New Civilization News: Give me personalized collaborative ranking    
 Give me personalized collaborative ranking13 comments
picture 18 Feb 2003 @ 03:07, by Flemming Funch

This is what I want: resources of all kinds that are filtered and ranked according to people I trust and respect.

I assume it is a complicated problem, since I don't have it yet, because I'm for sure not the first person to think about it. But I believe it can be solved, if some capable person can work out the math.

The Google PageRanking mechanism is the most successful collaborative ranking mechanism there is, which is able to successfully operate on a huge dataset. For those of you who for some strange reason don't know, Google will rank webpages not only based on what words appear in them and how prominently they appear, but based on how many other websites carry link to that particular page, and how many websites carry links to those websites, and so forth, producing a surprisingly accurate and fair ranking mechanism.

I wouldn't know how to implement that myself. But the basic formulas are available, and Google does it with hundreds of millions of pages, so of course that can be figured out.

But what I want is to do a personalized version of that kind of thing, based on choices I've made about other people, other websites, or about anything else, like books or movies or brands of shampoo. I want not just to get the aggregate 'best' choices, chosen by all websites in the world. I want the best choices by people I know, like, respect or trust, or by the people that they again know, like, respect or trust. And I want a similar, complicated huge matrix calculation that adds all of that up, just for me. And for you.

I'm also talking about involving more dimensions than just the number of links. I want to add up the qualitative judgements of people I have a high opinion of, or that I'm likely to have a high opinion of. So, the further that gets from the choices I explicitly already made, the less value they'd have.

No, I'm not just talking about Amazon being pretty good at recommending books I might want to read. They do that well, and it is a practical and working example of collaborative filtering, but I doubt that their math is very fancy, as they really just recommend other popular choices in the categories I've looked in myself.

I want the algorithm that accurately and fairly adds up the collective advice implicitly given to me by my friends and friends of friends by their aggregated choices, weighted by how trusted their opinions are in relation to me. I mean, I suspect that it is just a formula and an algorithm for calculating a ranking value. Something that can be explained in abstract math, and then we can go and figure out what specific values are included and where they'd come from. If it is impractical to calculate at this point without quantum computers, I'd like to know that too. But I suspect it is perfectly feasible to do this well.


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13 comments

18 Feb 2003 @ 11:43 by sharie : Great Idea! How 'bout we start it here
My newslog's right-hand margin lists books I recommend. Would you list on your newslog the books you recommend and why, the films you recommend and why, websites you recommend and why.

Thanks,
Sharie  



18 Feb 2003 @ 12:34 by tdeane : Interesting...
Why not send an email to the friends who you wish to categorize in order of importance? Love ~ Tricia  


18 Feb 2003 @ 12:45 by ming : Ranking
I did have a couple of smart programmers respond very favorably to this thing, so maybe somebody is going to come up with the details.  


18 Feb 2003 @ 14:34 by tdeane : Makes sense doesn't it?
They, if they are as active as you, are most likely to have encountered the same need. Love ~ Tricia  


19 Feb 2003 @ 03:23 by jazzolog : Surely You Jest
I'm going to "rank" friends in order of importance? First, I'll have to rank what's important in order of importance. Then I can let the machine determine how much time I should spend with humans---and which ones. Won't it be great to send a robot out each day to find someone to trust?
What a rank idea!  



19 Feb 2003 @ 14:26 by ming : Importance
You were refering to what Tricia said, right? I don't think I said I wanted to rank my friends by order of importance. Although I could see some point in that. Not really ranking them as friends, which is a bit tasteless, but maybe as information sources or as candidates for particular activities. There are people you know very casually, and there are people you're planning on doing something big and important with. But primarily I'd like to notice who's opinions I can trust. Maybe for different areas. Like Joe Schmoe is great for recommending movies, and Harry Handy always seems to know how to do practical things. Either way, the problem comes in because I can't be personal friends with thousands of people, and I don't want to just accept the media's marketing BS on face value, so I'd have a preference for what is recommended by friends of friends of friends, compared with what the TV commercials think I should do. And as information sources, I'd have a preference for friends who actually have opinions of their own, rather than those who'll just tell me what they saw on TV.  


19 Feb 2003 @ 19:45 by vibrani : And then what?
What is the overall plan after you've ranked your friends? Can your friends rank you, too? And will you share one another's lists of ranking so you can all use each other just for your specific skill or whatever? In which way does friendship come into this? Sounds more like potential business associates than friends. How will that ranking go into effect for NCN, or is this just a personal venture of yours, Flemming? It seems you can just refine your worldtrans links to people and accomplish the same thing, since you already have your categories set up.  


20 Feb 2003 @ 00:01 by ming : Ranking friends
Again, I have no plans for ranking my friends. What I'm looking for is ways of better learning from the experiences of my friends. Ways of organizing information so that it ranks better if it comes from people I know and trust.  


20 Feb 2003 @ 00:35 by vibrani : aha
Thanks, Ming.  


21 Feb 2003 @ 06:28 by jazzolog : The Ultimate Rank File
Speaking of ranking people, here's Life Magazine's list of the 100 most important people of the last millennium---in order of IMPORTANCE. Sorry Ming, maybe next time... :-) http://www.life.com/Life/millennium/people/01.html  


21 Feb 2003 @ 13:33 by ming : Rank
Shesh, I feel slighted. Not even a mention. But at least I made the list of the most {link:http://www.go2net.com/useless/useless/wacko.html|useless wackos} on the net.  


21 Feb 2003 @ 15:08 by maxtobin : Hey cool Ming!!
Every one shows their true colours, words can be so misleading eh? I sense that there are those who consistently resonate with "miss-understanding" (god bless her) and will never get what you are onto. Go for it!!! I see where you are coming from and feel it is a fine direction. Check out this link www.snappermail.com in terms of messageing technologies for the mobile internet zone and PDA's (a local Auckland Company)  


22 Feb 2003 @ 17:00 by vibrani : lol
Look at it this way, Flemming, Spiritweb made the list, too. I didn't. Should I feel shunted? heehee  


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