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THE GROUPLENS PROJECT DESIGNED, IMPLEMENTED, AND EVALUATED a collaborative filtering system for Usenet news—a high-volume, high-turnover discussion list service on the Internet. Usenet newsgroups—the individual discussion lists—may carry hundreds of messages each day. While in theory the newsgroup organization allows readers to select the content that most interests them, in practice most newsgroups carry a wide enough spread of messages to make most individuals consider Usenet news to be a high noise information resource. Furthermore, each user values a different set of messages. Both taste and prior knowledge are major factors in evaluating news articles. For example, readers of the rec. humor newsgroup, a group designed for jokes and other humorous postings, value articles based on whether they perceive them to be funny. Readers of technical groups, such as comp. lang …