1. A method for classifying comments on an idea submission, comprising: receiving a collection of textual comments from users, each of the comments in the collection comprising text in a natural language and annotating an idea submission, previously-submitted by another user, which includes a description of an idea; for each of a plurality of comment classes, providing at least one pattern for assigning a textual comment to the class based on the occurrence of a specified syntactic relation in the comment, the comment classes including: a first class for reaction to the content of the idea, a second class for expression of a commenter's judgment 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 the third 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; natural language processing each of the comments to identify dependencies in at least a part of the comment; based on the identified dependencies, automatically classifying the comments according to the plurality of comment classes, the classifying including applying the at least one pattern for identifying comments that are assigned to the third comment class; wherein when the comment is assigned to the first class, the method further includes proposing appending at least a part of the comment to the description of the associated idea submission; wherein when the comment is assigned to the second class, the method further includes providing for rating the idea submission; and outputting information based on the assigned comment classes, wherein the natural language processing, classifying, and outputting are performed with a computer processor.
1. A method for classifying comments on an idea submission, comprising: receiving a collection of textual comments from users, each of the comments in the collection comprising text in a natural language and annotating an idea submission, previously-submitted by another user, which includes a description of an idea; for each of a plurality of comment classes, providing at least one pattern for assigning a textual comment to the class based on the occurrence of a specified syntactic relation in the comment, the comment classes including: a first class for reaction to the content of the idea, a second class for expression of a commenter's judgment 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 the third 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; natural language processing each of the comments to identify dependencies in at least a part of the comment; based on the identified dependencies, automatically classifying the comments according to the plurality of comment classes, the classifying including applying the at least one pattern for identifying comments that are assigned to the third comment class; wherein when the comment is assigned to the first class, the method further includes proposing appending at least a part of the comment to the description of the associated idea submission; wherein when the comment is assigned to the second class, the method further includes providing for rating the idea submission; and outputting information based on the assigned comment classes, wherein the natural language processing, classifying, and outputting are performed with a computer processor. 6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the classifying includes applying patterns for identifying comments that are assigned to the second comment class, the patterns comprising at least two of: a pattern for detecting agreement which detects when a verb in the comment is in a set of terms designated as relating to an AGREE concept is in a syntactic relationship with a first person pronoun; a pattern for detecting agreement which detects when an adverb in the comment is in the set of terms designated as relating to the AGREE concept is in a syntactic relationship is present at a beginning of a comment sentence; a pattern for detecting positive attitude which detects when a term in the comment which is in a set of terms designated as relating to an GOOD concept precedes a term which is in a set of terms designated as relating to an IDEA concept; a pattern for detecting negative attitude which detects when a term in the comment which is in a set of terms designated as relating to an BAD concept precedes a term which is in a set of terms designated as relating to an IDEA concept; a pattern for detecting negative attitude which detects when negation is used in a comment sentence; a pattern for detecting positive attitude which detects when the comment includes an expression from a lexicon of specific expressions that are recognized as connoting a positive attitude; a pattern for detecting pros and cons in which a first clause beginning with “yes” precedes a second clause beginning with “but”, a first clause precedes second clause beginning with “however”, or a clause begins with “while”; and a pattern for detecting pros and cons in which a pattern for detecting positive attitude is met by a clause of a comment which precedes “but”.