[Sigia-l] Findability

[Steven L. MacCall, Ph.D.]

>
> I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you saying Google is not precise
> enough, per any given user?
>
> Would you say Google satisfies most of the people most of the time?
>

Should I restrict my answer only to the consideration of documents that the
Google retrieval sets points to? or should I also consider (ala Teoma "link
collections") the documents that any of the retrieval set documents point
to? or the documents pointed to by the documents that the retrieved document
points to?? Should Google benefit (or for that matter, be penalized) if a
2nd, 3rd or 4th order (etc) document retrieval proved to be the relevant
one? Is time the only factor here or should we tell people to keep clicking
until they find something relevant to their needs? When should people give
up and stop clicking?

Further, it depends on situation and the definition of "satisfies" .. for
example, in medicine (my area is medical IR) it would depend on whether the
retrieved information satisfying the immediate clinical information need
also ended up killing the patient!


slm
--
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Santayana