Corpus Management Based on Question Affinity

A method, in a Question and Answer (QA) system comprising a processor and a memory, for managing a corpus of content, the method comprising:

• processing, by the QA system, a question to generate an answer to the question and a supporting evidence passage, from the corpus of content, that supports the answer to the first question being a correct answer to the first question;
• calculating, by the QA system, a corpus value metric for the supporting evidence passage based on a determined number of times the supporting evidence passage is used to generate a high ranking answer to questions submitted to the QA system;
• performing, by the QA system, a first corpus management operation on the supporting evidence passage in response to determining that the corpus value metric meets or exceeds a first threshold, wherein the first corpus management operation increases a relative importance of the supporting evidence passage within the corpus;
• and
• performing, by the QA system, a second corpus management operation on the supporting evidence passage in response to determining that the corpus value metric meets or falls below a second threshold, wherein the second corpus management operation decreases a relative importance of the supporting evidence passage within the corpus.