The presence of beneficial knowledge in web forum: Analysis by Kipling’s framework

Abstract

Words of doubt such as “What benefit can one get from web forums?” or “Web forums are meant just for small-talk” are examples of beliefs that were held by many individuals and researchers for a long time.Based on our observation of a web forum(http://asamboi.org), we found that at least quite a number of topics are dealing with deep knowledge contents.Our analysis of a so-called learning zone that contains 35 forum topics and 789 messages, utilizing Kipling’s 5W1H framework six “service-men”, found that the depth of details were ranked in descending order as ‘Siapa’ (Who), ‘Apa’ (What), ‘Bagaimana’(How), ‘Kenapa’ (Why), ‘Mana’ (Where) and ‘Bila’(When).We conclude that web forums are a good web-resource for digital age learning styles,especially for youth