Here is more info on the project of collective awareness platform for sustainability funded by the EU:
http://catalyst-fp7.eu/ of which I met some of the founders last week.
It addresses many of the issues that we have all encountered in large open on-line discussions: asynchronicity, multiple streams, noise, reprocessing of discussions, etc... and that you are underlining Jack in your blog post (if it's the right one that displays now). It's a suite of tools that are being made inter-operable.
Here's the presentation projected during the event:
http://catalyst-fp7.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Catalyst-tools-and-methodologies-CAPS-2014-Presentation-Frank-Escoubes.pdf
They are looking for collaborations to test interoperability with existing communities of 100+, they can also provide some funding: http://catalyst-fp7.eu/open-call-collaboration/
Actually, the four tools referred to (assembl, litemap, debatehub & edgesense) are a bundle of interoperable (or meant to be inter-operable) tools already funded and under development. That's what they would like to test and possibly integrate with use cases in real community environments of 100+ and real discussions (and maybe between the lines people that can help further develop the suite of tools -maybe my own wishful thinking :)-.
As for edgesense. I can ask Alberto for further info... Some interesting bits are probably here: I found the other presentations that were made during the conference (I would be interested in your opinion @David, there's a lot of overlaps with Debategraph)
Lightweight Tools, Analytics and Visualisation for Civic Engagement, Anna de Liddo, Open University:
Metrics for large scale delibaration: