QDEE: Question Difficulty and Expertise Estimation in Community Question Answering Sites

In this paper, we present a framework for Question Difficulty and Expertise Estimation (QDEE) in Community Question Answering sites (CQAs) such as Yahoo! Answers and Stack Overflow, which tackles a fundamental challenge in crowdsourcing: how to appropriately route and assign questions to users with the suitable expertise. This problem domain has been the subject of much research and includes both language-agnostic as well as language conscious solutions. We bring to bear a key language-agnostic insight: that users gain expertise and therefore tend to ask as well as answer more difficult questions over time. We use this insight within the popular competition (directed) graph model to estimate question difficulty and user expertise by identifying key hierarchical structure within said model. An important and novel contribution here is the application of "social agony" to this problem domain. Difficulty levels of newly posted questions (the cold-start problem) are estimated by using our QDEE framework and additional textual features. We also propose a model to route newly posted questions to appropriate users based on the difficulty level of the question and the expertise of the user. Extensive experiments on real world CQAs such as Yahoo! Answers and Stack Overflow data demonstrate the improved efficacy of our approach over contemporary state-of-the-art models. The QDEE framework also allows us to characterize user expertise in novel ways by identifying interesting patterns and roles played by different users in such CQAs.Comment: Accepted in the Proceedings of the 12th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2018). June 2018. Stanford, CA, US

Predicting Answering Behaviour in Online Question Answering Communities

The value of Question Answering (Q&A) communities is de- pendent on members of the community finding the questions they are most willing and able to answer. This can be diffi- cult in communities with a high volume of questions. Much previous has work attempted to address this problem by recommending questions similar to those already answered. However, this approach disregards the question selection behaviour of the answers and how it is affected by factors such as question recency and reputation. In this paper, we identify the parameters that correlate with such a behaviour by analysing the users’ answering patterns in a Q&A com- munity. We then generate a model to predict which question a user is most likely to answer next. We train Learning to Rank (LTR) models to predict question selections using various user, question and thread feature sets. We show that answering behaviour can be predicted with a high level of success, and highlight the particular features that influence users’ question selections

Social Search: retrieving information in Online Social Platforms -- A Survey

Social Search research deals with studying methodologies exploiting social information to better satisfy user information needs in Online Social Media while simplifying the search effort and consequently reducing the time spent and the computational resources utilized. Starting from previous studies, in this work, we analyze the current state of the art of the Social Search area, proposing a new taxonomy and highlighting current limitations and open research directions. We divide the Social Search area into three subcategories, where the social aspect plays a pivotal role: Social Question&Answering, Social Content Search, and Social Collaborative Search. For each subcategory, we present the key concepts and selected representative approaches in the literature in greater detail. We found that, up to now, a large body of studies model users' preferences and their relations by simply combining social features made available by social platforms. It paves the way for significant research to exploit more structured information about users' social profiles and behaviors (as they can be inferred from data available on social platforms) to optimize their information needs further

Expert recommendation via tensor factorization with regularizing hierarchical topical relationships

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018. Knowledge acquisition and exchange are generally crucial yet costly for both businesses and individuals, especially when the knowledge concerns various areas. Question Answering Communities offer an opportunity for sharing knowledge at a low cost, where communities users, many of whom are domain experts, can potentially provide high-quality solutions to a given problem. In this paper, we propose a framework for finding experts across multiple collaborative networks. We employ the recent techniques of tree-guided learning (via tensor decomposition), and matrix factorization to explore user expertise from past voted posts. Tensor decomposition enables to leverage the latent expertise of users, and the posts and related tags help identify the related areas. The final result is an expertise score for every user on every knowledge area. We experiment on Stack Exchange Networks, a set of question answering websites on different topics with a huge group of users and posts. Experiments show our proposed approach produces steady and premium outputs

The Best Answers? Think Twice: Online Detection of Commercial Campaigns in the CQA Forums

In an emerging trend, more and more Internet users search for information from Community Question and Answer (CQA) websites, as interactive communication in such websites provides users with a rare feeling of trust. More often than not, end users look for instant help when they browse the CQA websites for the best answers. Hence, it is imperative that they should be warned of any potential commercial campaigns hidden behind the answers. However, existing research focuses more on the quality of answers and does not meet the above need. In this paper, we develop a system that automatically analyzes the hidden patterns of commercial spam and raises alarms instantaneously to end users whenever a potential commercial campaign is detected. Our detection method integrates semantic analysis and posters' track records and utilizes the special features of CQA websites largely different from those in other types of forums such as microblogs or news reports. Our system is adaptive and accommodates new evidence uncovered by the detection algorithms over time. Validated with real-world trace data from a popular Chinese CQA website over a period of three months, our system shows great potential towards adaptive online detection of CQA spams.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure

Graph-based Cluster Analysis to Identify Similar Questions: A Design Science Approach

Social question answering (SQA) services allow users to clarify their queries by asking questions and obtaining answers from other users. To enhance the responsiveness of such services, one can identify similar questions and, thereafter, return the answers available. However, identifying similar questions is difficult because of the complex language structure of user-generated questions. For this reason, we developed an approach to cluster similar questions based on a web of social relationships among the questions, the answers, the askers, and the answerers. To do so, we designed a graph-based cluster analysis using design science research guidelines. In evaluating the results, we found that the proposed graph-based cluster analysis is more promising than baseline methods

A Framework to Predict the Quality of Answers with NonTextual

New types of document collections are being developed by various web services. The service providers keep track of non-textual features such as click counts. In this paper, we present a framework to use non-textual features to pre- dict the quality of documents. We also show our quality measure can be successfully incorporated into the language modeling-based retrieval model. We test our approach on a collection of question and answer pairs gathered from a community based question answering service where people ask and answer questions. Experimental results using our quality measure show a signi¯cant improvement over our baseline

FACTORS INFLUENCING USER’S CONTINUANCE INTENTION ON PAID QUESTION AND ANSWER SERVICE ----A STUDY ON WEIBO IN CHINA

This thesis addresses the research question “Why do users continue to use paid Q&A in China” by means showed below: First, this research introduces research background of paid Q&A in China and raises corresponding research question and highlights the research significance of this thesis topic; Second, the author concludes previous research on paid Q&A in aspects of Q&A system, paid subscription and sharing economy, and finds that most of prior research focuses on exploring the influence of usefulness but not enjoyment on the users’ willingness of continuing using a paid Q&A system; Third, the thesis introduces the VAM theory and build a modified model based on it, this modified model highlights the importance of pleasure on users’ continuance intention in using paid Q&A; Finally, the empirical study combining an Exploratory Factor Analysis and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis proves that, after integrating factors extracted from previous research and the proposed model, the research is tested to be explanatorily capable and hypotheses related to the model are mostly proved to be supported. As a conclusion, this study conducts an investigation on the constructs and related theories that influence users’ continuance intention to use paid Q&A, from a hedonic perspective. In this thesis, VAM theory is selected as the prototype of proposed research model which reveals factors affecting users’ continuance intention to use a Chinese paid Q&A product named Weibo Paid Q&A. In this thesis, the proposed model makes predictions that the constructs perceived fee and community atmosphere along with perceived enjoyment construct have critical effect on users’ continuance willingness in using Weibo Paid Q&A in China. With the assistance of PLS–SEM, this study analyzes data collected from users in WPQA, the empirical study verifies that users' continuance intention is assuredly dependent on perceived fee and community atmosphere along with perceived enjoyment. The study also reveals that quality of answerers and quality of answer positively exert significant influences on perceived enjoyment