Source: Wikum: Bridging Discussion Forums and Wikis Using Recursive Summarization (2017) http://people.csail.mit.edu/axz/papers/wikum.pdf
From Reddit to Quora, discussion forums can be equal parts informative and daunting. We’ve all fallen down rabbit holes of lengthy threads that are impossible to sift through. Comments can be redundant, off-topic or even inaccurate, but all that content is ultimately still there for us to try and untangle.
Sick of the clutter, a team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has developed “Wikum,” a system that helps users construct concise, expandable summaries that make it easier to navigate unruly discussions.
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The team tested Wikum against a Google document with tracked changes that aimed to mimic the collaborative editing structure of a wiki. They found that Wikum users completed reading much faster and recalled discussion points more accurately, and that editors made edits 40 percent faster.
Karger wrote the new paper with PhD students Lea Verou and Amy Zhang, who was lead author. The team presented the work last week at ACM’s Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing in Portland, Oregon.
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Readers can import discussions from places such as Disqus, a commenting platform used for publishers like The Atlantic. Then, once users create a summary, readers can examine the text and decide if they want to expand the topic to read more. The system uses color-coded “summary trees” that show topics at different levels of depth and lets readers jump between original comments and summaries.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
