Patent ID: 7171429

Claim:
A method of tagging a datum in a hierarchical data set having a plurality of hierarchical levels and a plurality of hierarchical depths, the method comprising: (1) presenting a datum of an indented threaded discussion on a display; (2) determining a hierarchical level of the datum; (3) determining a hierarchical depth of the datum; (4) assigning a tag to the datum, comprising: (i) determining the immediate parent of the datum; (ii) selecting a tag of the immediate parent of the datum, wherein the tag is a number having multiple digits each representing one of the hierarchical depths of the hierarchical data set; (iii) selecting a digit of the selected tag that represents the hierarchical depth of the datum; (iv) assigning a value to the selected digit, the value representing the hierarchical level of the datum; (v) determining the number of children of the immediate parent of the datum that have already been tagged; (vi) incrementing the number of children to obtain an incremented number; and (vii) setting the value of the selected digit to equal the value of the incremented number; and (5) storing an entry in a table as processor-readable code embedded within one or more mass storage devices, said table entry including the assigned tag, the selected digit representing the hierarchical depth, the assigned value representing the hierarchical level, and information pertaining to the datum.