The Utility of Discourse Structure in Forum Thread Retrieval

Web user forums are a valuable means for users to resolve specific information needs, both interactively for the participants and statically for users who search/browse over historical thread data. However, the complex structure of forum threads can make it difficult for users to extract relevant information. Information retrieval (IR) over forum threads is one important way to obtain useful information on questions asked by others. In this paper, we investigate the task of IR over web user forums by utilising the discourse structure of forum threads. Experimental results show that exploiting the characteristics of discourse structure of forum threads can benefit IR, when compared to previouslypublished results.