different discussion, to your Clipboard or even to your Wastebasket.

A discussion forum may contain isolated notes that do not reply to another note and have not yet triggered a note replying to them. Alternatively, there may be several independent "threads" of notes replying to notes replying to "..." in a discussion.

In the style of a folder page, the discussion page shows an entry for each note in the discussion. The entries of notes that belong to a particular thread may be grouped together:

• Click 'by Thread' on the Sort entry of the View menu to select this view.

Notes may contribute different types of content to a discussion, possibly reflecting the author's attitude. BSCW lets you characterize your contribution by assigning an icon to be displayed to the left of the note name. Different icons to indicate different types of contributions may be available on different BSCW servers. GMD's public BSCW server offers the following icons:

neutral note

pro -- approval

con -- disapproval

angry -- strong disapproval

important -- significant contribution to the discussion

idea -- sudden inspiration