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  1. Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!decwrl!access.usask.ca!jester.usask.ca!fogel
  2. From: fogel@jester.usask.ca (Earl Fogel)
  3. Newsgroups: alt.gopher
  4. Subject: Re: index for all of gopherspace
  5. Message-ID: <1992Jul29.154103.26402@access.usask.ca>
  6. Date: 29 Jul 92 15:41:03 GMT
  7. References: <1992Jul27.163746.974@nstn.ns.ca> <1992Jul27.180509.27470@mercury.unt.edu> <98ANB22K@cc.swarthmore.edu>
  8. Sender: news@access.usask.ca (USENET News System)
  9. Organization: University of Saskatchewan
  10. Lines: 22
  11. Nntp-Posting-Host: jester.usask.ca
  12.  
  13. The problem with the Wais directory-of-servers is that the database
  14. descriptions are woefully incomplete.  Searches for "Mac" and "Macintosh",
  15. for example, produce very different results.
  16.  
  17. And I'm not convinced we can rely on gopher server administrators to
  18. maintain up-to-date, keyword-rich site descriptions, as has been suggested.
  19.  
  20. Instead, I wonder if a site description database could be created
  21. automatically, by waisindexing the information at each site, and
  22. compiling a list of the top-scoring words.  The directory-of-servers
  23. would then maintain a database of the most frequently occuring 1%
  24. of the words in each database.
  25.  
  26. Presumably, "Mac" and "Macintosh" would make the most-frequent list
  27. for Mac-related databases, while "dessert" and "cake" would make the
  28. list for recipe databases.
  29.  
  30. Earl Fogel
  31. -------------------------------------------------------------------
  32. fogel@sask.usask.ca        Computing Services, Room 56 Physics
  33. Phone: (306) 966-4861        University of Saskatchewan
  34. Fax:   (306) 966-4938        Saskatoon, Sask. CANADA, S7N 0W0
  35.