Modeling user-generated contents: an intelligent state machine for user-centric search support

Researchers tend to agree that an increasing quantity of data has caused the complexity and difficulty for information discovery, management, and reuse. An essential factor relates to the increasing channels (i.e., Internet, social media, etc.) for information sharing. Finding information, especially those meaningful or useful one, that meets ultimate goal (or task) of user becomes harder then it is used to be. In this research, issues concerning the use of user-generated contents for individual search support are investigated. In order to make efficient use of user-generated contents, an intelligent state machine, as a hybridization of graph model (Document Graph) and petri-net model (Document Sensitive Petri-Net), is proposed. It is utilized to clarify the vague usage scenario between user-generated contents, such as discussions, posts, etc., and to identify correlations and experiences within them. As a practical contribution, an interactive search algorithm that generates potential solutions for individual is implemented. The feasibility of this research is demonstrated by a series of experiments and empirical studies with around 350,000 user-generated contents (i.e., documents) collected from the Internet and 200 users.