# Modelling structure and predicting dynamics of discussion threads in online boards

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.10082 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.10082/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 30 Jan 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [The Anatomy of the Moltbook Social Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10131/) (2026)
- [Benchmarking Multi-Modal Graph-based Social Media Popularity Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.27539/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Internet boards are platforms for online discussions about a variety of topics. On these boards, individuals may start a new thread on a specific matter, or leave comments in an existing discussion. The resulting collective process leads to the formation of `discussion trees', where nodes represent a post and comments, and an edge represents a `reply-to' relation. The structure of discussion trees has been analysed in previous works, but only from a static perspective. In this paper, we focus on their structural and dynamical properties by modelling their formation as a self-exciting Hawkes process. We first study a Reddit dataset to show that the structure of the trees resemble those produced by a Galton-Watson process with a special root offspring distribution. The dynamical aspect of the model is then used to predict future commenting activity and the final size of a discussion tree. We compare the efficiency of our approach with previous works and show its superiority for the prediction of the dynamics of discussions.