Categorizing users based on similarity of posed questions, answers and supporting evidence

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a computing device, causes the computing device to:

• obtain question information identifying extracted features of an input question and a first source of the input question;
• perform a clustering operation to cluster the input question with one or more other questions of a cluster based on a similarity of the extracted features of the input question to features of the one or more other questions;
• and
• perform an operation based on results of the clustering of the input question with the one or more other questions, wherein the operation comprises at least one of automatically initiating a collaboration between the first source of the input question and a second source of another question in the cluster via at least one computer implemented collaboration system, or automatically initiating a communication between the first source and the second source at least by automatically establishing a communication connection between the first source and the second source, wherein the input question is a question input to a Question and Answer (QA) system which processes the input question to generate an answer to the input question based on a corpus of information, and further generates one or more supporting evidence passages supporting the answer as being a correct answer for the input question, and wherein the computer readable program further causes the computing device to perform the clustering operation to cluster the input question with the one or more other questions of a cluster at least by performing the clustering based on features of the input question, features of an answer, and features of the one or more supporting evidence passages.

An apparatus comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
• obtain question information identifying extracted features of an input question and a first source of the input question;
• perform a clustering operation to cluster the input question with one or more other questions of a cluster based on a similarity of the extracted features of the input question to features of the one or more other questions;
• and
• perform an operation based on results of the clustering of the input question with the one or more other questions, wherein the operation comprises at least one of automatically initiating a collaboration between the first source of the input question and a second source of another question in the cluster via at least one computer implemented collaboration system, or automatically initiating a communication between the first source and the second source at least by automatically establishing a communication connection between the first source and the second source, wherein the input question is a question input to a Question and Answer (QA) system which processes the input question to generate an answer to the input question based on a corpus of information, and further generates one or more supporting evidence passages supporting the answer as being a correct answer for the input question, and wherein the instructions further cause the processor to perform the clustering operation to cluster the input question with the one or more other questions of a cluster at least by performing the clustering based on features of the input question, features of an answer, and features of the one or more supporting evidence passages.