Int. J. Electronic Business, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2003 69 Copyright © 2003 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. The architecture of commKnowledge: combining link structure and user actions to support an online community Michael Gordon* University of Michigan Business School, 701 Tappan Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1234, USA Fax: +1-734-936-0279 E-mail: mdgordon@umich.edu *Corresponding Author Weiguo Fan Virginia Tech University, Pamplin College of Business, 3007 Pamplin Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA Fax: +1-540-231-2511 E-mail: wfan@vt.edu Sheizaf Rafaeli University of Haifa, Graduate School of Business Administration, Room 7048 Rabin Building, Mt. Carmel, Haifa, 31905, Israel Fax: +972-4-8249194 E-mail: sheizaf@earthlink.net Harris Wu and N. Farag University of Michigan Business School, 701 Tappan Street, Room D0263, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1234, USA Fax: +1-734-647-8133 E-mail: harriswu@umich.edu E-mail: nfarag@umich.edu Abstract: The commKnowledge project is exploring how an electronic community interested in electronic business can effectively share information. We discuss the design decisions in developing an architecture that helps automatically vet contributed items and allows access by recency, topicality, and perceived usefulness. We discuss how use graphs combine the hypertextual structure of the web with user judgments and actions to provide new means of assessing the usefulness of contributed information. Keywords: Knowledge sharing; information retrieval; online community; web structure; social filtering. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Gordon, M., Fan, W., Rafaeli, S., Wu, H. and Farag, N. (2003) ‘The architecture of commKnowledge: combining link structure and user actions to support an online community’, Int. J. Electronic Business, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.69-82.