3. The method of claim 1 , comprising receiving machine-readable endorsement information that characterizes members' ratings of various articles, wherein the members are members in the member network by: receiving a collection of search queries submitted by one or more members in the member network; receiving a collection of article identifiers identifying articles that are responsive to the search queries; receiving a collection of numeric ratings of at least one of the articles identified by the article identifiers; and updating, for each of the one or more members in the member network, corresponding profile information using numeric ratings from the collection of numeric ratings and the article identifiers for the articles rated by the corresponding member.
3. The method of claim 1 , comprising receiving machine-readable endorsement information that characterizes members' ratings of various articles, wherein the members are members in the member network by: receiving a collection of search queries submitted by one or more members in the member network; receiving a collection of article identifiers identifying articles that are responsive to the search queries; receiving a collection of numeric ratings of at least one of the articles identified by the article identifiers; and updating, for each of the one or more members in the member network, corresponding profile information using numeric ratings from the collection of numeric ratings and the article identifiers for the articles rated by the corresponding member. 6. The method of claim 3 , wherein receiving a collection of the numeric ratings of the at least one of the articles each comprises receiving one or more of: a binary positive or negative rating, a scaled grade, or a comment characterizing a member's rating of an article.