The TREC Blog track will be continuing in 2010. In
2009,
the
Blog
track
has
been
markedly
revamped
, addressing
more
refined
Blog
search
scenarios
using
the new Blogs08 collection, a
large
sample
of
the
blogosphere covering the period of 14th January 2008 to 10th February 2009.
A summary of the TREC Blog track 2009 edition has been presented by Iadh Ounis at the main TREC conference (Slides). The Blog track 2009 overview paper will be available on the TREC website shortly, once it is updated and reviewed.
The details of the TREC 2010 Blog track are still being finalised by the organisers. However, following the discussions at the TREC 2009 Blog track workshop, here are some salient details (see also the TREC 2009 Wrap-up Slides):
1. Faceted blog search task will run again in 2010: The task addresses
the
quality aspect
of
the
retrieved blogs
. It is a feed search task.
- We will adopt a two-stage submission procedure: (1) a participating group submits "topically-relevant"blogs for each query; (2) a few standard baselines will be distributed to participants, so that they can re-rank them with respect to various facet inclinations (e.g. opinionated, in-depth, personal).
- Groups can participate in stage 2 without stage 1, and vice-versa. Stage 1 is akin to an adhoc blog search task.
- More topics for various facet inclinations.
2. Top news story identification task will run again in 2010: The task addresses the
news‐related
dimension
of
the
blogosphere. In particular, it investigates whether the blogosphere can be used to identify the most important news stories of the day.
- Real-time news search task rather than retrospective.
- Much larger and a more comprehensive headlines sample, provided by a major news organisation.
- A two-stage submission procedure: (1) Groups submit a ranking of top stories for some days per-category (e.g. sport, politics, business, etc.) (2) We will then select some top relevant stories, for which we will ask the participating groups to identify the related blog posts, in a manner that covers the various/diverse aspects of each story.
- Groups can participate in stage 2 without stage 1. In the latter case, its is an adhoc diversity blog post search task, where the headline is the query.
We welcome any feedback and comments on the tasks above to trecblog-organisers (at) dcs.gla.ac.uk
Finally, note that if you wish to participate in TREC 2010, you should answer the TREC 2010 call for participation. We will update the Blog track wiki as things become more refined - keep following the Blog track developments as they happen on our dedicated Wiki web site.
