9. The method of claim 7 , wherein determining the query independent score for the candidate answer passage comprises determining a score for the candidate answer passage based on a reputation of the resource from which the candidate answer passage was created.
7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: determining, for each candidate answer passage, a query independent score for the candidate answer passage, wherein the query independent score is independent of the query and query dependent score; and wherein generating an answer score that is a measure of answer quality for the answer response for the candidate answer passage based on the query dependent score comprises generating the answer score based on the query dependent score and the query independent score.