Patent ID: 7890515

Claim:
An article distribution system comprising: a user terminal for receiving contributed articles that are viewed among users in a community; and an article distribution device provided with: an article transmitter for receiving article distribution requests from a user terminal, for transmitting relevant article registration data that contain at least the content of said articles to the relevant user terminal and for displaying, on the user terminal, said content of said articles; a response article registration unit for both receiving, from among the content of said articles that have been viewed, a response article that contains cited portions of one or more of said articles and registering said response article in an article database in a thread that contains a group of relevant articles; an article appraisal value registration unit for, based on content of said response article that has been registered by said response article registration unit, calculating article appraisal values that include: article volume, citation volume of said cited portions, and citation ratio of said citation volume with respect to said article volume, and for registering article appraisal data that include said article appraisal values for the content of said response article in said article database for said thread; and a thread appraisal value registration unit for calculating a thread appraisal value for said thread based on said article appraisal data that have been registered by said article appraisal value registration unit, and for registering thread appraisal data that includes said thread appraisal value in said article database for said thread; wherein said article transmitter transmits said article appraisal data and said thread appraisal data that have been registered by said article appraisal value registration unit and said thread appraisal value registration unit, respectively, to the user terminal, wherein said article appraisal value registration unit and said thread appraisal value registration unit calculate configuration ratios of said thread appraisal value with respect to each of said article appraisal values, and wherein the article volume and the citation volume are calculated based on a number of characters in said response article and said cited portions of one or more of said articles in said response article.