I apologize if I used unfamiliar terminology in my post. I guess being around technology so much of the time has taken its toll.   Basically, visualizations turn data into pictures. People are familiar with charts and graphs, which are common enough but were very time-consuming to produce before the computer. But new forms of visualizations are being created too. Here are a couple examples.

This first example is a word cloud, which is, in a sense, a picture of a concordance. This one is based on word frequencies in the sacred harp. I find it interesting that "sinner" is not more prominent.

http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/sacred-harp-word-list

This next one is a chart but with time as an animated variable. I've often wondered with all the problems and disparities in the world if we are making any progress at all. This visualization shows that progress has occurred in life expectancy and that it is not limited to the wealthy countries, even though disparities exist throughout the decades presented.

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/200-years-that-changed-the-world/

I don't have access to a slow connection to test these, but I suspect they may not work well on dial-up.

Tools that create these visualizations do not need to be on discussion boards, but I think increasingly people on discussion boards will want to embed these graphical "arguments" (created elsewhere) into their posts. For Mudcat, the more pertinent examples probably would be to embed a music or video example in a note. This is routine at boards such as the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum.

I wanted to illustrate this point because I had not explained it well; however, my main point continues to center on the matter of whether MudCat wants to appeal to a younger, computer literate generation. There is a lot of information here that is worth preserving, I think.