This is a really fascinating question. Contrary to what the other posters have said so far, a rudimentary system for expert detection is not so far off. Your idea about using textual analysis to arrive at an answer is a good one. You might actually have a go at it using the AI::Categorizer modules.

The drawback to this approach is that you are going to want to have a large body (several hundred) of answers for each question, each judged by several experts to be either expert or not expert. Just as you suggest spam assassin does with spam, you could do with answers.

This kind of automation is something that is going on right now grading college composition students essays.

Yes, someone might be able to wheedle past a couple of the questions, but my guess is that it is going to eliminate the vast majority of those who try.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.