Max Gadney has written about a novel comment visualisation technique - White Spectrum - being used by the BBC as part its interesting White season of programmes on BBC2:

We commissioned this in order to allow people to explore this complex debate more freely than they might in the conventional text format. As one of the BBC's most popular television services BBC Two must make subjects like this accessible. But being BBC Two it must do it in a way that encourages discovery and serendipity.

It is quite neat - give it a try. I am often suspicious of flashy visualisation techniques that seem to add little value to the data, but in this case I think it actually helps get an overview of the debate and also delve down to explore and respond to individual comments. As Max points out, they used the Have You Say engine to host the debate because it is a tried an tested moderation.

To me this is a grown up attempt to locate a series of individual comments about a very sensitive issue within the framework of a wider debate. It is more constructive, if less entertaining, than my other preferred interface onto Have You Say, although in this particular case, I bet there is a fair degree of overlap ;-)