Title
The ContactFinder agent: answering bulletin board questions with referrals
Abstract
ContactFinder is an intelligent agent whose approach to assisting users is valuable and innovative in the following four ways. First, ContactFinder operates proactively in reading and responding to messages on electronic bulletin boards rather than acting in response to user queries. Second, ContactFinder assists users by referring them to other people who can help them, rather than attempting to find information that directly answers the user's specific question. Third, ContactFinder categorizes messages and extracts their topic areas using a set of heuristics that are very efficient and demonstrably highly effective. Fourth, ContactFinder posts its referrals back to the bulletin boards rather than simply communicating with specific users, to increase the information density and connectivity of the system. This paper discusses these aspects of the system and demonstrates their effectiveness in over six months of use on a large-scale internal bulletin board.
Year
Venue
Keywords
1996
National Conference on Artificial Intelligence
specific user,contactfinder agent,intelligent agent,bulletin board,large-scale internal bulletin board,bulletin board question,specific question,user query,electronic bulletin board,information density,topic area,contactfinder categorizes message
Field
DocType
ISBN
Information density,Intelligent agent,World Wide Web,Computer science,Heuristics,Artificial intelligence,Multimedia,Machine learning,Bulletin board
Conference
0-262-51091-X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
34
12.65
4
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Bruce Krulwich123850.70
Chad Burkey28230.73