摘要 |
Computer-implemented methods and systems provide for user collaboration in evaluating complex products over a public network. Product capabilities are preferably represented as a hierarchical taxonomy of features. Users can assign ratings and comments to the features of a product. User-submitted ratings can be qualified (or moderated) by other users. Such moderation is accomplished on a per-rating basis by user selection of one label from a set of labels that represent different levels of perceived credibility of the user that submitted the rating. A moderation score for a rating/comment is derived from the user-selected moderation labels pertaining to the rating/comment. Registered users preferably can assign weights to features, the weights representing the importance of that feature to the particular user. The user-supplied ratings as well as the moderation scores and/or weights corresponding thereto are used to compute composite ratings for user-selected product features that are communicated to the users for evaluation of the user-selected product features. Preferably, a distributed moderation process is executed that automatically grants a select subset of the user community the opportunity to moderate the ratings of other users. |