Here's an example: let's say you have a newsgroup with 22,000 messages posted there per month. You have a problem! What should you read? We have some suggestions. In an existing browser, you can see the messages sorted by date, sorted by size or sorted alphabetically, and this is not very useful. What we want to say is, "there are different vectors through this content space, different ways of slicing into the data, the conversation, that are more likely to bring valuable information."
For instance, what are people talking about? What we've done is highlight the 40 threads that got the most number of messages in this period -- day, week, month, year. And we'll say, "Here are 40 really big threads." How do you know those are good? We're not sure they were good, but these were the things that got people really excited and engaged in this newsgroup. That's one vector.
But what about the guy who gets his printer fixed in two messages?
And you can legitimately argue that. "What about small threads of high value? How can you help me find them?" The answer is that we are, by leveraging latent structural data that is itself a product of collective behaviour. You have lots of individuals working on their own. If there were only one person writing Web pages, Google wouldn't work. But Google Groups doesn't do what we do to Usenet. We're doing something useful to Usenet. We're not yet a search engine, we're a research project. And we will eventually be doing things related to the full text of the message.
Let's look at the individual who posts to a list. Does he show the pattern of participation over time that is an indicator of a valuable contributor? The question you should raise is, "what do you mean by value?" One man's flame warrior is another man's poet. It's not for us to tell you. But we do give you tools to sort patterns of difference.
Let me tell you how to find someone who gives really good technical support answers using our author tracker. It's a way to slice a vector into the content space that measures how dedicated are the people to this newsgroup. Basically, it asks, "Are you a regular?"
