Expert Search

POST /search/experts

Search for experts by any text query. The query must not be longer than 1000 characters (this constraint will likely be relaxed in future versions of the API).

The response will include both a list of experts, as well as a list of the tags that were associated with the given query and used during the expert search. The list of experts is ordered with the highest ranking experts appearing first.

In contrast to the tag suggestions endpoint, this endpoint only returns tags that already exist in this network. If no relevant existing tags can be found, an empty list is returned for both tags and experts.

If you want to directly search for experts for a specific combination of tags, then use the /statistics/network/experts endpoint.

In order to prevent a possible identification of question authors (see question poser anonymity), users who are only linked with the given tags through question posing are excluded from the response.

In order to motivate why a particular user has been selected as an expert, the details includes some statistics on how the user is connected to associated tags, namely:

  • solution_count: The number of published solutions written by the user that are linked to at least one of the tags
  • avarage_rating: The average of all ratings on those solutions, or null if there are no ratings available.
  • recommendation_count: The number of times the user was recommended as an expert for a question linked to at least one of the tags. Recommendations for questions that were later deleted are also counted.
  • expert_tags: The tags associated with the query on which the user is confirmed to be an expert.

Note that the Starmind algorithm considers many more factors to decide which user is the top expert. An exact explanation of how experts are ranked is currently not available through the API.

Parameter Type Default Required Description
query string - Query to search by (max. length: 1000 characters).
limit int 10 Sets how many experts are returned at once.

Json payload

{
    "query": "Is Sherlock really dead?",
    "limit": 5
}

Response

{
    "tags": [
        "Sherlock Holmes",
        "Moriarty"
    ],
    "experts": [
      {
            "user": {
                "location": "London",
                "image": "http://cdn.starmind.com:8080/static/user/default.jpg",
                "firstname": "Sherlock",
                "email": "sherlock.holmes@example.com",
                "auth_type": "simple",
                "is_deleted": false,
                "is_hidden": false,
                "is_system": false,
                "country": "uk",
                "lastname": "Holmes",
                "id": 17310,
                "language": "en",
                "about": "Detective",
                "company": "Ward, Lock & Co",
                "department": "Investigations", 
                "position": "Master Detective", 
                "gender": "m",
                "first_seen": "2015-02-02T11:31:05.000Z",
                "last_seen": "2015-08-09T11:31:05.000Z",
                "customfields": { "occupation": "Detective" },
                "score_level": null,
                "score_points": null
            },
            "details": {
                "solution_count": 3,
                "average_rating": 0.8666664958000183,
                "recommendation_count": 2,
                "expert_tags": [
                    {
                        "label": "Sherlock Holmes",
                    },
                    {
                        "label": "Moriarty",
                    }
                ]
            }
        },
        {
            "user":  {
                "location": "London",
                "image": "http://cdn.starmind.com:8080/static/user/default.jpg",
                "firstname": "Siger",
                "email": "siger.holmes@example.com",
                "auth_type": "simple",
                "is_deleted": false,
                "is_hidden": false,
                "is_system": false,
                "country": "uk",
                "lastname": "Holmes",
                "id": 17309,
                "language": "en",
                "about": "Father of Sherlock. Inactive",
                "company": "Ward, Lock & Co",
                "department": null, 
                "position": null, 
                "gender": "m",
                "first_seen": "2015-02-02T11:31:05.000Z",
                "last_seen": "2015-08-09T11:31:05.000Z",
                "customfields": { "occupation": "Detective" },
                "score_level": null,
                "score_points": null
            },
            "details": {
                "solution_count": 1,
                "average_rating": null,
                "recommendation_count": 0,
                "expert_tags": [
                    {
                      "label": "Moriarty",
                    }
                ]
            }
        }
    ]
}