Chapter 10 - Thread networks: Mapping message boards and email lists

Chapter 9 - Thread Networks: Mapping Message Boards and Email Lists

Issue tracking systems such as Bugzilla are tools to facilitate collaboration between software maintenance professionals. Popular issue tracking systems consists of discussion forums to facilitate bug reporting and comment posting. We observe that several comments posted in issue tracking system contains link to external websites such as YouTube (video sharing website), Twitter (micro-blogging website), Stack overflow (a community-based question and answering website for programmers), Wikipedia and focused discussions forums. Stack overflow is a popular community-based question and answering website for programmers and is widely used by software engineers as it contains answers to millions of questions (an extensive knowledge resource) posted by programmers on diverse topics. We conduct a series of experiments on open-source Google Chromium and Android issue tracker data (publicly available real-world dataset) to understand the role and impact of Stack overflow in issue resolution. Our experimental results show evidences of several references to Stack overflow in threaded discussions and demonstrate correlation between a lower mean time to repair (in one dataset) with presence of Stack overflow links. We also observe that the average number of comments posted in response to bug reports are less when Stack overflow links are presented in contrast to bug reports not containing Stack overflow references. We conduct experiments based on textual similarly analysis (content-based linguistic features) and contextual data analysis (exploited metadata such as tags associated to a Stack overflow question) to recommend Stack overflow questions for an incoming bug report. We perform empirical analysis to measure the effectiveness of the proposed method on a dataset containing ground-truth and present our insights. We present the result of a survey (of Google Chromium Developers) that we conducted to understand practitioner's perspective and experience.

The Stack Overflow web site is an online community where programmers can ask and answer one another's questions, earning points and badges. The site offers guidance in the form of a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), beginning with “What kind of questions can I ask here?” The answer explains that “the best Stack Overflow questions have a bit of source code in them”. This paper explores the role of source code and non-source code text on Stack Overflow in both questions and answers. The primary contribution of this paper is to provide a more detailed understanding of whether the presence of source code (and how much) actually will produce the “best” Stack Overflow questions or answers. A second contribution of this paper is to determine how the non-code portions of the text might also contribute the “best” Stack Overflow postings.

In 1999 Central Queensland University's School of Computing and Information Systems offered a computer programming course in a totally online delivery mode. Academic support from the lecturer was provided, in total, by means of email lists to which all class members were expected to subscribe. It was found that a single class email list was insufficient to cater for the needs of advanced students. This two-year study of the course email list usage demonstrates the benefit of providing advanced online students with an advanced topic discussion forum so that the general class email forum can be freed up for core business. It also demonstrates that totally on line students tend to use the class email list as a primary workroom for assignment preparation.

In recent years, virtual communities have become the topic of countless books, journal articles and television shows, but what are they, and where did they come from? According to Preece, Maloney-Krichmar, and Abras (2003), the roots of virtual communities date back to as early as 1971 when e-mail first made its appearance on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), which was created by the United State’s Department of Defense. This network would lead to the development of dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs) which would allow people to use their modems to connect to remote computers and participate in the exchange of e-mail and the first discussion boards. From these beginnings a host of multi user domains (MUDs) and multi-user object oriented domains (MOOs) would spring up all over the wired world. These multi-user environments would allow people to explore an imaginary space and would allow them to interact both with the electronic environment and other users. Additionally, listservs (or mailing lists) sprang up in 1986, and now, almost two decades later, they are still in use as the major method of communication among groups of people sharing common personal or professional interests (L-Soft, 2003). Since then the Internet has exploded due to the development of Web browsers as well as the development of communications technologies such as broadband, digital subscriber line (DSL), and satellite communications. Groups of people from as few as two and reaching to many thousands now communicate via email, chat, and online communities such as the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL) and such services as MSN, Friendster, America Online (AoL), Geocities, and Yahoo! Groups. Other examples of online communities are collaborative encyclopedias like Wikipedia. Web logs (Blogs) like Slashdot.com and LiveJournal allow users to create their own content and also to comment on the content of others. They also allow the users to create identities and to make virtual “friends” with other users. The definition of virtual community itself becomes as convoluted as the multitude of technologies that drives it. Are e-mail lists, message boards, and chat rooms online communities or are they virtual communities? Virtual communities might be persistent worlds as those found in popular online games (Everquest, 2004, Ultima Online, 2004) or virtual worlds (such as MUDs and MOOs) where the user is able to explore a simulated world or to take on a digital “physicality” in the form of an avatar. It becomes clear from the literature that the terms are still used interchangeably.

Community Question‐Answering (CQA) sites have become popular venues where people can ask questions, seek information, or share knowledge with a user community. Although responses on CQA sites are obviously slower than information retrieved by a search engine, one of the most frustrating aspects of CQAs occurs when an asker's posted question does not receive a reasonable answer or remains unanswered. CQA sites could improve users' experience by identifying potential answerers and routing appropriate questions to them. In this paper, we predict the potential answerers based on question content and user profiles. Our approach builds user profiles based on past activity. When a new question is posted, the proposed method computes scores between the question and all user profiles to find the potential answerers. We conduct extensive experimental evaluations on two popular CQA sites ‐ Yahoo! Answers and Stack Overflow ‐ to show the effectiveness of our algorithm. The results show that our technique is able to predict a small group of 1000 users from which at least one user will answer the question with a probability higher than 50% in both CQA sites. Further analysis indicates that topic interest and activity level can improve the correctness of our approach.

This chapter describes important issues regarding research students' participation in a virtual community. Within a virtual community, university staff can communicate with research students without geographical/space constraints, and research students can exchange views, materials, and experience with their peers and/or academics in a flexible learning environment. Students' participation in virtual communities is mainly based on socio-emotional and informational motivations. Initially, this chapter describes the conditions of research in a traditional environment and the role of students and academics in it, along with the role of pedagogical and psychological aspects in virtual communities. Examples from a university virtual community developed in a Virtual Learning Environment and a Facebook™ closed group are presented. Apart from discussion forums, blended learning activities also increase students' engagement in virtual communities. Technical issues and difficulties based on different learning environments and university members' experience and familiarity with technology are highlighted and discussed.

The development of the World Wide Web has created new opportunities for interpersonal interaction. The Internet allows one-to-one (e-mail), one-to-many (Websites, e-mail lists) or many-to-many (online discussion forums) interaction, which represent a unique feature in comparison with traditional communication channels (Armstrong & Hagel, 1996). On the other hand, the Internet has specific characteristics, such as interactivity, transparency, and memory. These characteristics permit the development of online or virtual communities?groups of people with similar interests who communicate on the Web in a regular manner (Armstrong & Hagel, 1996; Goldsborough, 1999a, 1999b; Gordon, 2000). This article attempts to investigate, analyze and present the main patterns of the codes/rules of ethics used in the public discussion forums, otherwise known as Newsgroups, and their influence on the profile and functioning of the community.

We identified content-specific patterns of network diffusion underlying smoking cessation in the context of online platforms, with the aim of generating targeted intervention strategies. QuitNet is an online social network for smoking cessation. We analyzed 16 492 de-identified peer-to-peer messages from 1423 members, posted between March 1 and April 30, 2007. Our mixed-methods approach comprised qualitative coding, automated text analysis, and affiliation network analysis to identify, visualize, and analyze content-specific communication patterns underlying smoking behavior. Themes we identified in QuitNet messages included relapse, QuitNet-specific traditions, and cravings. QuitNet members who were exposed to other abstinent members by exchanging content related to interpersonal themes (e.g., social support, traditions, progress) tended to abstain. Themes found in other types of content did not show significant correlation with abstinence. Modeling health-related affiliation networks through content-driven methods can enable the identification of specific content related to higher abstinence rates, which facilitates targeted health promotion.

We argue that the actions for which actors receive recognition vary as they move up the hierarchy. When actors first enter a community, the community rewards them for their easier-to-evaluate contributions to the community. Eventually, however, as these actors rise in status, further increases in stature come increasingly from engaging in actions that are more difficult to evaluate or even impossible to judge. These dynamics produce a positive feedback loop, in which those who have already been accorded some stature garner even greater status through quality-ambiguous actions. We present evidence from Stack Overflow, an online community, and from two online experiments consistent with these expected patterns.Funding: All authors would like to acknowledge funding from the Austrian Science Fund [Grant P 25768-G16].Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.1559 .

Community question answering (CQA) services accumulate large amount of knowledge through the voluntary services of the community across the globe. In fact, CQA services gained much popularity recently compared to other Internet services in obtaining and exchanging information. Stack Overflow is an example of such a service that targets programmers and software developers. In general, most questions in Stack Overflow are usually ended up with an answer accepted by the askers. However, it is found that the number of unanswered or ignored questions has increased significantly in the past few years. Understanding the factors that contribute to questions being answered as well as questions remain ignored can help information seekers to improve the quality of their questions and increase their chances of getting answers from the community in Stack Overflow. In this study, we attempt to identify by data mining techniques the relevant features that will help predict the quality of questions, and validate the reliability of the features using some of the state-of-the-art classification algorithms. The features to be obtained have to be significant in the sense that they can help Stack Overflow to improve their existing CQA service in terms of user satisfaction in obtaining quality answers from their questions.

Unhealthy behaviors, such as tobacco use, increase individual health risk while also creating a global economic burden on the healthcare system. Social ties have been seen as an important, yet complex factor, to sustain abstinence from these modifiable risk behaviors. However, the underlying social mechanisms are still opaque and poorly understood. Digital health communities provide opportunities to understand social dependencies of behavior change because peer interactions in these platforms are digitized. In this paper, we present a novel approach that integrates theories of behavior change and Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) to understand structural dependencies between users of an online community and the behavior change techniques that are manifested in their communication using an affiliation network. Results indicate population specific traits in terms of individuals’ engagement in peer communication embed behavior change techniques in online social settings. Implications for personalized health promotion technologies are discussed.

BackgroundOnline communities provide an environment in which people with similar health concerns can interact and access content that can support the self-management of long-term conditions (LTCs). Recently, the importance of online social networks as sources of health information and social support has been brought into focus with the emergence and widespread societal impacts of COVID-19. Although online communities exist for older adults, little is known about the specific health and self-care topics that older people discuss in such environments and how these relate to users’ support needs and outcomes. A better understanding of users’ needs and peer-to-peer communication in these communities is necessary to inform the design of information and communication technology (ICT) interventions that are relevant to older people and their peer supporters.ObjectiveThis study aims to use a two-phase, web-based ethnographic (netnography) and co-design approach to explore specific health care and self-care topics that older adults discuss in a UK-based online community and how peer supporters respond to these queries with informational and/or social support and engage with stakeholders to define the needs and requirements for new ICT-based interventions capable of reducing social isolation and facilitating LTC self-management support.MethodsThe first phase of the research will involve a qualitative netnographic analysis of posts in discussion forums in a publicly accessible online community. The second phase will involve co-design workshops with health care consumers (ie, older adults and carers) and service providers to determine the needs and requirements for new ICT-based interventions and digital innovations. Constructivist grounded theory will be used in the first phase; in the second phase, the co-design workshops will be audiorecorded and analyzed thematically.ResultsThis research project is in progress. Permission was obtained from the website administrator to use materials from the social media forum; data collection for the first phase began in April 2020. The second phase of the study is expected to begin in late 2020. This study is due to be completed by the end of 2021.ConclusionsThis study is the first, to the best of our knowledge, to combine qualitative netnography with an iterative co-design framework to specify the needs and requirements for new ICT-based interventions. The findings from this study will inform the next phase of the multiphase knowledge translation project and will provide insights into the potential of online peer health communities to reduce social isolation and facilitate chronic illness self-management support and self-care.International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)PRR1-10.2196/19834

Video Games and the Future of Learning

Online communities are increasingly central to the strategies of religious non-profits, serving as digital spaces for spiritual support, participation, and organizational resilience. This article examines the principles of online community building, including defining purpose, choosing platforms, setting inclusive guidelines, and fostering participation. Drawing on global case studies from Nigeria, India, Brazil, the Philippines, and Kenya, it illustrates how faith-based organizations adapt digital tools such as Facebook Groups, WhatsApp, and Telegram to sustain belonging and engagement. The analysis emphasizes the importance of proactive moderation, cultural sensitivity, and recognition of member contributions in maintaining healthy communities. By integrating academic insights with practitioner examples, the article shows how online communities support both sustainability and accountability in religious non-profits.