Predicting Thread Linking Structure by Lexical Chaining
Li Wang, Diana McCarthy, Timothy J. Baldwin · 2011
Web user forums are valuable means for users to resolve specific information needs, both interactively for participants and statically for users who search/browse over historical thread data. However, the complex structure of forum threads can make it difficult for users to extract relevant information. Thread linking structure has the potential to help tasks such as information retrieval (IR) and threading visualisation of forums, thereby improving information access. Unfortunately, thread linking structure is not always available in forums. This paper proposes an unsupervised approach to predict forum thread linking structure using lexical chaining, a technique which identifies lists of related word tokens within a given discourse. Three lexical chaining algorithms, including one that only uses statistical associations between words, are experimented with. Preliminary experiments lead to results which surpass an informed baseline.