Cooperation with HAW Hamburg

In the winter term 2007/08 19 students from the Design, Media and Information Department of Hamburg University of Applied Sciences embarked on researching the role of social search within the course “Integration of Q&A Services Into Web Search” led by Prof. Dr. Dirk Lewandowski. The university project was carried out in close relationship with Lycos Research as the students investigated, among other data sets, questions and answers from the popular Q&A service LycosIQ.

The topic was investigated within three areas:

• Social search types – social bookmarking, tagging, etc.
• Qualitative evaluation of questions – which questions are asked by the users, which are answered or left unanswered and from which area the come new questions?
• Quality comparison – how does the relatively small amount of results in social search influence the quality of the search results in general?

The students carried out a comparison between search results from different sets that made possible a comparison between entire search results pages rather than only between algorithmic results. The results sets that were used were:

• answers from Lycos IQ
• algorithmic results from Lycos
• ads from Lycos
• algorithmic Ergebnisse aus Google
• ads from Google
• one-box-results from T-Online
• one-box-results from Google
• bookmarks from Mr. Wong

The project results were delivered by seven groups working on different work packages:

• Systems comparison / Market analysis
• A qualitative user test and an online poll on the usage of Web 2.0-based search systems
• Comparison of the results relevance in algorithm-based search engines, social bookmarking sites and Q&A services
• Analysis and Evaluation of the questions on LycosIQ
• Quality of the answers in Q&A services
• Tagging optimization
• Cooperation and competence evaluation of communities

The students presented results of the work packages on 8 February 2008 to members of the Lycos staff and the Lycos Board of Directors in the Bertelsmann Corporate Centre in Gütersloh. Due to the highly interesting and generally relevant research results the students' deliverables will be published as a book.