Quiver's QKS Classifier:

a hybrid categorization tool

July, 2002

Among corporate information managers, there's a growing recognition that human input is needed in the categorization process, and that much of the effort should be localized among functional and subject matter experts. The QKS Classifier product from Quiver plays to this trend by offering a set of tools that allow editors to refine a computer-produced taxonomy. The conventional rationale goes like this:

1. Search engines don't work well enough.

2. Let's create a Yahoo-like directory to give users another way to find stuff.

3. Using humans to assign documents to directory topics is too expensive.

4. Let's get the best of both worlds by getting an auto-categorization program that allows human editing.

This rationale makes several questionable assumptions. We wanted to compare the results from a Quiver test with those of a manual process and a rules-based categorization tool. This article describes the results and summarizes comments from members who also have experience with the product. Includes screen shots.

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