[Search-l] Delta

[qiip at freesurf.ch]

Some time ago I designed and implemented a prototype system (Delta) 
which allows users to rate search engine results. Without going into too 
much detail I believe the approach of systematically gathering and 
reusing (user,query,document,rating)-tuples on a large scale could 
dramatically improve search quality:

1) Ratings can be used to generate recommendations for certain queries.
2) Ratings can be used to learn a relevance function which takes a 
(user,query,document)-tuple as input and returns a relevance value.
3) Ratings can be used to cluster users into groups, a prerequisite for 
group-specific (personalized) search.

If I find some time, I will write a "white paper"  containing more details.

Here's why I think this approach might be of interest for Wikia:

1) Such a system can serve as a complement to existing search engine (at 
least initially), rather than as a replacement. Hence gaining a critcal 
mass of users is less difficult.
2) The approach doesn't require the same amount of infrastructure as a 
full-scale search engine, since it suffices to store only ratings. 
Storing whole documents is not strictly necessary.

In the case of Delta, user interfacing is done through a browser 
extension (currently implemented for Mozilla Firefox). I never launched 
Delta, since it is not quite release-worthy and I don't have the time 
resp. financial resources to continue development. Maybe Delta could be 
continued as a stand-alone open-source project, or part of Wikia?

You can have a look at Delta under http://www.aizar.com/downloads.html
In case you want to test it you should not expect useful recommendations 
since Delta has only a couple (test) users.

Hoping this is an in some form valuable contribution I remain with best 
regards,

Joel