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Designing an interactive open-domain question answering system

Published: 01 January 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Interactive question answering (QA), where a dialogue interface enables follow-up and clarification questions, is a recent although long-advocated field of research. We report on the design and implementation of YourQA, our open-domain, interactive QA system. YourQA relies on a Web search engine to obtain answers to both fact-based and complex questions, such as descriptions and definitions. We describe the dialogue moves and management model making YourQA interactive, and discuss the architecture, implementation and evaluation of its chat-based dialogue interface. Our Wizard-of-Oz study and final evaluation results show how the designed architecture can effectively achieve open-domain, interactive QA.

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cover image Natural Language Engineering
Natural Language Engineering  Volume 15, Issue 1
January 2009
170 pages

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Cambridge University Press

United States

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Published: 01 January 2009

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