On Dec 21, 2007 9:54 AM, Bernhard Eversberg <ev_at_biblio.tu-bs.de> wrote:
>
> So you are suggesting the POV of Humpty-Dumpty:
> "When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it
> means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."
>
> ... when using the word "relevance" with regard to search result
> ranking.
>
While this is a funny image, no.
There is a "user expectation" of search and how it presents results
and that our systems will try to choose an algorithm to present the
most appropriate results based on the terms and context fed to it.
I think, given the paucity of information available to it, determining
relevance based on how the terms match based on predefined and ranked
fields is a contract that the user can generally accept. The more
semantics available, the more accurate the results. AquaBrowser is at
least making the attempt at enhancing the semantics by incorporating
more data.
Since that's what we're really talking about -- it's relevance ranking
of the metadata about items, not relevance ranking the items
themselves and I think we need to realize that reality in how we model
and generate our metadata accordingly.
-Ross.
Received on Fri Dec 21 2007 - 10:08:26 EST