15. The system of claim 14 , further comprising memory which stores, for each of a set of domain-dependent concepts, a respective set of terms, and for each of a set of domain-independent concepts, a respective set of terms, the comment classification component applying patterns for classifying the comments including patterns which each specify at least one of the domain-dependent and domain-independent concepts.
14. A system for classifying comments, comprising: a data repository which stores: previously-submitted idea submissions, each of the idea submissions including a description of an idea, and a collection of comments on the ideas, each of the comments in the collection comprising text in a natural language and being associated with one of the previously-submitted idea submissions; a linguistic processing component which natural language processes each of the comments in the collection of the comments to identify dependencies in at least a part of the comment; a comment classification component which classifies the comments into a plurality of predefined comment classes based on the identified dependencies and labels the comments according to the comment classes, the comment classes including: a first class for reaction to the content of the idea, a second class for expression of a commenter's iudgment of an idea's value, and a third class for reaction to an idea generation process in which the associated idea submission is made, the at least one pattern for identifying comments that are assigned to the third comment class comprising a pattern which identifies when a term in the comment which is in a set of terms designated as being associated with a domain-specific PROCESS concept is present in a comment sentence, the classifying including applying the at least one pattern for identifying comments that are assigned to the third comment class; a comment interpretation component which, when the comment is assigned to the first class for reaction to the content of the idea, proposes appending at least a part of the comment to the description of the associated idea submission, and when the comment is assigned to the second class for expression of a commenter's judgment of an idea's value, provides for rating the idea submission; an output component which outputs information based on the assigned comment classes; and a processor which implements the a linguistic processing component, comment classification component, and output component.