Rohit had some doubts and to resolve them he posted a question in an internet forum whose he was an active member. And after that he got busy.
He came back after few hours and what he saw was disappointing for him. Nobody had answered his query yet.
I can bet this might have happened with you too when you posted a question in an online web forum and nobody engaged it for quite a while.
This is a common phenomenon that we see frequently in many of the web forums.
Oftentimes, it happens that a forum member posts his query and then waits for someone to resolve it. If a forum member who can resolve his query is not present, then he has to wait.
Would you like to return to a forum where you don’t find answers of your problems? In fact nobody wants to.
Moreover, the waiting can ruin the impression of a forum and chances are that a visitor like Rohit may never return to the website again. Also, to run a successful forum one needs lots of members and losing members doesn’t fit in the strategy.
Therefore, to make sure to provide swift replies to every query is an important task for a forum moderator.
However, its being easier said than done. It’s quite difficult task to answer every single query if the forum has a large audience. Isn’t it?
Recently I stumbled upon a patent application filed by Google whose title is – Automated Answers to Online Questions. You can see that the title of the patent explains the solution of the problem itself.
According to the patent application, Google has developed an algorithm that will give you an instant answer whenever you will post your queries on an online forum powered by the Google.
You will not be waiting for others to answer your question. Isn’t it amazing? You will be writing your question and as soon as you will hit post the answer will be there. Bam!!
This will help forum moderators and will enhance experience of forum users. Here in What A Future we got very curious readers who always want to know the hows and whys of the technology behind every invention.
And to feed their inquisitive soul here is a crisp description of the patented technology.
Working of Google’s Automated Answer for Forum Queries
According to the patent application there are going to be two databases. The first database will contain question-answer pairs and the second database will contain keyword-answer pairs.
Most of the times the questions that we ask, have already been asked by someone else and have also been answered by someone else in past.
For example, if you want to ask ‘How to teach subtraction to my kid?’ OR ‘Best places to go in San Francisco? We are sure that you are not the first one to ask these sorts of questions.
Therefore, whenever you will ask a question in a forum powered by Google, the algorithm will search for the answer from the database of question-answer pair first.
If it doesn’t find the answer in first database then it will find the answer in keyword-answer pair and will revert with an appropriate answer.
The patent says that unlike Quora Google won’t be giving long and detailed answers and the length of the answers and questions will be of a predetermined limit.
However, if Google can enhance its algorithm and makes it to answer in detail then it can give an amazing power to Google.
I may not be wrong to speculate that tweaking algorithm to give detailed answers could give Google an edge over online forums like Quora and Yahoo Answers.
What do you think?