An information processing system employs an integrated
collaborative/content-based information filter structure to find network
informons relevant to information desired by an individual user. The
filter structure includes a three-level content-based filter which
preprocesses informons in a first level to pass only relevant informons,
applies community filters in a second level to pass relevant informons to
matching communities of users, and applies in a bottom level user filters
within each community to pass relevant informons to matching users.
Collaborative filtering is integrated with content-based filtering through
agent mind melding by which content profile data used in the content-based
filtering is formed from a merger of an individual-user or member client
data profile and any similar data profiles of other users or other member
clients. A threshold level of similarity is required an other-user data
profile to be classified as similar for merger with the individual-user
data profile.