Abstract
As people need to make decisions or solve problems, they usually collect some opinions or feasible solutions to ensure that they can obtain the best/better solution. People usually think the best/better solution can be generated from one specific domain expert or a small elite group. However, most people (including the domain experts) would not have enough knowledge and skills to solve every problem they face with. On the basis of the collective intelligence (CI), people would have a higher probability to get the best/better solution to solve their problems, if the numerous of opinions from the public can be collected in a fair and objective way. Based on the concept of collective intelligence, this research develops a methodology and a platform for public opinion gathering and tendency determination. Before development of the methodology, this research analyzes the key components of opinions and uses the statistical methods to explore the characteristics of each component. On the basis of the key components and their characteristics, this research develops a two-stage methodology for gathering and analyzing the collective intelligence. In first stage of the proposed methodology, the free-form opinions can be converted to the formatted ones. After that, in the second stage, the proposed method extracts the viewpoint and tendency related to each formatted opinion and determines the trend of the pubic in order to support decision making. By utilizing the proposed methodology, this research develops a platform for collective intelligence analysis. Furthermore, a real-world case, Yahoo! Answers (YA), is also used to evaluate the feasibility and performance of the proposed methodology and platform. As a whole, by using the proposed methodology and platform, the free-form opinions from users can be converted into structured opinion components and the tendency of group opinions can be automatically derived to support decision making. As a result, people can effectively and efficiently make decisions on the basis of the collective intelligence.